The Humble Baker

I have noticed of late that people seem to accord a lot of respect to those who bother to bake their own desserts or bread. As someone who truly enjoys baking, I don't find it a chore, nor do I find it terribly difficult. If anything, to my way of thinking it is even easier than cooking, because cooking often involves more experimentation and thus chance of disaster; whereas most baking requires a relatively stringent adherence to a recipe and thus precludes much disaster.

However, people are always surprised and/or amazed when I bring a home-made dessert to our small group Bible study, or when I baked home-made breads from scratch for our St. Patrick's Day party. I pretty much steer clear of mixes for my baked goods with the occasional lazy exception, and when people hear this, it engenders even more comment. "Wow, how do you find time to do that?" "I could never make a pie crust myself." "I can't imagine being able to bake a cake from scratch...I don't know how you do it." These comments leave me sort of scratching my head, because, frankly, I don't see what is so terribly difficult about throwing ingredients into a mixer and pouring the mix into a greased pan. Yes, I can see how you burn things if you don't check it soon enough, but that's just not knowing how your oven bakes, and that comes with practice.

I have more of an understanding as to why my in-laws choose to buy all of their baked goods. The treats in Ireland would be quite laborious to make by yourself. Most biscuits require a specific flour, and many are chocolate dipped (now that is time-consuming). The preferred cakes (by which I mean individual size tartlets or sponge cakes) are usually filled with a cream filling, or a jam filling, or both, and then topped with frosting or chocolate. Ouch...you start talking about so many layers and ingredients, and that is real WORK, my friend. I have never attempted to make my own jaffa cakes (a delectable creation of a small circle of vanilla spongecake, topped with orange marmalade, and then topped with dark chocolate...*drool*). There is too much labor involved for it to be worth my time, when I can just buy Pims or Jaffa cakes from the British grocer online or even at my neighborhood grocery store. Even Christmas cake and puddings are quite time consuming to make, and even if I liked them (which I don't), I would probably opt to buy the Champagne Special Pudding by Marks & Spencer, too.

However, I truly do not see the difficulty in putting together a basic chocolate or vanilla cake, or a fruit pie. Really, is it that hard to add things in the proper order, and grease a pan? Heck, I use a canola oil spray instead of greasing the pan for my own convenience, and it works just fine.

I bring this up because I know there are many traditional treats for holidays which seem to be falling by the wayside as people stop baking in their homes. I am going to be making hot cross buns for Easter, and I might even be brave enough to make them tonight so I can have them tomorrow on Good Friday--the traditional time for hot cross buns. The symbolism of the bun is so lovely--the shape of the bun is that of the stone that was rolled away. The spices in the bun represent the spices Christ was buried with, and the fact that it is a yeast bread represents Christ's resurrection from the dead! Of course, the cross on top is for the crucifixion, and the lemon glaze in the cross shows how God turned something very sour into something oh so sweet. Even the fruit tells a story, representing the fruits of the Spirit which are His gift to believers. They also represent the fruit we are to bear in Him. What a great message for little ones, and in such a sweet package! I hope you will enjoy some hot cross buns this Easter, too, even if they aren't home-baked...but if you are feeling adventurous, give it a try! It's not that hard, I promise.