Procrastibaking

I'm really not that much of a cook, but I've always loved baking. There's something so pleasingly mathematical and precise and safe about it. A couple of teaspoons of this, a couple of cups of that, and voila, you will have yourself some completely respectable muffins/cookies/whatever. Also, I love nearly any recipe that involves the oven. It makes anything delicious. Garlic? Check. Tomatoes? Wouldn't eat them any other way. Hummus slathered on a piece of flatbread with some veggies thrown on top? Done, done, and done. The only things you can really do wrong when it comes to the oven are: not greasing your pan, keeping stuff in there too long, or you know, forgetting to wear oven mitts. (Sometimes you have a pan of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies gazing up at you all oozy and decadent and you just don't have time to go looking for things like oven mitts.)

Anyway, now that I've left cool, idyllic California for the humid, icky, seriously-why-can't-I-ever-have-a-good-hair-day-here East Coast I've found the oven has a major drawback: in a non-air conditioned apartment in New Haven in August, it has an unfortunate tendency to bear-hug the entire place in its overwarm, cuddly-bordering-on-needy embrace.

Unfortunately for my apartment and sanity, I tend to turn to baking most often when there are thing(s) I'd rather not be doing. Like confronting a mini-quarterlife crisis. Prepping for a week's worth of interviews at school. Et cetera. Procrastinating + baking = procrastibaking.

So I procrastibaked all weekend long. I had such an urge to procrastibake that I started making these blackberry orange muffins, which sounded like summer in a pan. I'd gotten all the way to zesting my orange and folding the blackberries into some flour when I realized I was totally out of eggs. Not only was I out of them, but I knew I was out of them--I'd picked up a dozen at Gourmet Heaven (which really should be renamed Usurious Passably-Stocked "We Sell Pop-Tarts and Thus Cannot Refer to Ourselves as Gourmet" Market) and then, deterred by the $7 price tag, put them back down. And then left. And yet here I was, midway through a recipe that called for two eggs.

Back in the day, my optimism might have led me to mix all the ingredients anyway, stick it in the oven, and "see what happened." This kind of thinking was smashed out out of me right good after I made white chocolate cookies that resembled nothing so much as a semi-solid, thick stew. Never again.

Google revealed as the solution (among other things, including vinegar, Egg Beaters, flaxseed oil, and "Go back to the store and just buy a carton of damn eggs") a whole mashed banana. Both eggs and bananas have a really bizarre, sticky, slick, difficult-to-replicate texture. It seemed to make sense. And sure enough, the banana mash and a little almond milk (I decided I'd go whole cow on the vegan thing since I'd already started--pun so intended) held the dry mix together.

Twenty minutes later (the batter was a lot thicker because of the lack of egg, so I didn't bake the muffins for quite as long):

Blue(berry) banana orange blackberry muffins. They say four fruits a day...

These guys were not bad given the last minute improvisations (and my accidental impaling of a few blueberries and blackberries in the mixing process, which led to a Smurf-blue batter). The banana flavor was subtle and the crumb a little denser, but aside from that...really not bad. I sprinkled some raw sugar on top of each, which gave the muffins a tasty little crunch.

I thought this and some five-ingredient peanut butter cookies (so easy: flour, peanut butter, agave nectar/honey/maple syrup, vanilla, baking powder) (unfortunately no pic available as they were eaten too quickly) would kick the procrastibaking right out of me.

But no. The next day, interviews still looming, I was seized with a sudden urge to make...naan?

That's right. Naan. I actually had a little packet of yeast, nestled among my baking tools, from my last procrastibaking spree. And I had flour. And sugar. And salt. And that's all you actually need to make a pretty delicious little piece of naan.

Little naan breads all ready to be baked...how cute are they?!

I was terrified to make these b ut they weren't bad at all, and the recipe I used was incredibly easy to follow. I do think I left them in the oven too long--they had more of a crunchy, bready texture than the soft pull of naan I'm used to--but that was easily rectified with a damp paper towel swaddling and a zap in the microwave.

I served them with a super-simple daal featuring random spices (curry powder, cumin, chili powder, something else red, tons of garlic, and salt) and a pack of red lentils.

And then I sat down to write this blog.

Wonder what my next feat of procrastination will be...