My Very First...

Happy New Year! Is there a better time to start a blog than the very first day of a brand new year? I decided to create my own blog so that I could meet the requirements to join Tuesday's with Dorie. I'm very, very excited about the prospect of working through a baking cook book with a whole slew of others who are just as obsessed with baking as I am! The only worry that I have is eating the baked goods - but I've been reassured by my family that they will be more than happy to help out with the oh so difficult task of eating a wide variety of delicious sweet treats.

I've been baking every since I can remember, but the obsession really kicked in when I decided to try a few recipes for a dinner party my mom was hosting - I must have been 13 or so. By the time I was done experimenting with a few baked goods, I realized that I baked two cheesecakes, a three layered chocolate cake, and two dozen pecan cookies. As I started to explore more cookbooks and food magazines, my interest in baking grew into a bigger frenzy eight years later when I decided to make my brother's wedding cake. It was a three tier pound cake with raspberry filling, and cream cheese frosting. It was a labor of love. By the time my own engagement party came around (I wasn't going to risk baking my own wedding cake (!) the stress would have sent me over the edge!) I made a three tier chocolate fudge cake with chocolate buttercream. Then I had the brilliant idea of creating a chocolate mosaic to decorate each of the tiers. By the time I was done tempering, breaking, and attaching each little piece to the cake, the smell of chocolate made me sick (it's hard to believe that chocolate would ever make me sick). Needlesstosay I couldn't even eat a piece of the cake b/c I was so sick of smelling chocolate! Not to worry though, my inablity to consume chocolate quickly expired, and I was back to my choco-holic ways in no time!

So, baking has been a big part of my life, and thankfully eating the baked goods doesn't seem to be as important to me as the actual process of making them and seeing my family and friends enjoy them!