For years, people have been telling me that I should sell my baked goods, and for just as many years I’ve been thinking that they were crazy. Who would pay for cookies when they can just make their own?
Recently, I made a cake for a pot-luck dinner and had someone ask, “Wow! How did you make this?”. This question dumbfounded me…do people really not know how to make cakes? My response was, “well, I just followed the recipe. It’s not hard” and she responded, “well, it doesn’t look like any cake I’ve ever seen!” (For the record, it was a chocolate chip bundt cake with a chocolate glaze.)
I grew up in a family of bakers…my mom always baked at holidays, for school bake sales, and for birthdays (when I was 6, she made me a three-tier birthday cake that looked like a carosel). Both my grandmothers baked, and when I was 8 I started not only helping them bake but also baking on my own. (My easy-bake oven never worked right, so I just graduated straight to the real thing).
I’ve been baking ever since…when my parents got divorced, it was really a source of comfort, and has continued to be that way. In college and grad school, I baked nearly every week, for bible studies and staff meetings, and just because I felt like it and wanted a good dessert. But I’ve never considered my baking special…I’ve never been to culinary school, and don’t know fancy tricks or names or how to make pastry or have any decorating skills. But more and more I’m realizing that cooking, and especially baking, is becoming a lost art. Most people don’t go to the effort to make things from scratch anymore, and many of them wouldn’t know where to start if they wanted to. (In college, I made a pumpkin pie in the dorm and had tons of people tell me it was just like their mom’s…I was, again, dumbfounded. What will they do when they want a pie and their mom isn’t there to make it for them? The obvious answer here is buy one from the store, but, as a baker, this never occurred to me.)
More and more I’ve been realizing a.) how much happier baking makes me than almost anything else and b.) it’s not as common a skill as I always believed. Just today, buying cream cheese at Target to make a cheesecake, the check out clerk told me, “You know, it’s much cheaper to just buy one”. I just stood gaping dumbly at her..just buy one? What?
Before I moved here, I had a coworker suggest that I contact the coffee shop in town and ask if they would be interested in selling my baked goods, as an extra source of income. Shocking even myself, I did, never expecting anything to come from it.
I’m still not sure if anything will come from it, but I have a meeting with the owners Saturday morning and am fixing up a slew of my best cookies, cakes, and pies for them to taste (snickerdoodles, cream-topped NY cheesecake, cream-cheese frosted red velvet cake, lemon bundt cake with almond frosting, and chocolate chip pie). Maybe the only thing that will happen is that they ‘ll have a very tasty Saturday morning (and all the friends we’re inviting over Saturday night to eat the rest will enjoy it, too), but I won’t regret it. I like sharing what I’ve baked, and if it makes someone’s day better, then I’ve achieved my purpose.
But…making a career out of it wouldn’t be too bad either.
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