“If baking is any labor at all, it’s a labor of love. A love that gets passed from generation to generation.”

-Regina Brett

From The Great British Baking Show to Zumbo’s Just Desserts, baking has taken mainstream media by force, a sugar hurricane if you will. Since the pandemic outbreak in 2020, the vast majority of people can now boast of having made their first loaf of bread. Making sourdough popular once again.

Whether you bake for the love of the craft, or you just like to eat (hey girl hey!), there is more to this culinary activity than meets the eye.

For some, baking is seen as a subset category of the culinary arts; one where flour, sugar, and eggs mix to create delicious and time-consuming delicacies meant to inspire the palate and sweeten the tooth. For others, baking is seen as a pastime sweet aproned grandmothers undertake to bring joy to their grandchildren. And the rest of us either like to bake for the fun of it or due to necessity. Whether driven by curiosity or an empty stomach baking can be more than what it seems. 

Bake Yourself Better

In this Huffington Post article, a professor at Boston University is quoted saying: “There’s a lot of literature for connection between creative expression and overall wellbeing. Whether it’s painting or it’s making music [or baking], there is a stress relief that people get from having some kind of an outlet and a way to express themselves.” 

 Julia Ponsonby author of’ ‘The Art of Mindful Baking’ told HuffPost “The physical act of baking, the way that you knead bread for example, takes your mind out of the intellectual and connects you to your body.” 

An interesting way of viewing this centuries-old skill, but when you think about it, it makes sense. From time management, improving social skills (it’s hard to get feedback without some form of verbal communication), and developing your imagination and creativity, to the manual benefits of movement and focus, baking is more than a simple Sunday morning activity.

There are multiple therapies people can use to better themselves, some of which I outline in the post “How To Start Your Self-investment Journey.”

All of these show that there is life still to live, there is hope on the other side of pain and joy just beyond the horizon. Baking, for me, is one of the greatest of these. With fond memories of Kai’s Kitchen and my easy bake oven baking has been a long-time friend.

So many of us have little memories like that. Being in the kitchen with our mothers and grandmothers, making sweet memories. Nostalgia is just one of the ways baking can be seen as therapeutic. Baking allows you to step back in time to those kinds of happy moments, engaging your tactile senses to heighten the moment. Happy memories can soothe an overtired, overworked, hyper-stressed mind.

This article shows the psychological background of how baking can affect our person for the better. And that’s why we are all here right? To be better today than we were yesterday; to push and improve where we can.

To do that successfully, each of us needs to find our “happy place,” a place where the world and its issues can fade away like an unwanted ex. 

A place we cultivate where we can be free to fully be ourselves, allowing grace for any mistakes and being willing to learn and grow in a safe environment.

In the kitchen, blasting music with the sunlight streaming in feeling the strength in my arms as I knead away at bread dough is my happy place. Seeing the happily stuffed faces of my loved ones is my happy place.

 Having the ability to still your mind and allow yourself to focus on one task at a time as you work your way through a recipe can be very therapeutic. And as a wonderful side effect, you get to do something else valuable; feeding people. One of the simplest pleasures in life is seeing people’s eyes light up when they bite into a slice of my cheesecake, hearing as they mumble incoherently about how good the food is. 

And no, just like life, the recipe doesn’t always work out. I have burnt a finger or two, forgotten ingredients, and improvised my way through a recipe. But through all that joy and a sense of accomplishment can be found in knowing you tried and even if it didn’t work out, that’s okay, you had fun in the process. Many moments in baking can be teaching moments. And like many things in life, if you start to train yourself to look closer, actually look at how you react to the world, you may be surprised. 

When you accidentally drop an egg on the ground, how do you react? With anger? Tears? Exasperation? When you’ve spent the last 3 hours making cake and when cutting into it realized you swapped the sugar for salt and now the cake is inedible, what is your first thought? Do you mentally berate yourself, calling yourself names, how stupid you were, and then just spiral down that dark rabbit hole? Or are you able to laugh it off and be willing to try again later? Because when you are in your “happy place” and you feel safe to be yourself, you’ll get to see the sides of you you may otherwise be repressed. Good or bad, it’s best to know what you’re working with so you know what to strengthen and what to improve.

When it comes to life what I’m learning more and more is it is not about the nature of adversity that is most important, but how we deal with it, as the Resilience Theory states.

So the next time your cookies burn, or your custard curdles remember to try and go with the flow, learn from it, and be encouraged knowing Paul Hollywood and I have done that at least once (whether he admits it or not).

Maybe you can’t fathom baking for fun and yet have been entranced to make it this far in the blog post (thanks btw). I encourage you to lean into any whispers of curiosity that have cropped up and see what the hype is all about! I would suggest you try and make this beginner-friendly recipe, tried and tested in my kitchen and by my stomach.

Berry Crumble for Two

Ingredients

Filling:

• 1 ½-2 cups berries
• 2 tsp cornstarch
• 1 tsp sugar
• ½ tsp vanilla

Topping:

• ¼ cups flour
• ¼ cups rolled oats
• ¼ cups brown sugar
• 3 Tbsp cold butter, salted
• ¼ tsp salt
• ⅛ tsp cinnamon

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350℉
2. In a large bowl toss together the filling ingredients until well coated, and distribute equally into two ramekins.
3. Place ramekins on a baking tray.
4. In a small bowl combine the dry topping ingredients and using two butter knives (or your hands), cut in the chilled butter until the mixture is crumbly. 
5. Spoon the topping mixture over the berries and bake for 30 minutes or until the berries begin to bubble and the topping is golden.
6. Serve warm on its own or with ice cream.

This recipe is one I have adapted into my own and have loved eating it as much as I have loved baking it. I recommend this one for its simplicity and overall deliciousness. I hope you love it as much as I do.

Final Notes:

Life is not always a piece of cake, but you’re sure to find it sweet when you take the time to prioritize your kneads (see what I did there?).  

 Find what brings out that joy in you, and pursue that with reckless abandon, no matter how silly or mundane it may seem to the world. If it makes you happy, that’s enough. You aren’t required to explain yourself to anyone else. You’ve only got this body and this lifetime in the present moment, might as well make the journey a good one, you deserve no less.

So the next time you feel yourself stressing out, step out of your head and into the kitchen. At the very least you’ll get to try something new, at the most you can turn your stress into something productive.

Until nest time,