I love baking on Saturday mornings.

Actually, I love baking period. Much more than cooking. I like how baking has to be done in control. In baking, you can't just dump "some of this" and "a little more of that" in and expect things to turn out okay like you can when you're cooking. Another plus, the ingredients are usually a lot less gross to the touch.


My Mom used to make this hot milk sponge cake quite a bit when I was growing up. I never realized until I got older that most of the baking recipes my Mom used came from the Red and White checkered Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. It was a real pleasant surprise when I started making things from that book like my favorite cookie (snickerdoodles), my other favorite cookie (peanut butter), my third favorite cookie (sugar) and finding out that it was just what I grew up on. Truly "how Mom used to make it." I have a lot of different cookbooks now, a lot of them dedicated solely to baking but my favorite is still the BH&G by far. It's a cookbook you can trust that when you make something from it, it's going to taste like it's supposed to and it's going to be good.

Anyway, this hot milk sponge cake doesn't exactly look like much but the taste is excellent, although subtle. There's nothing fancy on it like frosting, glaze or fruit except for the top which turns into a crunchy sweet coating. You can easily eat a whole pan of this just so you can keep tasting it. And that's exactly what I did this morning. BUT... I'm really in to the "small-batch baking"** way of thinking now so I cut the recipe down to a very small round cake so I didn't have to get too mad at myself because I already knew I wouldn't be able to resist it.

My breakfast:

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!


**Small-Batch Baking by Debby Maugans Nakos is my new obsession this week. I'm eating healthier now and working out on a regular basis... but I really can't live without baked goods. This book is perfect because it scales recipes down to just one or two servings and you still get the satisfaction of baking totally from scratch. My very first attempt at making something from the book (Chocolate Birthday Cake with Double Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting) did not turn out to be a great success but I'm going to keep trying until I get this small batch baking stuff down because I have to be able to eat sweets AND get this body bikini ready at the same time.