Hi! My name is Orly and I am the creator of Ballerina Baker. I love to bake and I have been baking since I was nine. I always thought it was too hard or time consuming to bake bread or cookies by myself, but then I started to do so and I realized it is really easy. But, like everything else, it has ups and downs. Sometimes, it can be frustrating and not turn out the way you wanted it. But I think we should embrace those mistakes and learn from them to create something beautiful, and delicious! My goal is to help teach people this lesson. I still haven’t completely mastered it myself, but I am getting there.
You might be wondering why my blog is called Ballerina Baker, and that is because I love to dance, and as I mentioned earlier, bake. I have been dancing sense I was three, and hope to continue dancing. This year, I started dancing on pointe which was huge to me because that is what i have been working towards my whole life. Similar to baking, dancing is like an escape to me. I don’t have to think about all the stressful things in life while I’m dancing my heart out. As well as ballet, I also do contemporary, musical theatre, and a little bit of tap. Often when I am waiting for my bread to rise, I find myself dancing and practicing, either in my head or marking it.
Although I had baked with my mom for years, I truely discovered my love for bakin at a birthday party when I was ten. We made chocolate chip cookies from scratch mostly by ourselves. I realized then that it wasn’t all that hard to do that. I just did what the recipe told me to. So about a month later I woke up early in the morning and made chocolate chip cookies for valentines day. They were a huge success, so shortly after I started making more complicated things. I moved into breads and biscuits and cakes. I soon realized that all bakes follow a similar guide of rules. They are made of mostly the same key ingredients, eggs, sugar, flour, butter. And it is mostly measure, mix, shape, bake. Once I had this epiphany it opened up so many new doors.
I think the hardest part about baking was the oven. Oh the dreaded oven! I always thought it was big, scary, and dangerous, but as long as you are careful and use the proper safety equipment, you are as good as gold! When I first used the oven on my own I thought I broke it because it started beeping at me and I didn’t understand what was going on. As it turns out, those were friendly beeps and I was doing it right!
So, all in all, I am a still learning baker. I wanted this place to be somewhere I could share my favorite food findings, my recipes, my experiences, and any other things I have learned in the kitchen. I hope that Ballerina Baker can be a place where you can learn and teach.
Put on that apron and let’s get to it!
-Orly