I think I was about 8 when I discovered that if I made cookies then I would get to eat cookies. And it’s fair to say that baking has been a big part of my life ever since then. I’ve always loved the challenge, mystery, sense of accomplishment, and sweet reward that baking has to offer.
But as I grew older, I found that baking become more than just a way to sneak cookies into the house. It became a sort of therapy.
Let’s admit it, life is stressful. And life after college when you’re a go-getter who doesn’t know where to go next, is stressful. Whenever it felt like things were unraveling around me and my mind was racing too much to let me sleep, I turned to baking. And I still do. In those moments I find there is nothing more comforting nor calming than making something delicious out of the bits and bobs in my cupboard. I think it’s empowering to know that there’s always a coffee cake hiding in my kitchen – and I can put it together whenever I want! It just so happens that ‘whenever’ for me is usually very late at night….
Thing is, the more I took to baking in the middle of the night, the more I realized that not just any recipe is right for midnight baking. You see I don’t exactly plan ahead before these baking episodes and I can’t just run out at midnight to pick up an ingredient that I may be missing. And assuming I might want to actually sleep at some point, I don’t have a lot of time for this either. Along these lines, I’ve found that there are 3 qualities that define My (perfect) Midnight Baking recipe:
- Simple ingredients
- I can never be sure when baking inspiration will strike, so I can’t plan ahead for individual recipes. This means that My Midnight Baking recipes are made out of my staple ingredients, or my Kitchen Essentials.
- One batch
- As much as I love cookies, I hate baking them in the middle of the night. The rolling, the dividing, the repeating – who has the patience at midnight?! My Midnight Baking is all about recipes that only require one trip through the oven.
- Few tools
- Look, just because I want to bake at midnight doesn’t mean I want to do dishes at 1am. The fewer tools the better. Ideally everything easily fits in the sink to be dealt with in the morning.
And that’s it – the art of My Midnight Baking! What follows on this website is my collection of recipes – each curated, tested, and approved in the wee hours of the night. I hope you find them as comforting and calming (and delicious) as I do!