Gingerbread Houses

 It's the holiday season again, so I decided to make one of the most traditional and fun baked goods for this time of the year--Gingerbread houses! Gingerbread houses really make the house look more festive for the holidays, and they're a really fun project to make with friends!
To make gingerbread houses, all you need to do is make gingerbread cookies on a big sheet, cut out the layout of the house, and then use icing and candy to decorate to your heart's content.

For the cookies, you just mix the ingredients, chill the dough, and then roll it out into the shapes you want, then bake them in an oven at 375 degrees for about 15 minutes.

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup light molasses or dark corn syrup
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons water 

For the icing, I like to use a simple royal icing--it hardens nicely and is quite simple to make. Then, after baking and assembling the house, you can decorate it to your hearts content--or just eat it.

French Macarons

These are pretty much my very favorite things to make in the world. They're fairly easy to make, with only three ingredients, but you can customize them any way you like, with flavor combinations, colors, fillings, etc. And, they're becoming one of the most expensive, most sought after commodities in bakeries, yet they're fairly simple to make. Some time ago, I began making macarons after finding a recipe for them that looked interesting. I was intrigued by the various different flavors and ways to make them, and above all, how pretty they looked. So, when I began making them, I was delighted to find that they're not difficult to make at all. You only need three ingredients: powdered sugar, egg whites, and almond flour. Basically, you make a very light meringue cookie, and bake it at a very low temperature. Soon, I began making my own variations of macarons, such as matcha green tea, earl grey tea, and carrot cake macarons. It's so simple, yet they look so elegant, and they're definitely a marketable and delicious product to make!

All About Crêpes

Though crepes aren't exactly baked goods, they're still a delicious (and easy) dish to make! I have to say, they're one of my favorite things to make. You just take eggs, milk, flour, and a bit of sugar and vanilla, let it sit for a bit, and then mix in melted butter and cook in a pan. But the best part is decorating it. I love to think up of new flavor combinations and ways to present them when I make crepes.Whenever I make crepes, I usually add my favorite filling (Nutella), but it's fun to experiment with new flavors, such as flavored creme, fresh fruit, and of course,  the traditional crepes suzette. Last week, I went through what some might call a crepe craze. All I wanted to do was make lots and lots of crepes and give them to people (and eat some of course). So, I made various types of crepes, using green tea fillings, nutella fillings, and fruit fillings, and I made sure to present them nicely. I started thinking that if I can present them well enough and work out a system of making them, I could actually sell them, if I wanted. Of course, I would have to keep track of the money it costs to make them (and time) and determine the price based on them, but it could be something I could actually sell. It was a nice feeling, feeling that I'm actually capable of doing something that I not only enjoy, but I could make a livelihood around.

The Future

All my life, college has always seemed to be some distant future, as something to look forward to, but also dread. Now that future is almost here, it's kind of scary. I'm not 100% sure what I want to do with my life, and my list of possible majors varies from foreign language to business to pre-med. In short, I'm conflicted--it's hard to narrow the choices down to one major. There are a number of possible careers that I'm considering, and considering that college is only 2 years away, I need to seriously consider majors. I'd love to study many languages and travel the world, but realistically speaking, there aren't many jobs involving that, so it's probably not a practical major to pursue. I also would like to be a dermatologist, yet the years of studying kind of scares me, and I'm not sure if I would succeed in such a competitive program. It's still something that I would like to pursue, however, and definitely a good career option. However, I've always enjoyed cooking, especially baking, and if I majored in business, I could probably obtain the skills necessary to open my own bakery, which I would also love to do. On this blog, I will probably focus on this major, because it's the most confusing career option for me, and if I were to do it, I would need to have things to make. So, as this is something I'm seriously considering, I'd like to devote this blog to baking and developing recipes.