Just saying hi!

Sometimes, very rarely, I don’t have much to say. Most days I have plenty to say and I am always thinking (over-thinking)? But there are those days when I am just mellow. Nothing seems to bother me. I simply love those days. Those days where the world is spinning just fine on its axis. People and events are lovely and everything is going according to plan.

Sadly though, those days are don’t follow one after another. They are like the desserts of life in my opinion. When they happen you should savor them. Make memories that you can remember, to be thought of and remembered when your days are not going as well as you would have liked.

I strive to have more and more of these days and moments. Attempting to learn how to not let the small things bother me. To realize what is truly important in life and save my fretting for the things and life changing events that really matter.

This pandemic has taught a lot of us a lot of lessons. There are silver linings in all of this. They may be few and mostly hidden behind clouds of despair and doubt but they are there. I have actually found a few. Lessons that I have learnt. Truths I have had to accept. All to make me (I hope) a better person.

I hope you all have a great day and bake good choices!

xo, Lisa

Let’s talk cookies!

Yes! Finally, let’s talk about some baking 🙂 A good if not excellent choice always when it comes to baking is cookies! From sugar cookies to chocolate chip. Chocolate or peanut butter crunch. Complex or simple, cookies are simply always a good choice when it comes to baking. Whether you have them with milk, coffee, water or wine, a cookie always seems to hit the spot.

In some countries cookies tend to be known as biscuits, I use both terminologies, but I guess, a chocolate chip biscuit just does not have the same “ring” you know? But anyway, I tend to scour the internet for the recipe. The one, that will yield the magical OMG moment when you take the first bite. Depending on what you are looking for in a cookie could determine what type of recipe and method you would prefer. For example, when it comes to chocolate chip cookies, there is a plethora of opinions on that topic. Chewy, soft, crunchy, gooey? Loads of chips or just a hint? Large or mini? With a sprinkling of salt or none? Chocolate chunks or just chips? Personally, it depends on my mood I suppose. I generally like, crunchy on the outside with kind of soft, chewy, gooey goodness at the centre.

There are some very good recipes out there and I think I still stop scrolling whenever I see yet another recipe pop up on my feed, but there are some go-to ones that I depend on as they are tried and true and come from bakers I admire and trust. There is Tessa Arias from Handle the Heat. Her Bakery Style Chocolate Chip cookies are out of this world and I love that she pairs simply great recipes with the science of baking. So I know WHY I am adding baking powder and not baking soda. Why you should chill your dough overnight, even though I want cookies RIGHT NOW!

https://handletheheat.com/bakery-style-chocolate-chip-cookies/

My attempt at Tessa’s Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies

Another type of cookie I love is the simple roll out cookie. These are what plays a major part of my life. I love to decorate cookies and for a while I made and sold decorated cookies (that’s another story for another day). But another well known cookier that do not spread is Georganne Bell or Lilaloa.com. To me, it is very important especially when doing cookie shapes that they remain the shape I cut them, so it is recognizable as well as gives an amazing decorated cookie. She has two recipes that are also keepers for me. The one linked below is a vanilla and there is another is chocolate….OBVS!

https://www.lilaloa.com/2013/02/vanilla-20-sugar-cookie-recipe.html

Vanilla 2.0 cookie – Lilaloa.com

Amber Spiegel from SweetAmbs.com has an amazing royal icing recipe as well as her vanilla cookie. There are sooo many recipes out there and obviously you can’t try all. I mean it would be a lovely experiment but not very practical I think 🙂 Let’s not even get started on cakes and pastries. The world of baking is just so infinitely large that even if you just sample a small bite, it will make your day that much sweeter. Find your recipe and bake good choices today and always!

xo, Lisa

Love is in the air

Or at sea, or across lots and lots of miles of land and ocean. Happy Valentine’s day to you. Today is a day all about love, hearts, chocolates and flowers. I am not able to be with my loved ones except via social media at this time, and I am guessing some if not most of people are in the same boat. This has been a strange year, continuing from the last one, but it gives us all a chance to reflect on many things. And today I choose to reflect on one of the greatest loves of my life.

I miss my mother. It’s been almost a year since last I was at home and a lot has changed in that year. But the one constant has been my mummy. I do miss her so very much. It’s amazing how much our relationship has changed over the years. I remember being a rebellious teenager and I don’t know when the dynamic changed to her being my best friend. When I am at home, we do everything together. One of our favorite pastimes is going to the grocery. May sound very weird to most people, but we love it. We even have the groceries mapped out and what we get in each. She is the most amazing and genuine woman I have ever known and everyday I try to be just a little more like her. Her love and kindness. Her belief that there is good in everyone, even if you have to dig a little deeper to find it in some more than others. Her deepest wish for her family is that we all find peace with each other.

She possesses a kind of innocence that I love. It’s almost child-like. When I chat with her there is ALWAYS a smile on her face, it’s like just me talking to her makes her so happy. It makes my heart full. I truly, truly love that woman with a depth and breadth that I cannot describe. Although I will never have the joy of knowing what it is like to be a mother, I can only hope and pray that I may be as loving and as amazingly beautiful a person as my one and only. My mother.

Happy Valentine’s day Mummy, I love you more than you know.

xo, Lisa

Photo by Andreas Wohlfahrt on Pexels.com

Have a pinkaful day!

Back when I can remember and people would ask me what is your favorite color, it was never, EVER what it is today. Blue, black, purple, never any bright colors. Until one day, and I must add rather recently, it became PINK. I don’t know how and I don’t know when, it just…was.

It may have started off with rose gold and then morphed into a mix of lilac, lavender and baby pink. I shop for stuff now and some of it I must admit is purely based on the deliciousness of the pinkness of the item. I would actually put in “pink …..” in the search bar. I would have never taken myself for a pink person. AT ALL!

I like to collect. Which in and of itself is not strange, but one of the many items I collect are mugs, but specific types of mugs, they must have something about them that draws them to me. Big, cozy comfort mugs, that you can wrap your hands around and blow on the steam as it rises from the hot drink inside. Cute, quirky ones, ones with meaningful or not so meaningful sayings written on them.

There’s also glasses, reading glasses. I don’t need a strong prescription, so I can pick up glasses anywhere, and I do. Then there are the pen collection and the watches and the back-packs. Then factor in that most of these have some shade of pink. Going through the security check in the airport one day a lady behind me actually commented that I must “like” pink as everything that I was putting through the scanner had some type of pink hue. We are talking iPad, Kindle, laptop case, hand carry, back pack, hoodie and even my sneakers were pink. Imagine the color of my cheeks after she mentioned that:)

Thing is, I still don’t think of myself in terms of pink, more of a neutral girl really. But it kind of reflects my personality I think. I don’t really like to stand out or shine above others, I don’t like to shout out or announce my presence. I am not a fuchsia person, more of a hint of pink. I like quiet time and hiding away in quiet nooks reading my pink Kindle.

Will the color change in time? Will I learn to love green? Probably not. But I have noticed that as I move along in life a lot of things have changed since I was younger. I never like oatmeal, now I look up oatmeal recipes for hot and cold oats, cookies, overnight oats, granola. Love, love oatmeal. Coffee and hot drinks in general…could not stand them, now? Cannot seem to start my day without a cup of hot liquid. Hence, the fascination with mugs. And pink….who woulda thunk it? But pink seems to be my happy place for now.

Have a pinkaful day all,

xo, Lisa

You’ve got that baking feeling.

So, I am still not able to go home. Sounds strange? Well, due to the ongoing, everchanging nature of the pandemic my home country still has not opened the borders. Which mean I am still not able to go home.

In the beginning I didn’t look at this in a positive light as I was thinking of all the things that I could be doing if I was home. But now, I choose to look at it as all the things I am doing now that I would not do if I was home.

Gigabytes of pictures of sunsets. Trying to find an interesting angle on a coffee cup that will make an excellent picture. Reading books, learning to knit and bullet journaling.

But I have to say the one thing I do miss about being home, besides being home is baking. That, I can’t do where I am. So, instead I scour the internet for recipes and save videos and make promises to myself that that will be the first thing I create when I get home.

I am content to some degree as I have realised no amount of shaking my fists at the sky will change things. I continue to find recipes and cookie decorating techniques and videos and hopefully one day soon I will be home, baking good choices.

xo, Lisa

Sunset from the deck just outside of Barbados

What makes you truly happy?

If you are reading this, your answer may very well be the same as mine. We could even shout it out together (if we were in the same room).. BAKING!

Yup, baking. It is amazing how many emotions that one simple word evokes. Pictures of warm, delicious goodness coming straight from the oven. You can picture the steam rising off a loaf of freshly baked bread. The joy of seeing your cinnamon rolls, hot and full of cinnamony gooey-ness. I know, I know the joy of waiting to see the finished cookies at 2 am. Seeing that perfect chocolate chip cookie and cannot believe that you, simple amateur baker, you made this work of art!

I have been writing and pinning so many recipes for when I eventually go home that I don’t even know where to start anymore. There are recipes for cookies, muffins, breads, pizzas. The list just goes on and on. But I am so excited. I ordered all these cookie cutters and sadly, I was not home for Christmas to use them, but hey there is always next year, and who says, you cannot have gingerbread people in April?

There are loads of things, hobbies, people that make me happy. But baking truly is an activity that creates this feeling of sublime peace. My Zen, my go to place when I am upset or just need to release stress. It is where I can create, combine and come up with something that may not be perfect but something that I am perfectly happy with. Baking is a science, we know that, but baking is also a passion. I realized that you cannot have one without the other in order to create truly great bakes. I follow awesome people like Tessa Arias from Handle The Heat, Gemma Stafford from Bigger, Bolder Baking and so many more. I learn different techniques, hack and so much more from all of them. I am pretty far off from being anything close to resembling a professional, but I have the passion and that, is a happy start.

xo, Lisa