First and foremost! This blog is not a New Year’s Resolution-type of deal. Our timing is purely coincidental. I mean, it is, but it’s not. We’re not calling it that. Because Resolutions come with that weird combination of good intentions but lack of completion, and we don’t want that! Everything else we are planning with this blog is definitely resolution-y; change, improving our lives, motivation, blah blah all that stuff. But we’re also trying not to put too much pressure on ourselves to go all out. We have our January planned out, and anything we can do after that is success! Just completing the 5 recipes for January would be a success. You can read more about why and how we decided on the title of our blog in our about section, but I’ll say this much here; we want to get better at baking. And a whole lot of other stuff, but we’ll start with baking.
We, your blog co-runners from this moment on, are not the greatest cooks, nor bakers, nor are we well-versed in food stuffs in general. We watch numerous food-related reality TV shows though, so we do consider ourselves somewhat amateurish foodies. We can tell your how Gordon Ramsey makes the perfect omelette, but have never tried it ourselves. To give you a solid idea of the state of our affairs, our cupboards, fridge, and freezer are starkly stocked at best. We have some whole wheat flower, some sugar and maybe a spattering of other baking items. Reasons being our financial statuses, and maybe more so, our just lack of motivation to go grocery shopping. It’s a pain, you know? I have my driver’s license but no car, so we either take a taxi when we need a bigger load of groceries – which is sometimes expensive, or lugging our bags on the bus – which is inconvenient for other bus riders and is just a PAIN. But anyhow, I’ll stop whining, let’s get to the point.
How this started: Since summer 2012 we have been practically fanatic about the British baking competition TV show the Great British Bake Off, which is even greater than it sounds and if you haven’t watched you should do so immediately, like maybe even before you read any more of this blog and then of course come back to us. And tell us what you think, and who your favourites are, and how great Mel and Sue are and don’t you just want to make out with Sue? Paul Hollywood’s a piece of work, right? I can’t believe Mary Berry’s name is her name, like what are the chances? A cookbook writer and experienced baker with the given name, Mary Berry. Amazing.
I’m getting off-track – that’s going to happen a lot. So last Christmas, or rather two Christmases ago now, we were gifted the Official accompanying cookbook The Great British Book of Baking. Look at it, isn’t it beautiful?
Only a handful of days ago, when I returned to our humble abode from visiting family for the holidays, Kalin broached the idea of working out way through the book with me, triggered by a gifted Kitchen Aid mixer from Kalin’s Mom under the condition that we actually use it. I think we had half-seriously said we’d do something all these lines when we originally got the cookbook, though we never followed through. But the timing and everything felt right, so we immediately started planning and building this blog! We’re not going to Julia & Julie this, we’re not, don’t have the time or energy or even desire to do so. We’ve already pre-chosen a portion of the 120 recipes in the book; recipes we want to eat, want to challenge ourselves with, and left out the ones we don’t want. Our plan is to make one recipe a weekend, with the accompanying post posted by Sunday night our time [PST].
For our first foray, we’re going to make the very first recipe in the book, Stem Gingernuts, with Kalin getting everything we require for it tomorrow while I’m meeting a friend and then hopefully the action will be complete by Saturday and I’ll have Sunday to write our post.
In the mean time, check out our About page for more about us, and then watch some Great British Bake Off and then feel free to follow along our baking journey.
Remedial Bake Off 