The trouble with a baking addiction is...

It's an addiction... and addiction is something I should know something about.

Keith Richards

I am, totally, unequivocally, absolutely a baking addict. It started when I was pretty young and has just got stronger as time goes by.

I first started out, like most people, being taught how to bake by my mum. She used to bake so much! Cakes, pies, yorkshire puddings, biscuits, breads etc etc. Anything she could bake at home, she would. I love this about her and have carried it on, not only does it save you a lot of money (sometimes!) but also it tastes better and is so much fun.
When I first started I wasn't very good - no surprise there. It took me some time to get used to the baking terms and ingredients (and I'm still always learning) but I got the handle on it eventually. So I started trying more and more difficult recipes and that progressed into me starting to create my own recipes.

The thing about this addiction, like any other, is it can be debilitating. For instance, when you're not selling your creations (as I am currently unable to, not through lack of trying but location) you're spending money but not getting anything back. Sure you're making lovely biscuits and desserts but all you get out of that is holes in your teeth and a wider waistline every day.

The other thing is saturation - with this I mean you still love the process of baking, the weighing of ingredients, mixing, folding, sieving etc, but the end result loses more and more of the excitement it once held. You want the process without the outcome or the resulting food that needs to be eaten. Also, tied in with this part of the problem is saturating your friends and family...there's only so many people you see regularly enough to give your baked goods to and they can only enjoy them for so long too.

Today was hard for me to resist baking some more biscuits (my own recipe) as I'd baked peach cupcakes only last night...it's only because the peaches were turning bad....I promise that was the reason ;)

So what did I do instead? Sadly, the answer is nothing. I sat in front of my laptop and played silly Facebook games, talked to a couple of friends back in the UK and tried to waste the hours until I can go to sleep. It's not a great way to spend a day and half of me feels worse for doing it...as if sitting here and avoiding the kitchen has made me more unhealthy and lazy - totally guilt ridden.

It's still too early (and too hot) to go to sleep, so now what do I do? To that, I have no answer but I thought sharing this and the physical act of typing it might take up some time and bring a solution possibly.

The conclusion for this post is - I'm still working on it. I even got fed up with writing my recipe book, I love to type but sometimes there's nothing that'll satisfy you other than doing exactly what you want. Right now I can't do or have anything I want - food, baking and cigarettes - so needless to say, life is annoying lately.

Anyone else have a baking addiction? Or anything similar? How do you deal with it?

Happy baking to anyone able to bake today :)

Gorgeous Custard Creams recipe!

 

I don't think anyone can say no to these little naughty treats once they've tried them, I know I'm a total addict!

This is exactly why I had to hunt for a recipe to make them at home. Let's face it, if you love to bake and love any certain baked product then of course you're going to have to find out how they're made!!!!

So here's the recipe I used (from the BBC Good Food website with some tweaking by myself)

Ingredients:

For the biscuit:
100g margarine/butter
100g flour
50g caster sugar
50g custard powder
few drops of vanilla essence
For the filling:
150g icing sugar
75g margarine/butter
20g custard powder

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 180c-200c

2. Cream sugar and margarine, then fold in your flour, custard powder and vanilla essence until the dough is firm and roll-able.

3. Lightly flour a clean surface and roll out the dough to roughly 1/2 cm thickness. Then cut out with a cookie cutter, making sure to have an equal amount of cut outs.

4. Place shapes on a baking tray covered in grease proof paper (or lightly greased and floured), ensuring that one of each pair is put on upside down (i.e. flipped over, rather than rotated).

5. Bake for 10 minutes, or until golden brown.

6. Remove from the oven, don't remove from the tray for a few minutes as they'll be very soft. Then cool on a wire rack.

7. Now mix the icing sugar and margarine until smooth, then add the custard powder.

8. Fill the custard creams once they are cool. Place a bit on the bottom (i.e. non-smooth side) of one biscuit, then put the bottom of the first biscuit's pair onto this. Don't force together as this'll just make the filling spill out.

Let me know how this works for you

Happy baking!

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