Baking, July 3, 2011

My husband bakes for me. That's one of the ways I know that after 41 years he still loves me. You see, I'm gluten intolerant, and so eating pastry is more of a challenge than it used to be.

When my kids were young, I baked almost daily. As a stay at home mom, it was nothing to make a cake, pie, brownies, cookies. I had a box full of recipes, and I was always trying something new. Thanksgiving meant a collection of pies, and once we got past Thanksgiving, it was cookie time. Many years, we had 80-100 dozen cookies of various kinds wrapped in foil. As Christmas approached, my daughter and I would fill baskets or tins with cookies and candies for friends, relatives, people my husband worked with, and anyone we thought might eat them.

But now the kids are grown, I'm busier than I used to be, and gluten-free baking is a whole different thing. You have to mix different types of flours to get the correct consistency. It's trial and error, and so often the results are disappointing enough to end up in the trash. But my husband knows that I love nothing more than a homemade pastry, so, even though baking isn't really his thing, he's taken on the challenge. Thanks to my honey!