From Business to Bread--The Journey to Saving my Sanity: Neil Young and Muffin Tins

Here we are folks. Blog post number 2!!!!! I had sort of a tough time deciding this week, what to make for my first "official" baking post. There are so many ideas floating in this head of mine, it was hard to pin one down. Bread? (After all that IS in the blog name!) Something complicated, like puff pastry??? Or easy like rugelach? Funnily enough, some of my preliminary readers decided for me. "Chocolate Peanut butter cheesecake?" (Mentioned in the first post) "I want THAT!" Okay okay. I pinned down last night (Thursday) to do my project. This week has been one of the longest in history (all 27ish years) that I can recall. No one was happy with me. Everyone needed something different. Complain and bitch and change and whine. Seriously. By Thursday night I felt like if one more person wanted me to fix something I was going to lose it. Who was a cranky Chicky this week? Yep! This girl.
I came home to a BLISSFULLY empty apartment. Just Me, My Dog, and Baking. BTE. (Best Time EVER...Learn it. I'll use that abbreviation a LOT) Now don't get me wrong...I'm lucky when it comes to roommates. A. We're all Katies...and that's just cool in itself... and B. We all get along so its not a chore living with two other Chickies. Sometimes, however, just coming home and being alone to crank up the music while you work is just what a girl needs after a frustrating week!
I have a sort of routine when baking. I'm pretty organized- All ingredients out on the counter, with measuring spoons, and cups and bowls etc. If I use it, it goes back in its proper place. Cleaning up is just SO much easier that way. I am NOT however, one to follow directions to a tee. Now with baking, most measurements need to be exact. Your Chocolate Chip Cookies will be runny if you use 4 sticks of butter with 2 cups of flour vs 2 sticks. This clearly isn't an issue for me...I pretty much stick to the rules....BUT when it comes to flavorings and additions...I like to play around with that in recipes...but that's a whole other story. Most of the flavors in this dessert came together after careful experimentation. Who doesn't like Peanut butter and chocolate??
Because I like to take my time I am NOT one to set the oven to the right temp right away. ALL that does is cause pressure to hurry the heck up and mix and chop and measure blah blah. PRESSURE! Oh MY GOD the OVEN IS ALREADY AT TEMP! I need to get these in! I'm wasting Gas!!! AAAAK! Nah. I'll set the temp when I'm good and ready.
Making a cheesecake does take quite a few steps...making MINIS...well add a good amount of time to that and that's how long it takes. Haha. Time and concentration was exactly what I needed last night....while making the crust and carefully flattening it into the muffin tins I was listening to Edith Piaf...beautiful haunting French vocals..(If you haven't seen La Vie En Rose I HIGHLY recommend that movie. It's about Piaf's life.) However beautiful and haunting that music is...it became very depressing, very quickly. On to Lady Gaga! Yeah! Mixing cream cheese and eggs! Dancing! (My Dog all the while looking at me as if I'd gone insane) Once the filling was complete (AND I could finally be comfortable pre-heating the oven) I needed a music change. Onto a Norah Jones/Beatles/Neil Young mix. (Odd combo, I know). Sometimes my music needs to be mixed. I ever so carefully measured my filling (cream cheese, p.b. chocolate chips, eggs, vanilla etc) into the cups and popped those babies in the oven. Now with a big, normal sized cheesecake (9 or 10") you cook it for about an hour or so, and until the middle is JUST a bit soft. Small ones take sooo much less time...these are PERFECT at around 15 minutes total. Trust me...I learned this by trial and error. Quite a few times I had to stick em back in the oven over the years. Better a runny mess to cook more, than overdone. Yuck.
By the time I was done and ready to photograph, so much stress had been mixed and baked away. I could see it being smashed up in the sink's garbage disposal with the egg shells....baked into tiny creamy morsels of peanut butter cheesecake goodness. Ahhhh...THIS is what I live for every week. Putting my energy into something that MATTERS to me. Something that ultimately makes people smile.
Now....as I am still unsure of the overall format of this blog, I do not yet know if I will be posting recipes. It really depends on you, who are reading this. Want a recipe??? Leave a comment. :)