Falling in love with baking...

My love for baking began when I discovered these from Bakerella. I never considered myself much of a baker. I love cooking because with cooking you can add a hint of this and a dash of that and just experiment. There always seems to be a way to fix a mistake if you are cooking. If you are baking, not so much. It's so meticulous, everything must be measured out to the exact teaspoon and if you add not enough or too much of any given ingredient, your cake may end up like a giant hockey puck. Ahem...**you know who you are**. My extension of baking went as far as the Toll House cookies that you take out of the package and stick in the oven, even then I messed those up once.

I decided to pursue something outside of my limits one day. My mom's birthday was coming up, which is two days after Valentine's day. She loves chocolates and she loves cake. So why not put the two together? Well, Bakerella did and I tried my own hand at her design.

I was quite impressed with my handiwork seeing that just a few short months ago I couldn't even bake those Toll House cookies without burning them. Yikes! But this was the beginning of my baking infatuation. Over time I began to try newer designs, all inspired by my role model, Bakerella of course. Soon the truffles became a big hit and I was finding a demand for my goodies. I started taking them to work and then getting asked if I could take special orders for occasions like Mother's Day, Baby Showers, Wedding Showers and the like. Who wouldn't want to make some money off of a hobby that they love doing?

Baking is therapeutic for me. I've always been very creative and I never quite found my niche, but once I began this adventure in baked goods I realized how much I loved using my creativity to make edible art.

Tomorrow is a big day for me. I have a meeting with an acquaintance (new friend) that is a chef at a very nice Tapas Restaurant here in downtown St. Louis. He saw some of my stuff just by seeing the few pictures I had on my iPhone and said he was interested in meeting with me to talk about putting my truffles on their dessert menu. He said that they were looking for some fun new desserts that had some personality to them and that he really liked what I could do and said he'd love to pay me to make some weekly for the restaurant. You have to imagine the shock when I realized he was completely serious about this and now I have a meeting with him tomorrow.

I spent the night trying to perfect my truffles and come up with a trendy design that would kind of have some sort of coherence with the feeling of the restaurant. I'm pretty pleased with my work and looking forward to hearing what they have to say. Either way, no matter the outcome, I'm going to continue my baking endeavors and see where it takes me. I'm feeling quite positive about this path in my life.