I am starting this blog as a way of documenting the year ahead, 2021 (not to mention to keep myself accountable). Specifically, our year of baking. When I say our I mean me and my daughter, Aubrey. I love baking but, as so many like me, I fall back upon the old favorites and rarely try new things. Aubrey aspires to have her own bakery some day. She has resigned herself to the fact that, in order to pay her bills, she will have to put those dreams on hold for the time being and be content with baking as a hobby.

After spending countless hours watching cooking shows, cooking show contests, and reading baking books and magazines; we have decided to take on “A Year Of Baking”. We hope that over the course of this year, we will learn how to make things we have seen on TV. Standard things like creme puffs and pies to the not so standard things like a bakewell tart or pavlova. We will take our inspiration from shows like “The Great British Baking Show” and “Holiday Baking Championship” and from magazines like “Bake From Scratch” and “Taste of Home”.

Our goal is to try to bake once a week. I have a full time job as a Certified Kitchen and Bath Designer and general contractor. Kitchens are my passion in more ways than one! I am also a health coach as a part-time business. Aubrey is in her 2nd year of college on her way to an accounting degree. What I’m trying to say is we are busy, just like you! We don’t have a test kitchen, we won’t be testing our recipes several times to get them just right before sharing them with you. This blog is going to show the good and the bad as we discover one recipe at a time. We hope that even in our failures we will be able to impart lessons we learned. While we will try to do a little research before tackling each recipe to make sure we understand the techniques involved, we can’t guarantee that will always happen.

After losing over 90 pounds collectively over the past two years, our other goal is to try to make our recipes “healthier”. We like to use whole grains, lower fats, and sugar substitutes (such as Swerve and Stevia)…the lower the glycemic index the better. I plan to post our recipes as written and what we use as substitutes. If we don’t think it’s wise to alter the recipes, we will leave them as is (like cream puff pate a choux).

I hope you enjoy our experiment as much as we will!