Passion Bakes: Ba Bye 2011!

Wow.

I don't think any year has ever gone as fast as 2011.

Here I am, a junior in college, almost 20 (though I feel a lot older), feeling antsy, too big for my town, and yet also so inmature.

This was the year I learned how big the world really is. I traveled to Portland, which I can't get out of my mind now; got a taste of working in a real bakery, became vegan, made a few too many baked goods, including a few too many that didn't come out but I ate anyway... (like those sourdough doughnuts I mentioned last post....), met a few other fellow vegans, got more antsy to get the heck out of college.... Having spent too much money a farmers' markets and on textbooks and therefore making a lot of homemade Christmas gifts and watching it all pass in a rush because J&W decided it would be a good idea to let us out on the 22nd....

The list goes on and on.

But that's why there's 2012. Another year closer to moving on with my life.

A year of hope.

Hope of getting a job (please Wildllour!!!!!)

Hope of finishing school in..... 418 days.

Hope of calling Portland home in 610 days or less.

Hope of meeting the 1 person that will change my life (so the mediator says)

Hope of being 20+ lb. lighter and not having to care about what I eat.

Yes, there is hope in numbers.

So with that, and another baking expiment, Portland Petit Fours (hazelnut cookies with rosewater frosting and marzipan) behind me (pictures of that to come later.... I need to beautify them); I thought I'd present 12 hopes/wishes for 2012. I'm not very good at resolutions, though then again, I don't think many people are. Maybe having them written down, for all the world to see, might hlep me out. So here goes:

12 Hopes for 2012

1 paying job

2 pounds lost per month

3 gym days per week

4 new friends made

5 random walks in the city

6 vacation days in another state

7 days with Amy (you can get a little of your 2012 beach time with me!)

8 great new recipes

9 pieces of new food writing

10 new favorite vegetables

11 Black Point swims (they are dwindling with each passing year)

12 lives changed

Maybe you've got some hopes of your own. Maybe you've got some new skills to learn of health that needs changing. We all have something.

But first, how about ending the year with some delicious inspiration?

First, the vanilla madelines I baked a few weeks ago. Veganized from Dorrie Greenspan's Baking from My Home to Yours. Just make sure you grease and flour your molds really, really well!

Then there's the Christmas sheet cakes I never thought I could decorate. But I did. Three of them. For the Mary House, a heart-felt soup kitchen that I've had the experience of working with.

And then more cake. Yummy, vegan cake. Pistachio coconut cake to be exact. With some thick, addictive pistachio frosting that didn't want to properly stay on the cake. And some passion fruit curd that you couldn't really taste. And a delicious cake with a secret ingredinet. Yum! Sorry no recipe for this - It's too good.

Oh and Boston Cream Roll! Yes, a roulade can finally be vegan! And a way to get your cake fix when you parents want the real thing that they saw in an issue of Cooks Country, and you can't have any. And you can have some as soon as I open my bakery in Portalnd!!!!