My idea of baking is picking up a cake at “Nothing Bundt Cakes” or something at the grocery store bakery.  My kids used to get excited about me making slice and bake cookies with cheers of “mom’s baking cookies!!”.  It’s like camping.  My idea of camping is a Holiday Inn (or nowadays, a Hilton), but I digress.  While I love to eat baked goods of all kinds, I just don’t have the time or the patience to bake anything these days.

Now, my husband will tell you that I bake pretty well, but I’m pretty sure that he has to because it was in the wedding contract.  I can make a mean chocolate pie from scratch but it’s been years.  And key lime pie is just way too easy to count as baking.  I never baked growing up because my mom was a great baker and she didn’t have patience for me making messes. But it’s not like I didn’t pay attention.

But times have changed.  In the last week I’ve baked tollhouse cookies, banana bread and now a banana pudding cake.  From scratch.  Trying to get rid of ripe bananas of course.  Lots of vanilla ice cream needed this week.  Good thing is was on sale 2 for 1. But why have times changed enough that I’m willing to find a recipe and hope I have all the ingredients?  Because I don’t get to create things with my kids right now and I NEED to create.

Baking has been a great way to work with my son who tends to isolate even we don’t need to isolate.  All I had to say tonight was “hey Dave, I want to bake something new” and he was there.  So we spend time talking together and he does the sous chef thing while I put stuff together.  He says it’s satisfying for him to chop walnuts and measure out ingredients.  I like multi-tasking and running things so I’m in my element.  And in the end, it usually turns out pretty edible.

With my days being full of sitting on the computer for hours, baking has been  surprisingly cathartic.  It makes me slow down and think differently and rewards me for my efforts in the end.  I’m not necessarily getting that in my day to day right now.  I’m not going out to eat, which is one of my favorite things, so I’m trying create variety here at home.  I’ve never been a very good housewife in any of the traditional terms.  I very much dislike cooking, cleaning, and staying at home in general.  I admit that I was eager to get to work after having my boys.  I’ve felt guilty about that for decades.  But over the years I have figured out that this is who I am and my boys turned out to be pretty great people despite me.  Or because of their dad.  We’ll probably never know.

So if we’re going to be stuck for awhile, it seems I’ll be doing some more baking.  I might even get to like it.  One of the bright sides of what has been a very strange time, taking me away from what I feel like I do pretty well and challenging me to try something out of my comfort zone.  Here’s to great desserts and no weight gain!