The stay at home order and the paranoia of catching the virus keeps us inside. A majority of us basically never spends this much time in our own homes. We all have our own lives. Usually, people are at school or at work. Then once we get home, we have homework or chores to do but once we are finished with our basic responsibilities, we’re too tired to work on a new hobby or activity. most of us would probably go to our comfy spots and turn on our devices to relax. Being home all day now makes relaxing boring and it’s not as enjoyable anymore. Well that’s how it is for me now. Binge watching shows or taking naps don’t feel the same anymore. I decided to pick up hobbies I have always wanted to get into. Baking and being more active and gaining experience in the kitchen has always been an interest of mine.

I started off with the classic chocolate chip cookies. There are so many different recipes online claiming it was the “best.” My first batch was kind of a failure. The results were flat and hard cookies but my mom enjoyed them to eat with her coffee. I also did not have chocolate chips at the time so I crushed up chocolate bars but they melted into my dough while baking in the oven. Not wanting to repeat the same mistake, I read a few articles and watched some Youtube videos just about chocolate chip cookies to create a delicious and chewy cookie. At last, I finally decided to bake a batch of cookies. I used the method of “browning” my butter and adding in expresso powder to intensify the flavor of my cookie. Adding on, instead of simply using two eggs, I used one egg and one egg yolk to create a moist texture to the cookie. The dough turned out very dark due to the expresso powder and brown butter. The cookies fresh out of the oven was extremely sweet. The chocolate chips were oozing and the sugars weren’t fully settled. A few hours later, the sweetness was just right. It was pretty small in size too, not much spreading occurred. I had fun experimenting with this new method of baking cookies! Next time, I think I’ll stick with regular butter instead of brown butter though.

When I made different types of bread in culinary, it was quite tedious and had its own complications. So the thought of making banana bread sounded challenging. I didn’t even start off with baking regular banana bread, I made low-fat strawberry banana bread. My first loaf was actually a great success. I made many, MANY more loaves after that as per my mom’s request since she liked having it for breakfast. I made a loaf of strawberry banana bread once every 2 weeks basically. One Saturday, I had to bake two loaves of bread. One for my grandparents to share with aunt and uncle, and another one for my family. I finally made regular banana bread after one and a half months into quarantine. To make it a little more fun, I added chocolate chips in. I totally forgot about how much more moist and thick regular banana bread was. It was very delicious and the chocolate chips gave it an extra kick.

Trader Joe’s sells this amazing coffee cake that my dad and I absolutely love. I decided to bake coffee bread muffins because I wanted to drop off these treats to my friends since they had AP testing and I missed seeing their faces. I did not enjoy making these muffins. There were four different components to put together to make the final product but I only made three. I decided the glaze topping wasn’t all that crucial. The recipe instructed that I had to create the batter, the cinnamon filling, and the crumb topping. Transferring the batter to the muffin pan was the most annoying part. In the middle of transferring, you have to insert some of the cinnamon filling and then put another layer of batter on top. I wasn’t sure about how much cinnamon filling I was supposed to put in each muffin but in the end, I ran out because I put too much in the first few muffins. The crumb topping was honestly a failure too. I was supposed to fill up the rest of the muffin cup with the crumb topping but I barely covered the whole top. As an end result, my coffee cake muffins were a little dry and there was a buttery taste. The top of my muffins looked naked due to the lack of crumb topping. I was pretty disappointed on how they turned out especially since I put so much effort into the process. To redeem myself, I looked up a different recipe and recreated my coffee cake muffins. This time, I used as much crumb topping as my muffin cup could hold and I substituted butter with oil. The turn out was better than before but the top of my muffin still looked bare because the crumb topping was spotty. The texture of the muffin was still a little dry and was far from the uniqueness of Trader Joe’s coffee cake.

A few other cool eats I’ve been creating/trying out are peanut butter cookies, whipped dalgona coffee and matcha, and brown sugar boba ice cream bars. At times , I feel thankful for quarantine because I was able to try out and learn about so much things. There’s so much science behind the art of baking. I find myself craving coffee now and I feel like it’s because I don’t drink boba as often anymore. My knife skills are slowly improving since I’ve been helping out in the kitchen a lot more now!