Baking is about the only kind of cooking I truly enjoy undertaking. I think because it is automatically categorized as extra-curricular and not part of the begrudging, everyday labour I normally do.
Plus, naturally, I like to eat the end product.
However I bake in a state of denial; part of me truly believes that what I am creating cannot possibly be bad for my health or my family. I mean, I used organic flour, for chrissake. I use eggs from chickens that live on farms, who must all be so completely happy and satisfied with their lot that it almost makes me want to go live with them.
So I look away when I tip in that entire 250gms of softened butter. I hum to myself when I tip in all that sugar.
Then I say such ridiculousness to myself that it is a wonder that someone doesn’t come up and tap me on the shoulder and have me committed for even thinking such ridiculousness: that perhaps, somehow, the muffin I eat won’t contain any of the fat – just all the others will. That by dividing up the mixture between 12 muffin holes that by some miracle of Jesus the fat will ‘escape’. That by my unique folding technique I will have discovered the gift of culinary alchemy and my end product will be purer and healthier than the wet mixture which proceeded it.
Tell me – do you have this gift too?!
