“There is no ‘should’ or ‘should not’ when it comes to having feelings.  They’re part of who we are and their origins are beyond our control.  When we can believe that, we may find it easier to make constructive choices about what to do with those feelings.” 

– Fred Rogers

  No matter what feelings you’re feeling, if you walk into a warm cozy kitchen where the music is playing, you’re with people you love, and you have a great recipe to bake, you are destined for the warm and fuzzies. This is how my story began…

Years ago, I realized that my love of baking was just as much about the mood as it was the food.  For many of us home bakers, we bake because it whisks us away from this wild world in which we live.  Baking is innocent, pure, it gives us control, connects us, and nourishes the body and soul.  When we bake we are free to run away into a recipe where no one can find us, and when the time is right we come back to reality with something lovely and sweet.  Baking also has a beautiful way of comforting us with, and in, every sense.  If you’re angry you can soothe your bubbling rage into a ball of biscuit dough.  If you’re worried, you can watch your troubles melt away like warm chocolate chips.  And if you’re stressed, a little baking can raise your spirits like a delicious homemade pound cake. 

  Even science and social media have warm fuzzy feelings about baking.   Snapping photos of baked goodies is like a second hobby for many, as baking hashtags have become like huge communities of like-minded people.  On Instagram alone, the single hashtag #baking currently has over 25 million posts, and #bakeyourworldhappy has almost 160,000.  There are also tens of thousands of people within baking groups on Pinterest swapping their favorite recipes, daily.  If that isn’t convincing enough, how about a sprinkle of scientific data to back up all this baking?

  In a recent study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, it was found that spending time on small creative goals like baking was associated with a statistically significant increase in positive affect.  The study evaluated 658 young adults and determined after 13 days, that the more time spent on creative activities the happier and more fulfilled the study participants felt the next day.  On the inverse, less creative time was associated with lower positive affect the following day.  See, you really can transform both food and mood with a little butter, sugar, flour and eggs.

  In a nutshell, I bake because it is my therapy. No rules, total control, and unlimited possibilities. If you don’t think baking is for you, forget about the food and try it for the mood. We have tons of easy recipes on the blog that will surely warm you up from the inside out.

Happy baking!

Emily M.

The post The Real Reason I Bake appeared first on Pie Crust and Pixie Dust.

This week we baked a recipe called “Party Cookies” which came from a 1974 Rotary Club cookbook in my hometown of Marietta, Georgia. Quite frankly, this may be one of the best cookie recipes I’ve come across, and the fact that it came from an old southern Rotary Club cookbook is no surprise….

For those of you who aren’t from the south, vintage cookbooks from southern community organizations are a treasure trove of incredible recipes. Years ago, churches and civic groups like The Junior League would publish an annual cookbook to raise money for various causes. The cookbooks would feature both the recipe itself, along with the name of the contributor. As you can imagine, for those who contributed recipes, it was a little bit like their culinary “15 minutes of fame.” There is no way anyone would publish a sub-par recipe that literally had their name on it!

Fast forward several decades and many of us have been gifted boxes of these old community cookbooks. Before you throw your boxes away, you may want to take a peek inside. If you’re like we were this week, you may come across some seriously deliciously new recipes!

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Hello friends!

Here is a little sweet news for you, today.  You don’t have to have a bunch of fancy ingredients to make a really great cake.  In fact, if you make the most of the basic ingredients you have on hand, you can actually bake a super-fantastic cake.

The same is true in life.  You don’t have to have lots of things or every “ingredient” you want to have a super-fantastic life.  Just do a really good job with the basics like love, kindness, respect and honesty, and you can create a really awesome life for yourself and those around you.

This week we were challenged with making the best of what we had, when our oldest daughter Madison wanted to bake a cake.  Her vision was a very colorful buttercream cake, but we were a long way from having all the ingredients required for such a fancy cake.  Instead, she took inventory of the ingredients we had in the pantry, and decided to whip up the best cake possible with those ingredients.

The outcome was a very easy and DELICIOUS s’mores cake.  It wasn’t sparkly, colorful or buttercream, but it was so much better rocking the ingredients we had instead of trying to make something that wasn’t for us that day.

You will love this recipe if you like chocolate, marshmallows and CAKE!  The recipe my daughter used was the “1,2,3,4 cake” on the back of the Swan’s Down cake flour box, and she added cocoa powder to marbleize the cake batter.  Once baked, she frosted the cake with two cans of Hershey’s chocolate frosting, and topped it all off with marshmallows, Graham crackers and chocolate chips.  Woohoo!

While the s’mores cake itself was totally memorable, I hope the lesson in this baking project was even more memorable.  I hope that my children never forget to love, stay honest, be kind, and respectful of themselves and others.  Mastering the basics is the foundation of anything great. Cakes and beyond.

We hope you give this recipe a try and send us your photos and feedback!

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If you look at my Pinterest account, you will see plenty of fancy cakes with interesting ingredients and elaborate construction.  I love these inspiring cakes, but they are far from what I would consider  “perfect” cakes.  For me, the perfect cake is baked with love, has a story behind it, and a mission in front of it.  Most of the time, these special cakes are baked at home by “normal” bakers like you and me, and are intended to fill someones tummy with sweetness and heart with joy.

Last week, I saw one of the most perfect cakes I’ve ever come across.  Our family celebrated our son’s third birthday, and our six year old daughter baked (with help) and decorated our son’s birthday cake.  The batter was from a box, the frosting was from a can, and the outcome was straight from the heart.  Sure, I am a little bias, but my goodness I loved this sweet little labor of love.  It was perfectly imperfect.

Typically, I would use this cake recipe for the birthday cake, and a basic buttercream or cream cheese frosting.  For our son’s birthday cake however, my daughter insisted on “Funfetti” cake with matching sprinkle frosting.  Honestly, the cake tasted so good, no one cared that it all came from the box.  It totally rocked.

If there is anything my children could learn from this baking project, it would be this;  When faced with a new task, do everything in love.  Ask yourself, what is the story behind this project, what is its mission, and will it help others?  If what is on the inside is your focus, your success is imminent.  From baking a cake, to volunteering your time, to starting a new company, be prepared, have fun and do it in love.

Perhaps that’s a bit deep for cake baking, but hopefully it will come in handy as the kids grow older.

If you are interested in baking for a sweet cause, check out this link from King Arthur Flour.  Love y’all!

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Hello Sweet Friends,

Last week, I asked my five year old if she was going to be exchanging valentines with her classmates at school.  In response she said,

Yes, Mommy.  I need to bring 21 valentines to school on Tuesday.  There are 22 kids in my class if you include me, so that means I need to make 21 valentines.”

While her response was completely accurate, I couldn’t help but wonder why we never include ourselves in Valentine’s Day celebrations, when there is so much awesomeness in all of us?  Think about it, as adults, many of us are raising children, working badass jobs, fixing Pinterest-worthy meals (or at least trying to, I mean come on), laundry, marriage, volunteering… I could go on for days. There are serious super-hero skills required to balance such demanding tasks,  yet taking a moment to give ourselves an emotional high-five is far too rare.  I don’t know about you, but I want my kids to grow up with a healthy sense of self-love.  So in the spirit of learning how to love ourselves, I have started a new family tradition.  It’s time to party.

Every February 14th from now on, our family is having a Valentine’s Day party to celebrate others, as well as ourselves.

Our celebration is simple.  Each year, we will bake something to celebrate Valentine’s Day, and take a few minutes to make valentines for ourselves.  It doesn’t matter if what we write is silly or serious, it is just about taking time to write down what makes us special.  Next, we will collect the valentines in a box and save them for down the road when one of us needs a little encouragement.  Over the years, I want my children to have a nice collection of their own valentines to remind them of how they are truly incredible.  They will also have tons from their boring parents!

For the yummy part of our celebration, we decided to bake a homemade pound cake with fondant icing.  Although this cake looks a little fancy on the outside, it’s what is on the inside that really rocks.  You will love this recipe.  The cake is a no-fail old fashioned pound cake with canned cream cheese frosting. E-A-S-Y.  I’ll save the fondant and decorations for a separate post.  The cake itself has few ingredients and is very dependable if you ever need to make a cake in a flash and don’t have much in the pantry.

So this year, I hope you take time to celebrate yourself on Valentine’s Day….. Then eat cake!  I promise this combination will ensure one of your best Valentine’s Days yet.  You deserve it.

With lots of love,

Print

Easy Pound Cake Recipe

Basic Pound Cake

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 2 hours hours

Servings 8

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 cup butter
• 5 eggs
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Instructions

Cake

• Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees
• Combine sugar and butter
• Slowly beat in eggs
• Add vanilla
• Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add once combined
• Beat mixture until smooth
• Pour batter into pan
• Bake until slightly golden on top and there is "no jiggle" on top! 20-25 minutes.

Decorating

• Wait for the cakes to cool all the way down before removing them from their pans. Once removed, you can decorate and serve, or slice the rounded tops and stack the layers with your favorite frosting!

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Easy Peasy Lemon Squeeze Pie

Do you ever have those weeks when you start out with a well organized plan for the days ahead, and it all falls apart like a cheap pair of shoes? That was our family last week. The short version includes, a four-day stomach virus for our toddler, a case of head Lice for another one of my little ones (OMG, not even funny), a morning when we all slept in past the school bell, and dealing with the emotions of the one month anniversary of the loss of my sweet father. No wonder I look like Beetlejuice in a bathrobe this morning.

So in response to the challenges of our week, we decided to fight back. You know the old saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade?” Well, we took a new spin on the idea decided to bake mini Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezie Pies.

I want my children to know that when life gets difficult, you can’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself.  We have to pull ourselves together, and go find something to smile about.

Fortunately, these little lemon pies gave us a lot to smile about.  This is such a simple and classic recipe, and if you use a pre-made crust, you will still get an excellent result.  My kids love these little pies because they aren’t too tart, and the big helping of meringue is delicious.  The recipe below will allow for one shallow dish pie, or six mini-pies.

So the next time life gives you lemons, make pies.  I promise, this is a great recipe to bring that happy back. My grandmother brought this every Christmas for lunch, and there was never a crumb to spare. Enjoy, sweet friends!!

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