That is a good question. What IS this?! Why are YOU here? I know why I am here. So, I will start there and hopefully the rest will fall into place.
I love to cook. More precisely, I really love to cook. I long to bake. I long to bake like I was born to do it. So far, when I bake, it feels more like a chore. Like I'm climbing a mountain. A really really big mountain, covered in flour instead of snow.
I have recently toyed with the idea of going to school to become the baker I want to be. I'm not saying this idea is squashed completely, but until I decide for sure what I want to do, I decided to have some fun with my growing passion for all things patisserie.
While sauntering (like I do) around Barnes and Noble the other night, lingering in the cookbook section, I found myself standing in front of the baking books. My mouth slightly agape at all of the amazing things I saw in the pages of these books. As per usual, I lingered particularly long on one of Martha Stewarts books. It was her baking handbook. A heavy book, nearly 400 pages long. She is standing on the cover looking perfect (like she does) gently touching a cake plate with a towering strawberry shortcake looking thing (I'm sure I will learn the name of this "thing" in due time). She is smiling at me. Not a friendly smile, because that isn't how Martha rolls. It's more of a "You wish you could make something this freaking fabulous while looking as polished as me" type of smile. And dammit, she's right. I do want to make that towering strawberry shortcake thing! I have given up on trying to look as polished as she does, let's just be honest, I'm not Martha.
I wanted to buy this book. With a $40.00 price tag I knew that I would really have to buckle down and use it if I bought it. I needed motivation, besides my own burgeoning passion for the craft. Where else do i turn but the internet? So friends (internet friends and real friends alike), this is where you come in handy. This is where YOU get to help me shine. To keep me honest and to keep me motivated, you will be choosing what I bake. There are enough blogs out there about "So and So cooks their way through Famous Persons Cookbook." I didn't want to do that per-se. I didn't want to start at page 1 and work my way to page 400. I would wind up getting scared of a particular recipe and skipping it altogether, not once feeling guilty (ok, maybe a little bit). This way, we will mix things up. One week I might make cupcakes and the next week I might make bread! Who knows? The possibilities, while not endless, are quite varied.
Here are the rules (That I just made up):
1. As often as I see fit (this may be more than once a week, once a week, once a month), I will come here and ask you for a number. This number will correspond with a page in the book. If the number given does not have a recipe on it I will round up (like math!) to the next closest recipe. If I am at the end of the book, I will round down. See? Simple enough.
2. No skipping recipes! If you give me a number and I think the recipe that corresponds to said number sounds awful nasty and gross, that's just too damn bad. I'm going to do it anyway. It might get donated to an unwilling friend or family member though, just sayin'.
3. I will try to photograph this process as much as possible. I'm soooo bad about remembering to take pictures. But, for the sake of this "experiment" I promise to try my hardest.
4. I will blog about EVERY recipe, regardless of how terrible it might turn out.
5. I will make the recipe within 1 week of receiving the number (barring any natural disasters...flash floods....snow storms...tornadoes...you know, the typical for California).
I think that's it!
I already asked my wonderful Facebook friends to give me a number and the lovely April said 333. I have waited until the end of this blog post to look and see what 333 is. I am nervous and excited and I sort of feel like I want to throw up. Keep your fingers crossed for me as I begin to Bake Blindly!
-Kayla the Blind Baker
(To Bake Blindly is a culinary term, it means to bake a pie crust without filling. I am NOT actually blind.)
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