Sitting in a small bookshelf next to my bed sits an unassuming cookbook. It’s not flashy in design, and it touts no professional baker’s name on it’s cover. Yet, for almost a decade, this is the book I’ve reached for when I’ve wanted to bake.
In terms of a codex, this book isn’t anything special. It appears to have section-sewn binding in a hardcover shell. While it does not store records of grain and cattle, this book is similar to early written texts because it serves a purely utilitarian purpose: to pass on and keep record of useful knowledge. This book is special not because of it’s construction, but of it’s personal history with me.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a baker, and subsequently wanted a cookbook of my own. On a trip from California to Portland, I stared in awe at the shelves of Powell’s Bookstore for the first time. From this magical store, my mother gifted me a cookbook filled with dessert recipes. I found the following statement on the inside cover:
Kylie Sickles ~
You will be a wonderful “baker” someday – Bake with your heart & you can never go wrong.
With Love,
Mom
July 8, 2013
It goes without explanation that I was very excited for this book. Even today, where my dreams no longer lie in the culinary world, I use this book often. While I am a terrible cook, I am a pretty decent baker, and this gift jumpstarted that development.
As a twenty year old college student, I thumb through the pages of this book and memories from my ten year old self flood to the surface. The dog-eared pages remind me what recipes excited me most, like the football cookies I had planned for Superbowl Sunday. Even recent memories lie hidden in these pages – my partner, who loves sweets, was wooed by recipes from between these covers. This is what makes the book so special. Sure, I could search the web for some dessert recipes, and I would even find hundreds more than what this book contains. This book, however, holds emotional value, from my mother’s note to the page corners I excited folded all those years ago. When I bake from this book, I am baking from the heart.