With the coming of the season comes season themed baking shows, and I’m a sucker for a good baking competition. I really enjoy the holiday baking shows, mostly because I can watch and drool over all the fantastic desserts the bakers create. I have been guilty of watching the show late in the evening a time or two and finding myself craving for something sweet.
A good thing about baking shows is that they act as a easy gateway to new baking ideas – swiss rolls, mirror glaze, macarons, all of them seem more accessible when you see a home baker making them in an hour and a half. It’s one of the main reason I decided to try my hand at making macarons. After watching a dozen seasons of the holiday baking show with someone making a macaron every other episode it just seemed like procrastination not to try and make some. Even better, watching other bakers making macarons gave me multiple tutorials on how to do it.
There are new flavor options too. I did not even know a Pomelo was a thing until it was an ingredient on a baking show, but I’ve tried it afterwards and found it incredibly tasty. Likewise, some of the recipes the bakers make up with the flavor combinations the competition provides them are both wild and intriguing: goat cheese custard pie with poached pears? Miso and maple syrup apple cake? Cream puffs with Mozzarella pastry cream and apricot compote? I never would have thought of them myself but they sound unexpectedly delicious. More than one of them have gone into a folder on my computer listing different deserts I want to try.
But one bad thing is, aside from the sweet cravings at 10 pm, the way seasoned bakers can make even complex tasks look easy. I’ve tried multiple times to do royal icing on sugar cookies and it always comes out looking terrible. The icing is too runny. The colors are off. They don’t dry to that nice, hard, shiny top that means you can stack the cookies without worrying about icing from the bottom cookie smearing on the cookie on top of it.
Have you seen some of the cookie decorating competitions? They have cookies standing up. They have cookies where they’ve used icing layers to build up and give the cookie a bumpy texture. They string iced cookies like decorations on a garland. I saw one episode where they did decorations on edible cookie masks. My bakers heart was stirred with longing : if only I could do that.
I will never need to make an edible cook mask. I will never need to make an entremet or three tier wedding cake (at least not unless I make a very big occupation change). Isn’t it crazy the way our hearts long for things and accomplishments that we don’t really need? It sends me into a tizzy, comparing myself to other and how much they can do compared to me. How often do I make a competition in my own head, throwing out ranks and scores for things that don’t ultimately matter in my day to day?
I’m not on a competition, thankfully. There’s no judges waiting for me to come out of my kitchen to start assigning points to how neat the cookies look and how creative I’ve been. I’m just a home baker puttering around in a kitchen, hoping to make a tasty treat for family or friends. Goodness knows I would never make it on a timed competition, no matter how early I start baking I’m always adding a half an hour to the speculated time on whatever recipe I try.
Who’s going to judge me if the icing on my cookies are a little off color? I’m making something sweet to brighten my friends and families days. In the end bringing a smile to their face is the real goal, and as long as I can manage that I think I’ve done a pretty good job.
