Baking On My Own

Posted on October 9, 2026

I’ve been baking a lot recently. It’s a hobby I try to stay consistent with, though the amount I actually bake goes up and down over time. The complexity of the recipes changes a lot too. These days I find myself gravitating towards simpler recipes. Boxed cake mix never fails me, even when used in creative ways and for things other than cake. Still, I keep thinking it would be nice to do something more complex again. Bake something unique completely from scratch. I don’t know when I’ll have both the time and motivation to do it, though. That’s just how it is.

I think this surge in baking is partially because of stress. Stress baking has always been a thing for me. Sometimes when I feel the least in control of my life is when I want to bake the most. It gives me something tangible and immediate to achieve. And I get the comfort of a sweet treat when I’m done.

It isn’t always the best for me while living alone, though. I sometimes bring my baking to share with my classmates, but it can be hard to predict how much they’ll take. Plus, right before class is usually when I have the least free time to whip something up. I often end up baking on the weekend instead.

I try to invite people I’ve made friends with here in Pittsburgh to come take some treats off my hands, but they often end up being too busy to stop by when I’ve whipped something up. Or they’re watching their own diets too strictly to take me up on the offer. So, I’m left to eat everything myself.

It’s not even that I’m overly concerned with the health angle of things, though I know eating copious baked goods does me no favors. It’s just that some recipes make simply too much for me to eat on my own. Plenty of baked goods have fairly short shelf lives compared to the snacks you might get at the supermarket, jam-packed with preservatives (not that I have any beef with some tasty preservatives). And reducing the serving size of a recipe can often be easier said than done. Have you tried dividing 3 eggs by half? I do freeze them sometimes. I’ve even discovered some cookies taste pretty good right out of the freezer, no thawing necessary. But my freezer is only so big.

I know an overabundance of homemade baked goods isn’t the worst problem to befall a person. Especially when it’s all self-inflicted. Still, it quickly becomes a hard-to-ignore byproduct of me indulging in this hobby, and sometimes avoiding it means I’m not baking nearly as much as I’d like to.

Of course, now that I’m starting to get really busy again, my baking will naturally slow down. But it never quite means that it’s over. There are the holidays during this time of the year, sure to inspire me to bake even more. I was already baking up a storm for Rosh Hashanah not too long ago, making a honey cake plus some apple and honey cookies. Though I worry

that by the time holidays like Thanksgiving roll around, I’ll be too busy to bake something for my family. Ever since I took up baking as a hobby, I’ve always loved baking for them. Sure, it makes holidays and get-togethers a little more hectic for me, and I know my mother wishes I wasn’t always running late to this or that because of a recipe that took too long. Still, I love making food for people who appreciate receiving it. Yet, with Thanksgiving usually coming right before grad school finals, my days of whipping up pumpkin lava cakes have seemed long over.

I think that’s at the heart of why I started writing this blog post. I miss baking for other people. I knew what my family liked, and they were always available back when I lived with my parents and near my aunts. My old high school friends were also nearby, though one of them had moved away even before I had left for Pittsburgh. Appreciative eaters were never far away.

My professors, classmates, and friends in Pittsburgh are much more of an enigma. Often, they are on diets, looking to cut out sugary foods. Or they have preferences that remain mostly inscrutable to me even after a year. When they don’t try my baking, they rarely tell me why, after all. People will tell me if they liked something I baked, of course, but they are usually too polite to tell me if and why they don’t. So, it feels like a guessing game that I can never fully win. If a particular treat I put on offer is left mostly uneaten, I’ll probably never know why.

I don’t begrudge anyone about this. No one is obligated to eat something just because I made it. But that doesn’t stop it from feeling like a waste when hard work goes uneaten. I know I’m baking for myself, for my own enjoyment of it, but that doesn’t mean I always want to be the only one enjoying it. Sometimes it makes me hesitate, even when I have the urge to bake. Am I just making things no one else wants?

But I don’t want to let such thoughts get me down. Or diminish my love of baking. Baking is for myself, first and foremost. Even if I don’t always want to be the one eating it all. I bake because I love seeing a recipe come together into something delicious. I love being able to discover new things to make. And yes, I bake because I want to share what I make with others. But I don’t bake anything for anyone that I didn’t already want to bake for myself. I miss having my family around to bake for, but I’ll keep baking. Even if I must try to find recipes that make smaller batches. Even if I can’t always bake as often as I’d like. Even if I have to squeeze in all the time I can between everything else in my life.

Even if I do get stuck with all the leftovers.