Club: Baked

The aftermath of this cake

Here's the back story: I am not a baker. I learned to cook by adding a little of this, a little of that and just mixing things up until I liked them. Sure there was trial and error. But baking intimidated intimidates me. Everything is tasty AND beautiful. and seems sorta kinda scientific. I hated chemistry in high school. That's the part that gives me the heebee geebees.

Plus, baking when you can't have traditional baked good ingredients poses a unique challenge that a novice baker like me just was a little too shy to try and conquer. And why bother, my mom loves to bake. And if you know anyone like her, you know that they need someone to pawn off all those goodies onto and back when I lived in my hometown, I was happy to oblige. As long as I could cook dinner for myself at my apartment, I could just swing by on the weekends and steal half of a french silk pie (and watch my dad shed a tear) or a bag of cookies.

But I decided that I want to try and bake more often. And different recipes. I can do cookies pretty well. And pies - because to me, fruit based desserts are sort of closer to cooking than floured ones. But beyond that, I'm pretty limited. So what better way to dive into baking than a blog club dedicated to the art? I joined Club: Baked, a blogging/baking club that posts twice a month. Each baker bakes the same recipe from the cookbook Baked: Explorations and can visit the others to see what they've done with it. I figure that I can learn from some other amazing bloggers and try some things I never would have before. So stay tuned here on July 1st for my very first attempt at NY Style Crumb Cake!