Until very recently, I could not bake to save my life. Cakes always turned out too dense, meringue never meringue-ed, cookies burned. I would leave a trail of devastation in my wake. Mom and Mr. Town told me that I could do it, that cooking was nothing to be scared of, but I didn't believe them. One day I decided to just go for it, and slowly started learning the tricks of the trade. I love the internet for this reason. Anything you want to know is readily available. I learned how to decorate cakes and make Wilton roses from YouTube. I mastered macarons from other peoples' blogs (more on that another day). Not that I didn't make many, many, many mistakes along the way, but eventually things began to click.
I love that the basic ingredients for almost anything you make are eggs, sugar and butter. Depending on the ratio of ingredients and the techniques you use to mix them together, all kinds of amazing things happen. The day I made lemon tarts, I was astounded by the fact that cooking egg whites, sugar and lemon juice together starts out liquid and turns into a solid. Well, solid-ish. I don't understand why things work they way they do, but I love trying things out and discovering what will happen.
I made my own Dulce De Leche as a filling for my macarons from a recipe I found in a magazine a billion years ago. If you put a can of sweetened condensed milk in a pot of simmering water for a few hours, it turns into the most delicious caramel. How? Why does whipping cream turn into whipped cream if you mix it with a little sugar and beat it for awhile? How do egg whites go from liquid, to foam, to thick enough to not fall out of the bowl if you turn it over your head? Baking is this most amazing thing that's happened to me. (Hobby-wise, no offense to my hubby)
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