Picture it: you’re hungry, you’re bored, there’s ingredients in the cupboard and endless possibilities. Do you search online and traverse through endless, pointless, childhood stories from random cooking blogs? Do you peruse the bookshelf for a dusty copy of Mary Berry’s Greatest Tricks? Or are you feeling creative; do you have the confidence to whip something up all by yourself?
What we make from our own skills can be disastrous or miraculous, and sometimes you just want to remember how you managed that, especially when it’s three months later and you’re craving something that has never been recorded. How much cinnamon? How many eggs? You don’t know and you’re about ready to tear your own hair out.
There’s a simple solution, really. Last year, I got sick of having to search through six different recipe books to find one specific recipe – I never knew which one held it, and I’m the type of person who gets gifted a new cookbook every birthday. Did I even follow the recipe to the letter or did I freestyle? Who’s to know, really? My own recipe book was born from this frustration – a notebook bought specifically for this, which now houses every cookie, every brownie, every loaf of bread that I’ve ever made.
There’s something satisfactory about opening my cookbook cupboard and reaching for my notebook before all the others. In a year it has grown from one failsafe cookie recipe to over twenty pages full of all the treats that make my family happy. Birthday cakes and Christmas cakes live in these pages and (unless I lose it) they’ll always be with me.
Maybe one day, many years into the future, a niece or nephew will pick up baking. Maybe they’ll want to remake something just as I have. Maybe my little recipe book will get passed down generations, and it might even outlive me. It could become a treasured family heirloom – or maybe it will get forgotten.
Either way, it’s a way to whimsify my life right now. It’s a time-capsule of a hobby that I don’t think will ever leave me.
The next time you’re hungry, bored, or tearing your hair out trying to remember what exactly you added to that one recipe, consider picking up a pen and starting your own little recipe book. It’s whimsical, if nothing else.
Featured Image Credit: Kerry Lloyd