I was with a group of people recently when I heard someone say about someone else, “She can cook, but she sure can’t bake.”
It struck me as utterly absurd because both involve ingredients and measuring and mixing. Both depend upon stoves or ovens to bring their magic to completion.
The previous evening, I’d whipped up a mountain of tofu noodles topped with baby clams, artichoke hearts, arugula, pine nuts, shaved Parmesan cheese, a drizzle of blood orange olive oil and a twist of cracked pepper, a meal so spectacular that I considered starting a Facebook fan page just for it. With my intuitive talent for cooking, I thought: How could it be possible that I couldn’t also bake? And then I went home and made cookies.
According to my Yummly recipe app, the luscious little gems required only five ingredients and a time commitment of 20 minutes. They also required a stand mixer, which I did not have, but for which I substituted a hand-held mixer and stood while using it, which seemed like almost the same thing.
An hour and a half later, my kitchen was blanketed in powdered sugar and cocoa dust, the first batch of cookies were in the trash because someone on Yummly forgot to mention greasing the pan, and I realized I had, unbelievably, left out one of the five ingredients. The second batch looked to be salvageable, although I’d spooned the batter onto the baking sheet in such generous amounts that instead of 4 dozen cookies I wound up with 12 cookies the size of personal-pan pizzas.