Anything & Everything

I have had a recent and inexplicable obsession with cupcakes. Inexplicable due to the fact that they are extremely time-consuming and can require advanced skills when venturing to the regions of assorted cake types and, even more finicky yet, strange frosting flavours. The requirement time for butter softening, in addition to temperamental appliances and a grand lack of fundamental baking utensils, leads to the cute little dessert being the most unconventional baking basic in my very limited repertoire. However, that has yet to stop me from attempting. A balanced mix of incomprehensible stupidity and naive determination has convinced me that I can master every cupcake variation without requiring previous experience or the help of a highly experienced baker. And so, armed with misplaced confidence and inadequate knowledge I resolved to become a cupcake expert... and in the presently-ongoing process, failing miserably several times. My failures are documented in the forms of unused ...

Let it be made clear that I am not a professional baker (obviously), nor am I an avid baker, I am merely a baker due to a sugar obligation. I enjoy it as a hobby as some people might playing guitar, or painting pictures. In no way do I intend to pursue baking as a career, which is most likely a positive thing for the generic consumer public. Let it also be made clear that I am not a patient person. Which means that when I'd promised myself to methodically create the perfect brownie recipe I should have considered that I would have to endure long periods of trial and error and many, many, not-perfect brownies which I would have had to force upon my family until The One was found. Unfortunately, I am not good at methodical creation.   The only reason for this whole project is to be able to boast the best (anything) ever, and to perhaps have a recipe or two under my belt which can actually run smoothly.  I like instantly perfect recipes, and I scour the hundreds of pages...

I have all too many times experienced a disappointing recipe, and then gone out and tried a different recipe, to achieve an equally disappointing result. Frequently, I have concluded that the best way around it is to stick to one recipe with one component altered at a time so as to see how to improve the final result. But I was lazy. Thus it's a long term project that ends before it can begin. However, I reckon it's high time I started, with something that everyone likes differently: Brownies. There are so many recipes online, and none of them seem to be The One. All too often, I have had tips, recipes, recommendations, that declare one brownie recipe to be "the Ultimate Best Brownie Recipe, Like, Ever", but it's hardly the case for me. I had yet to find the perfect recipe for my cravings. The Perfect Brownie, to me, is a.) chewy. Not cakey or too fudgy, but like of those bakery cookies fresh from the oven (yet another thing to be perfected). It also has ...