when at rope's end.... bake

do you remember when this blog was sing-songy and all i wrote about were things like candy drawers, wild unexpected jaunts and baked goods?

i do.

it was years ago. before notorious men, one cosmically so, irreverently bucked through my life like a bull-in-a-china-shop tornado. since then, once i'd dusted off the shards of glass and dabbed the blood, i looked around at my world and thought, "oh wow - we are most definitely *not* in kansas anymore."

was the world so different? of course not. but i looked at everything with different eyes. gone was my buoyant optimism. my belief in magic, in life, in... anything.

BUT - i've grown weary of digging my heels into the poisoned earth of this abandoned fairground that i've built. i'm tired of picking stale peanuts off the ground, hoping like jack & the beanstalk that one of them will conjure back an irretrievable past - make people and circumstances behave & turn out differently.

people have done & will do what they do. even when their actions are good for nobody - not even themselves. which is tragic, but that doesn't mean my life needs to be a tragedy.

and so... first step, for me. is to start where i began, and bake my way back. baking is magic. it's starting from precious little nothing & turning all those separate elements into something. it is creation rather than destruction.

my young cousins and i were all in desperate need for a cheery diversion on monday and so we tackled peter reihnart's bagels - which had been featured by luisa of 'the wednesday chef' *and* tim of 'lottie and doof' (i trust these bloggers implicitly) - the kneading of which is *highly* recommended for emoting, whether you be a 12-year-old, or, uh, slightly older. **(there wasn't time for us to refrigerate the dough overnight - so my genius sister suggested we let them raise in a warm dark place for an hour instead, which worked *perfectly* - but i plan to make them again properly and take a pic to show you).

and last night i made the vegan chocolate tahini cake pictured above, suggested by my friend molly of 'the particular kitchen' (good for gluten-free baking or if you have a load of tahini on hand - which i did... but if not, and if you're not doing it for health, i'd suggest this loaf by nigella instead!)

it's been a good start.

so... here's to more baking... more great adventures... more living life in a way that's full of creation and gratitude. that's my promise to you from here on out. maybe i'll even get around to writing about candy drawers again.

love,
the long ago, but not forgotten, ms. spice