I Knead You

My first addiction to baking was when I was about 11 years old.
I was in a new home that had a small but far bigger kitchen than our last and an oven that was just waiting for me to get my chubby little hands on.

I had a weird obsession with wanting to make bread.

We didn’t have a water heater in our home - which is literally where everyone tells you to prove your dough if it needs a warm dry place. So I would, no joke, normally only try in Summer and leave it outside in the sun. Covered by a damp tea towel of course.

Needless to say, these tries were not very successful.

Skip forward a few years and I’m a teen in high school and I’ve got a rather sweet tooth. I start making marble vanilla cupcakes. I thought I was so cool making two different coloured batters and being able to create a less than basic cupcake.

My first taste of someone really enjoying my food and having multiple people asking for the recipe, including my house teacher was my own take on Gingerbread cookies.
It was a simple recipe for gingerbread men but I replaced it with real ginger, that was literally only because I didn’t have ginger powder, no money to buy it, my parents would have no idea what that was and being Cantonese there is literally always fresh ginger at home. I minced it up added it and spent over 30 minutes rubbing it into the flour and made them into cookies. I took them with me to school to dish out and everyone really loved them. I even had a couple of friends remake them but they wondered why they couldn’t quite get the same result despite also using fresh ginger.

My baking addiction was pretty much set from there. It took me a while to get my rhythm.

It took losing a friend who I considered a little brother, someone I was excited to ask to help me with this little food dream I had since he was a chef, to realise that cooking is the one thing that can bring me back into equilibrium.

So that’s just a bit about why I knead to bake ;)