Emotional Baking

I've come to realize I am an emotional baker.  Not like, I am a baker, and I am emotional (like my boyfriend pointed out much to my chagrin).  I mean that when I'm in heightened emotional states, my therapy is to bake.  See examples below.

When I'm frustrated with my job, I make pizza concotions. 

This one was brussels sprouts, bacon, and carmelized onions.  Then I do my best to not let us eat it all in one sitting.  Then I fail. 

 

When I'm trying to show my love, I make pie.  Either it's an "I'm in the Doghouse" pie.  Or, a "Hey, We All Love Each Other and Let's Eat Pie Together" pie.  Add tea.

Recently, it was a "Sometime's I'm a Dipshit" Banana Cream Pie with a fudgy "I'm Sorry" Ganache.  It turned into a "Let's Eat this for Every Meal" Pie.   I threw in some mini peanut butter cream tarts for good measure. 

When I'm angry, bread is the best medicine.  Kneading is therapeutic.  Really.  When angry tears come, all I want to do is knead the crap out of some dough.  Solution: Pretzels.

You can't go wrong.  You get to knead out your problems.  Then you when you are more composed you get to reflect for an hour while your dough rises (perhaps with a cocktail).  Then you get to focus on something else, like rolling and shaping them into perfect, twisted, salty morsels. 

And when I'm homesick and starting to get burned out from working two jobs, I make my mom's chex mix.

Then I eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  And snack.  And dessert?
Turns out, baking and cooking are how I relieve stress and sometimes how I express my feelings.  I'd have to say turning my frustration into creating something in the kitchen is a pretty healthy way for me to handle everything.  Although the heightened carb intake that comes after this therapeutic creating is likely not so healthy in the long run.  Such is life!

Want some recipes??
For the pizza, similar is here from Tracy at shutterbean.com.
For the pie, I adapted mine from the Williams Sonoma book Home Baked Comfort.  I'll post this later.
Pretzels. YUM!
Chex Mix is as follows!

16 cups of your favorite chex (I did 5 cups wheat, 5 cups rice, 6 cups corn)
2 cups pretzels (If my sister had her choice, she would omit these.  I use about 1.5 cups)
2 cups peanuts (I omit these because I don't like them much)
1 stick of butter
3 tsp Lawry's Seasoned Salt
7 tsp Worcestershire Sauce

Preheat your oven to 250 degrees.    Stick your butter on the pan you are cooking in and stick it in the oven as it is warming until it melts.  Pull out your pan, add the seasoned salt and worcestershire, and stir.  Add all of your chex.  Toss to coat.  Throw the pan in the oven for an hour, rotating chex every 15 minutes.  Add pretzels and peanuts after a half an hour. Let cool and try to keep your paws off of them!  I usually eat them while they are hot because I can't resist.

Easy as Pie

I have friends that don't know idioms.  Or maybe they don't know western idioms.  They are both Taiwanese and grew up in Asian households. One night there was a competition between the two of them.  An "Idiom Off" so to say.  One of them would take a turn and say, "The grass is greener on the other side!" and the next would reply "Better safe than sorry!". Probably after 5 comical and struggling rounds of this, it soon became me whispering into my friend's ear and another more "westernly cultured" friend whispering into the competitor's ear.  After a few more rounds I leaned over and whispered, "Easy as pie" only to be met by a harsh face of doubt and hesitation to say it out loud.  "That's NOT one!"... "Haha hey everyone, Kalen says, 'Easy as pie' ppfffftt!" ....then everyone else responded yelling "THAT IS ONE!!!!"

Easy as pie.  Apparently the easy is referring to the eating of the pie, and not the making.  It makes sense.  Pie is easy to eat.  I don't think you meet a lot of people that don't like pie.  When someone doesn't like cake, they definitely like pie.  When someone isn't that into sweets, they still like fruit pies.  Pie is inherent in our nature  (Go with it).  Who says no to eating pie? 

Turns out, I love making pie.  I know pie crust can be woeful, but I can now make a good pie crust in a jiffy.  I've figured out I really enjoy cutting cold butter into flour.   It's therapeutic.  Cheesy, I know.  But really, pie can be easy to make and eat.  It just crust, rolling, fruit, sugar and spice, a thickener, some butter, more rolling, and pinching. Easy as pie! 

 

Baking in my mom's kitchen is so nice.  Everything is open and organized and fancy as compared to my tiny apartment kitchen.  When I was home we BBQed some steaks, had some caipirinhas, and had an impromptu game night with some old friends.  We had bought rhubarb the day before because I had never baked with it and was curious.  So before we sat down to games, I threw a strawberry rhubarb pie together and popped it in the oven.


The pie was easy!  I swear!  It was also really easy to eat it.  Almost too easy because we couldn't even wait until it was cool enough to slice it.  The tartness of the rhubarb was complemented perfectly by the sweet farmer's market strawberries.  Because of the heat, it hadn't thickened all the way, but it was still delicious.  Go figure, pie is awesome in every form.

Lemon Meringue Pie

Everytime my family visits my grandma there is a freshly made lemon meringue pie just waiting for us.  It sits on her counter, humble, like it has been there all along, like it takes nothing to make, and like lemon meringue pie is a daily occurence in her household, which it may very well be.  My Grandma is a boss.  While it's entirely possible that she makes pie every other day, I'm pretty sure that she makes Lemon Meringue on the occasion that we visit.  It is a true family favorite. 

In honor of my grandma, on her birthday, I had the urge to make lemon meringue pies.  Yes, pies! I recently inherited small tart pans from my paternal grandma and have been eyeing them since I got them.  So, I whipped up a pie crust (this is a lie), and made lemon meringue mini pies!

Although lemon meringue is my favorite kind of pie, I have never attempted to make it.  Pies are not my favorite.  When I lied about whipping up a pie crust, I meant that pie crust is my demise.  I have yet to perfect the art of pie crust making, but hopefully the gene for this trait will show itself soon.  I usually use shortening in my pie crust, but this time I didn't have enough.  I found this website: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_pie_crust/ that helped!!!

The lemon meringue pies were so cute!!! I was ooohing and aaahing as I took them out of the oven.

 Delicious!  The pie crust turned out okay, a little too flaky for my taste.  I think the recipe I used with part butter part shortening would be great for a quiche, but next time I'll stick to shortening alone even though it grosses me out.

I used the Grandma's Lemon Meringue Pie recipe from AllRecipes.  Instead of using pre-made pie crust, I made used the Combination Butter and Shortening Crust from the SimplyRecipes website.  The recipe filled four 6 inch tart pans.

I brought a couple of these to my grandma (or Lola in tagalog) for her surprise party.  I knew they weren't as good as hers, because nothing ever is, but she still enjoyed them!

Happy 87th Birthday Lola!  Here's to you and lemon meringue pie!