13. Bake a Tasty Dessert

Complete: 01/05/2013

Ingredients provided by Reid

For my 24th birthday, my friends Reid and Tracyn planned a day around the theme of my bucket list. Tracyn, in all her crafty skills, made me a bucket with clothespins that she clipped to the rim of the bucket, with one bucket list item glued to each clothespin. The idea was, with each bucket list item that I completed, I could clip together any memorabilia and document the date I completed the bucket list item as well as who I completed it with. Reid chose this bucket list item as the theme for his gift to me, and bought me all the ingredients to make brownies. On my birthday card, he wrote the recipe as well as told me that I had no excuse not to complete this bucket list item. Thanks to that, I made some delicious brownies to continue my bucket list quest in the new year.

 

 Birthday card with recipe

Before I go into my baking experience, I'd like to go back to the origins of this bucket list item. When my sister and I were little, we attempted baking once just to try it out. The recipe was from a children's book (I recall cartoon pictures of domesticated mice in aprons) titled "A Very Easy Chocolate Cake." Since our family isn't really into baking, my sister and I had to go out and buy a lot of these ingredients since they weren't ingredients my dad typically used in his cooking. We had to buy a baking pan, measuring spoons, baking powder, among other things. We then got to mixing the ingredients together. After following the recipe and sticking it in the oven to bake, we waited in anticipation of our final product since it was quite a lot of work for us two. When it came out, we were met with much disappointment; the cake did not rise, the batter was uneven since I remember there being patches of white (flour not mixed very well?) among the chocolate, and it was hard as a rock. Talk about failure, especially considering how we managed to mess up a recipe that is apparently so easy, they made a point to include it in the title of the cake. That day, I concluded that whatever the equivalent of having a green thumb is for baking/cooking was exactly what I was not.

Finished product

But, as I'm sure everyone has heard at some point in life, "If at first you don't succeed, try again." Well, this was one things I was willing to try my hand at again to see if I could indeed do better. So with all the dry ingredients conveniently purchased and given to me, I went to the store to purchase the remaining wet ingredients I needed to make brownies during the first weekend of the new year.

That afternoon, I followed the recipe on the birthday card. Despite making some beginner baker mistakes (which didn't impact the end product too much), I was able to successfully make brownies! Now that faith has been restored in my baking abilities, I wouldn't mind trying my hand at another recipe, particularly lemon bars. Let's see if I get to it this year.

Update: I've since tried my hand a variety of other desserts, including vegan butter mocha, vegan lemon cheesecake bars, and chia seed pudding, among other treats. Sorry I don't have any pictures, but I'm glad I did live up to the concluding statement of this post to attempt other dessert concoctions.