Mods Are Asleep Post Your Hobbies

Writing, macrame, and baking. Such as the birthday cake I made for myself (and to share) a couple of months ago:





That is a "Chocolate Espresso Dacquoise" which means that there are no 'cake' layers. The layers are made from baked meringue, which is then covered with chocolate ganache and buttercream frosting. The chocolate on the outside is also the ganache, just heated enough to pour over the exterior. It took me about two days to make this cake, but it was worth the time and effort :~)

I was in the process of setting up a baking/pastry gallery when our power went off around midnight here (it's back on again, but am tired now). I'll do that tomorrow and you'll get to see more of my creations. I do have some background in pastry and baking, even professional experience, but I didn't go into that field (mostly because of the low-pay). My only problem with the meringue was that I didn't do the baking on the parchment paper correctly, so the layer curled a little in the oven. Next time I'll make it work right. That was also the first time I made that recipe, though I have made that kind of cake before, thirty years prior, and it was round, not rectangular.

Tubi is a fun channel, though I haven't watched it much lately. I'm fairly new to streaming (have only had my roku 6 months) so I'm still exploring all of the free options out there, as well as taking advantage of my Prime subscription. So much to watch, so little time... ;~)

I collect crystals, it's kind of like a weird hoard. I just think they're neat. I also collect stuff related to my fictotype source, primarily building models of various machines that appear in it! I also like to build and paint miniatures for tabletop RPGs and tabletop wargames (and play those games too). And I like to study different languages, although I haven't been super successful in learning one to any sort of useful capacity.

Well, here's my take on baking and why many self-described cooks hate it: it requires that you follow a recipe. I have written on my blog in the past that no matter how you look at it, every meal or culinary creation is made with a recipe. Immediately, those who cook meals by 'instinct' or 'feel' will balk. But, look at what a recipe is at all. It is a set of instructions. If you want to make that one meal the same way twice, even with tweaks to the spicing, you are following a recipe. You have to prep the ingredients a certain way, cook them in any of the well-established methods of heating (or cooling), assemble the parts and plate it for eating. If you wish to share the steps for making that meal with someone, you write it down, and it is suddenly a recipe. Recreating it in any way makes it a recipe. Truly, just doing it at all is the process of making a recipe. Because even if you are making something new, you are still following established methods and steps to making it.

However, the other reason many cooks hate baking is that you cannot be as loose with the steps as you can with cooking. The chemistry of baking is stricter than most cooking. At the same time, there are plenty of things in cooking which require strict adherence to specific steps and ingredients. Making a sauce (gravy) is like that. Cook things too quickly and you break it. Sometimes you can recover it, but if it's egg-based and it breaks/curdles, you have to throw it out. This is also why bakers have to be good cooks. We use things like pastry creams which is a custard based on heating eggs with hot milk. Heat it too fast and you curdle the eggs and have to toss them out. Don't heat them enough, and the enzymes in the eggs consume necessary starches for the setting process and it never sets up, and you have to throw it out, or use it in something else.

The best chefs out there know all of this and are not intimidated by baking and pastry work. In fact, they usually embrace those arts because they are a challenge, and they want to expand their capabilities as much as possible. That also makes them better at running a big kitchen because they know everything being done by all of the cooks in their kitchen and can help when necessary. But mostly it's about managing the whole workforce without major issues. They "run a tight ship" when they understand every single task being performed in their kitchens :~)

The challenge aspect is also why I want to get into candy-making. I haven't done that since my pastry classes almost thirty years ago, and I never used those skills at any of the kitchens or one bakery where I have worked. My desire to learn that art is partly to know it, but also to put more variety into my Xmas gift-giving and cut back on the amount of biscotti I usually make for family and friends. I'll still make the Orange-Almond recipe because that seems to be the absolute favorite of everyone who has ever tasted it. I also do not dip my biscotti in chocolate because that's an added mess and is unnecessary. If people want that chocolate flavor, they can dunk the biscotti in a mocha drink (-:

Video games, writing, and drawing are all hobbies I really like! Reading in theory too, but I don't seem to do much of it for some reason. I also want to get into reptile keeping! There's many species I want to keep, and I'm always reading up on them! (And even though they're not reptiles... There's a few amphibians and invertabre I've had my eye on. Basically, under rated animals rule lmao)

My hobby is collecting almost everything, and it comes even in video games. I often find something that I like and end up collecting it. It's kinda hard, so that's why i collect things in pictures or games - i just don't have money on material things.
Also i love to draw, but that's all.