Throughout this pandemic, I have seen a lot of people get into new skills as part of the coping process of being in home quarantine. One of the best ways to distract our minds from (awful) things is to get them focused on another, right? One of the prevalent new hobbies that emerged from the covid year that was 2020 was baking. Suddenly, all people seem to have been baking banana breads, right?

For me, my baking adventure started when I craved for choco mint cookies. However, I couldn't seem to find any sellers online that has it. Not everyone is a fan of this flavor, so I guess that's one reason that it's not a common cookie variant. But I really craved for it, like really bad, that I found myself going through each Instagram account that I found that was selling cookies. However, I was not successful in finding one. So I thought... what if I just create one myself? We have this medium-sized oven toaster at home anyway (that we rarely use lol). And so that's how my curiosity with baking began. I asked my friends, who are into baking, if it's possible to bake cookies only in an oven toaster. Well turns out you can! And so I did my research for the recipe, and in my next grocery run, I bought several baking ingredients.

Fast-forward to now, I have already baked chocolate chip cookies, banana breads, and banana muffins! During my first attempts, it was really a trial-and-error process because I had to adjust to my taste the recipes that I saw online. Every chocolate chip cookie recipe out there was unique, and so I had to find the perfect formula that works for me.

It was always a hit-or-miss, especially when trying out new recipes. Good thing I only create a few pieces every batch, because I just end up (unwillingly) eating them all, because of course no one in the household would want to eat a flour-tasting scone, right?. But each mistake was a learning process. That is basically the takeaway from all of these baking adventures. 😁

I then upped my game and bought more baking tools to use for my recipes! Through these tools, I was able to bake more varieties outside of cookies like banana bread and muffins. 😋 🍞

In the past, we had overly ripe bananas that we thought were not edible anymore so we just throw them away. Now, I can be more resourceful with them by making banana breads out of them! 💓

Since I was in the kitchen already (lol), my exploration expanded not just in baking, but also in cooking other snacks... because what do you do when you're stuck at home? EAT! So might as well learn how to create  your food (I'm not much of a fan of food deliveries).