The Birth of a Blog...

Hello everybody! Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lauren and I am a college student who is beyond obsessed with cooking, and even more obsessed with baking. To me, food is an art that you can see, smell, and taste. I started cooking the second I was tall enough to reach the stove, and I have not stopped since. I see every food that I have not yet made as a challenge waiting to be completed, and over the years I have experimented with almost every type of food imaginable. Whether it be rolling my own sushi or making marshmallows from scratch, or even using a hammer to pound out homemade noodles (yes, true story), I have embraced the art of cooking to its fullest. My mom has often referred to me as a mad scientist chef because I almost never use recipes, and when I do I almost never follow them without changing them to make them just a little bit more special (and delicious!). This year, I have my own kitchen in my dorm and a wonderful roommate named Dena who is equally obsessed with baking. (I’ll let Dena introduce herself in another post!) In other words, my baking has reached a fever pitch. Dena and I have become notorious among our friends for the pictures we post on Facebook of the things we bake, as well as for our proclivity to spring sweet treats on unsuspecting victims. Hey, we can’t eat it all ourselves! (Well, we could but stretchy pants only stretch so far…)

            Anyway, I got the idea to start this blog while looking for an apron at Anthropologie (Shopping--yet another one of Dena’s and my mutual obsessions). As I tried on a couple of aprons, I started talking with the saleswoman. I told her about my baking habit, and she asked what types of things I baked. Oh man, did she ever open Pandora’s Box. Poor woman. As I inundated her with my babble over chai cupcakes and key lime cookies, her eyes actually didn’t glaze over. In fact, she seemed intrigued by what I was saying. “You should start a food blog,” she said. “And then once you do, you should come back and tell me what it’s called so that I can start reading it!” I paused. I had never considered the idea of a blog before. The more I thought about it, however, the more perfect it sounded. I already loved to take pictures of what I made and share the details with everybody I knew. Why not expand this past the confines of my Facebook newsfeed?

          I mentioned the idea of a food blog to Dena, and she was sold. We immediately began brainstorming names for our blog and finally settled on “When in Doubt, Bake.” Why? Because we love to bake whatever we can, whenever we can, however we can. Whether we’re stressed, procrastinating, having a party, or just have some extra time on a Friday and a spare jar of Nutella, one or both of us is probably in the tiny kitchen of our dorm making the whole apartment smell incredible. We hope that this blog will serve both as a creative outlet for us and as an inspiration for others. After all, your “Recipes I Want to Make” list can always use a couple more items, right? (*Note: Dena’s list is currently well over 70…)