All-night baking

 

It has been a quite a while since I had an all-night baking session.  Today, I'm preparing ginger spice cookies and mac/cheese for orders this weekend.  However, next week, I'm doing a lot of baking for a special event that my wife asked me to help with.  I won't have to bake all night for this event, but I thought about it.  I have scheduled different doughs and foods to be done at different points in the week with a final burst of preparation on Friday night before the Saturday event.  With the schedule designed as it is, an all-night baking session won't be needed.

But all-night baking sessions are sort of fun.  To be awake in the middle of the night churning out tray after tray of cookies and rolls and muffins and cakes while the rest of the world is asleep .... there's something rather uniquely special about that. 

When I do an all-night session, I carefully plan out my ingredients and the order of items to be prepared and baked.  I select a few fun things to put on the TV as background, things that I'm already familiar with such as a favorite TV show, and in this way I have something going on that I'm listening to and which is engaging part of my mind to keep me fresh as I work in the kitchen.

As the hours pass and dawn draws closer, the food piles up, going into boxes as it cools, or being wrapped in appropriate wrappings and bags, and the work of the night becomes ever more evident.

Finally when first light is hitting and the work is almost done and almost ready to be picked up, there comes that moment of "what did I forget to make?" and other similar thoughts.  I always think about what else I could have made, even with no time left.  I always think big and then bigger at the end, I suppose.

When the food is out the door and the kitchen is empty, it is as though nothing had happened at all.  No evidence remains.  But when I hear about how everyone enjoyed the food, it makes the work all worthwhile.