The Sixth Love Language — Baking

This medium of love often requires patience.

First, we begin with creaming together the browned melted butter and sugars then adding the egg. Supposedly, I need to use a separate bowl for the dry ingredients, however, that’s more cleaning work later, so I add my flour and leavening agents to the same bowl. 

 

Slowly adding these measurements in and counting until I reach a full cup of flour then repeating this process until I finally create a cohesive cookie dough. Instead of premade chocolate chips, I hand chop chocolate bars and fold them into the dough. These cookies need to absorb the flavors of browned butter, quality chocolate bars, and dark brown sugar in order to taste perfect, so they sit in the fridge for a day before they bake. 

 

Within the five love languages, I developed a sixth — baking. Growing up with an Eastern European grandmother, she always insisted on feeding me with foods from her childhood or freshly made sweets. While my own mother did not pick up the love for baking, I did.

I always want to reach people’s hearts through their stomachs. When I began replicating Tama’s recipe, I valued her praises most of all; the compliments of top pastry chefs cannot match hers. Her critiques of even the smallest mistakes forced me to improve, so I could win her approval. 

She gave her love freely, but I needed to earn approval. For me, baking does not only allow me to express my love for others, it is an expression of culture ingrained into my genes. Perfection is not the goal here. I want to give out my love through doughs and batters and satiate my want of constant approval. It takes patience, so I can wait.

 

• baking
• bread
• childhood
• cooking
• family
• Nostalgic
• opinion
• recipes