Tasty Tuesday

So I woke up this morning to a beautiful overcast day in the Pacific Northwest, and decided that it sounded like a good day as any to bake. Now, I have always loved baking things. Especially when they turn out really well, and people enjoy what I spent hours making.

Now, last year I tackled learning how to make a home made chocolate cake and chocate frosting, and I felt so good about it. Because before that moment the most I ever did in making a cake was open a box, measure some water and oil, and crack a few eggs, so last year learning to make a cake from scratch made me feel as if I was on top of the world.

Lately however, through some pretty awesome friends and their tweets, my curiosity was raised from hearing all their talk about Red Velvet Cake. So I decided for myself today that I would tackle this mammoth mountain and see what would happen.

Now of course my journey to what I now like to call Red Velvet Heaven, I had to find a good recipe. So I hopped onto Google, and searched for a while before coming across one from Martha Stewart. And I figured, if she can do it, so can I.

After tearing apart my kitchen and discovering that I only had two, yes two items for the recipe in my arsenal of food items, I much to my dismay, had to take a trip to Safeway, which was frustrating in and of itself, because lets face it, whenever you need to find something in a store, you can NEVER, EVER find it, and usually its right there in front of your face. So after scouring the aisles for nearly-twenty minutes with my sister in law I finally found all of the things that I needed, and made a beeline for the ridiculously long lines. Seriously, how long can a line be in a Safeway, on a Tuesday? It's as if the baking muses were out to thwart me from my mission, but I refused to be beaten down. I was determined to do this. Nothing would get in my way.

Fast forward to nine o'clock, the kitchen was mine. It was just me, some good music, and Red Velvet Cupcakes. And wouldn't you know it, I didn't get enough red food coloring. ( it takes two whole, 1 ounce bottles of red food coloring just to make the cake red, who would have thought right?) So off to Safeway I went, once again (thank God it's open twenty-four hours.) So away to the store with myself I went, only to find myself standing in yet another ridiculously long line at nine thirty at night ( in the express lane no less) to buy three items, with a woman in front of me who wanted a rain check on just about every item in the paper for this week. So to say that when I got out of Safeway that I was a little peeved would be an understatement, which was only made worse to find that the skies had opened up in the twenty minutes that I was in the store and it was pouring rain. Got to love the Pacific Northwest.

Finally, I found myself in the sanctuary of my kitchen, safe and dry, surrounded by mixing bowls, and measuring cups, and I felt slightly overwhelmed. And for a moment I thought to myself, that perhaps I had taken on too much. As I looked at the sea of ingredients, and my small, pitiful kitchen, I contemplated throwing my hands in the air, and saying forget it. Cue some good old inspiration in the form of MJ's PYT ( gotta love an I-Pod on shuffle) and just like that, in the blink of an eye the inspiration was back and it was time to do what I had set out to do.

After the first few minutes, and countless times of checking the recipe I kind of lost myself. Let myself sink into the moment, into the scents and the sounds. And all of the tumultuous emotions that have plagued me for a week just seemed to slip away. For that hour it was just me, the music, and Red Velvet Cake.

So drawing this blog to a close, I have learned a few things. When you write a recipe down, be sure you check, double check, and triple check that you got enough of what it calls for to save yourself from having to run back to the store. Relax, if it turns out good, great, if it doesn't then you'll know what to do differently the next time. And lastly, let the moment take you away.