I hate baking!

Now... in my younger years, I loved baking.
I loved finding new recipes that required precision and attention to detail. Complicated torte recipes, cheesecakes, florentines drizzled with chocolate - I even made fruitcake one year when I was 19. Even though I never had much of a sweet tooth, I would visit friends and bring them treats and generally just bake for the sheer joy of baking.

I don't know exactly when it happened, but the thrill is now gone. Or maybe yesterday night I just lacked inspiration or patience. Or maybe I just need a bigger kitchen for baking. Or maybe I just needed to know that my new oven really means 430 degrees when it says 400. Regardless of my new ennui towards the sugar and spice arts - I persevered. And I managed to get three batches of treats of the (too hot) oven.
Batch one: Vital Geback.
These came from a recipe that my mom got from a German friend. They kind of taste like sesame snaps, but with sunflower seeds and almonds too. However, I burnt many of the almonds when I was attempting to toast them, so I threw in some pepitas to make up for the lack of almonds. Then I overbaked the whole batch.
The recipe said to bake them for about 15 minutes. I checked them at 13 and they were starting to overbrown. Then I waited too long to cut them into slices (you have to cut them while they're still quite warm) so some of the pieces shattered. But they are still edible, especially if you suscribe to the notion that burnt sugar is an exotic and delicious flavour.

Batch two: Lime and Pepita Sugar Cookies.

This recipe came to me from the Rebar cookbook, by way of lovely Kreesta Doucette. They are kind of like a sugar cookie with lime zest and pumpkin seeds. Thankfully, they are hard to screw up, and so they actually turned out quite well. I should have taken them out of the oven sooner to keep them a little softer, but the hot oven foiled me again.

Batch Three: Chocolate Chip cookies

This was the batch that nearly killed me. This recipe was nominated the best chewy chocolate chip recipe ever by the folks at Chowhound ( I think it's originally from Cooks Illustrated) but by this time I had lost all patience for careful measuring and delicate mixing. I should also mention a large part of the frustration of the day was due to the fact that my sugar was mostly comprised of huge, hard lumps that I had to crush down to be able to use for these recipes. I keep big bags of sugar and flour in the pantry in the basement and I guess it's too damp for the sugar.

Those lumps of sugar broke my spirit. At one point I was literally yelling out my frustration and was throwing stuff around the kitchen until Jeff came downstairs to see what the hell was going on... Even though I had read that you really needed to follow all instructions down to the letter for them to turn out just right, I just wanted to be done with the horrible things!
So I don't know if it was the hasty mixing/measuring or the hot oven, but they turned out very average and not-chewy.

Sigh... I think I will just have to leave baking to others more dedicated to the craft. Or at least stick to one recipe at a time - mixing up a new batch of dough when you have to pay close attention to the batch currently in the oven is probably not a great idea.

I shall endeavour to learn from these mistakes. I promise.