"Practice doesnt make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect."

            I’m starting to find what I was looking for in culinary school. This school is all about “technique.” They even have a student run restaurant called Technique. Anyways, I’m starting to figure out why at home my baking never came out perfect. No matter the recipe, or how closely I followed it, I never got what I expected from it. I did always have high expectations though.

            So I’ve had extreme baking fails and I’ve also felt decently proud about some of the stuff I’ve done. When I did happen to fail at baking something, I usually tried to Google it and find a solution, I never could. I also had no clue where to start or what to be looking for. I didn’t know if it were the recipe I used or if I wasn’t measuring right, maybe I missed an ingredient, who knows? So what I wanted to do was bake more, and experiment with different ingredients and take mental note of what I did and what I maybe could have done better the next time which is easier said than done. It’s hard to bake a lot at home, especially sweet stuff, I never want to eat it all so I love giving it away, but that gets expensive. So whenever I would bake there would be a big gap in between then and the last time I baked, months even. Because of how little I was able to bake I usually just ended up repeating the same mistakes. That will get you nowhere. Something my College English Professor used to always say, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.”

             Now that I am going along in my courses I’ve started to realize the problems I’ve had were based on my mixing methods. I had no idea that when you bake a cookie, the end result of that cookie depends mostly on the way you mixed it. If you mix it too much, you’re going to get a flat cookie. You get a flat cookie by not letting the dough trap air in it. How do you trap air in your dough, you ask? Well let me tell you! Butter needs to be room temperature, mixing speed needs to be slow/medium, you need to mix eggs in slowly and one at a time, you should sift your flour and Do Not over mix. Also, only mix in your chips for a little bit, and at slow speed. Your chips can get beat up in the mixing bowl and turn your cookies a darker color than expected. So when you mix in your chips do it on slow speed just to add to the dough. After that you should use a spatula to fold the dough and distribute the chips more evenly throughout.

            So my cookies I made the other day turned out decent but they could be a little better, nothing is perfect and I am never extremely happy with whatever I bake. I always find something I don’t like. Anyways, those cookies I baked were good, they tasted great and compared to the rest of my class they looked decent, not the best but good. Today we did a practical chocolate chip cookie test. With no help by our neighbors we had to make cookies entirely by ourselves. They have to be perfect cookies. I don’t want to jinx it but my dough seemed perfect this time, way better than last. We have to wait until Tuesday to bake them though so I have to keep my hopes up for a few days. :/ I’ll tell you how they came out once I get the chance.