I love baking.

In the past few months I’ve made 4 or 5 birthday cakes and probably a dozen batches of cookies. I absolutely love it (even though a few times, I put the cake off until the last minute…and got really stressed…and drove Jarom crazy).

Seriously, baked goods make people happy. A really good cookie or slice of cake exists in its own moment – even if I am miserably unhappy, orange chocolate chip cookies bring some actual measure of joy to my life. It’s small, and it doesn’t cancel out the anguish of, say, having one of my kids die, but still. Have you eaten one of those cookies?

I think delicious baked goods are also akin to reading a fantastically good book. The kind where you’re only a page in and already telling yourself, This book is going to be so. So. Good. (My best examples of such books are Mistborn – specifically the first of the trilogy – and The Name of the Wind. Oh, and Elantris. Read them all!) There’s a feeling of giddiness: I’m experiencing something incredible. It happened to me when I went to the Harry Potter theme park with Jarom last month, and it happens to me every single time I use a tried-and-true cake or cookie recipe.

And I can’t ignore the aspect of “I made that cake, and now someone else is having that wonderful giddy feeling. I did that for them!”

So if I offer to make a birthday cake (or anytime cake) for you, or bring you a fresh batch of cookies, I mean it. I love baking.