ahem

Reasons why I started to bake:

The Chocolate Room in "Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory"

Tita Nona's fabulous homemade Milo cake, shaped like a huge doughnut and slathered with creamy Milo (chocolate malt) and condensada (condensed milk) icing

The candy shop in Disney world where I saw great swirly lollipops big as my head

The Hansel and Gretel story book I had as a kid that used real dolls and real cookies in the illustrations


And so we begin:




This lovely pile of cookies was my first foray into baking. Very simple, basic recipes

cinnamonamons - a simple snickerdoodle recipe, great buttery balls of dough rolled in cinammon sugar
spicy senoras - a softer sweeter gingerbread type cookie
lemonadas - lemon crinkles with a cracked sugary crust
tsokolate con tsoknat - chocolate cookies with a creamy peanut butter filling

A few months in to my baking, I decided to try something a bit more ambitious:



Lollipop cookies!!! Sprinkles!!! Sigh...
This was a sugar cookie recipe with easy creamy icing and sprinkles. I remember I was making these until ten in the evening.

And finally, I baked my sister a birthday cake.




Of course I'm only showing the successes. I've had dry crumbly cookies, sad deflated cakes, gooey soupy pies. But I will continue my butter stained efforts. My cookies are never the same size, my cakes tend to lean on one side, my icing poured and swirled in quick slapdash peaks, but I don't want to be a pastry chef. I want to make big colorful messy sweets, the gingerbread house of my dreams, and my own private chocolate room. Yummy. Yay. Here we go.