How good are you really? Let's face the reality. Although baking during Christmas may be the most enjoyable time for such activity, it's also probably the most cumbersome, as you are busy with other things during this busy period, like buying presents, shopping and 999 other things that are on your to-do list that's reached a record length again – 20 meters long. And if you are a home mum, it can be even more difficult to keep up with all the hassle around the house and bake at the same time. If you are a working individual on the other hand, it can be more enjoyable to you, depending on how busy you are, you can generally spend moer time at home relaxing and enjoying yourself with family/friends/alone (whichever applies to you). In any case though it is obvious that your winning formula to success in home baking lies in having those easy baking recipes on your hands.



Although any recipe that you have mastered becomes easy once you've worked the dish a few times (well, almost any), there are still millions of other recipes that either have less ingredients, are simpler to prepare or just generally are in the field that you are familiar with. Being more selective in your preparation will make your time worthwhile in the process and will make the process more enjoyable for you and the same or better results will be achieved with lesser effort. While we know that planning should take up at least 20% of our time, if not more, in everything we do and effective planning always takes half the time, we always rush things as it's just in the human nature to do so, and those who are effective at planning are always more successful in comparison to those who are not. And they know it. The same applies to cooking. It only takes a few moments of your time to stand steel at some point in time and life and look at yourself/your life from the side, but is the most important self-assessment technique that you need to adopt in order to be successful at anything. Practicaly before you do anything that can have some strategy to it – cooking is part of this “anything”.

If you are finding that planning is tedious and researching things is just not your style, in this situation just consider this; once you are used to it, you will enjoy it. This largely depends on what you are like with your activities (you have to be passionate about your activity) but the idea is that while you plan, you delay gratification and this can be enjoyable if you know that something you love doing awaits you and you anticipate that as a result of your planning you will enjoy the end results more, this being even greater motivational factor for you. Remember though that this works best when you are passionate about whatever you are about to do or this won't work otherwise.

One of the other qualities in human beings that amplifies passion in something is creativity. Go and try something else, go and create your own Christmas baking recipes, use your imagination/creativity as much as possible and you will be enjoying greater end results (applies to everything). When does creativity come into play? When you apply your creativity to your passion, your end result is likely to be even greater and you will be pleased with yourself that you were capable of creating something that's different from the rest, something that is a result of your own brain work and hands, you will be proud and motivated to come up with something similar again or better.

This is one of the main philosophies/strategies of some of the most successful people that ever walked this earth and the good news is that it's not hard at all – all it requires is to have a passion for something (most people have a passion for at least a dozen things in their lives and few who don't think they have one do – they just need to think about what they like doing more than something else) and apply your brain to this passion. The Japanese are very good at developing this quality – they called it Kaizen (continuous improvement in something, whilst eliminating waste), and, although this may apply to some businesses more than other (i.e. when having this quality prevents you from developing other good qualities e.g. if you are a perfectionist in everything and don't see the bigger picture because of that, this is not a good thing), IMO this technique applies well to cooking.

If you have any of your own ideas and/or opinions on the subject and/or you just like to add something, you can make a post in my forum on my baking recipes site - I would love to here from you (it's quiet at the moment as it's new, but if you guys post your thoughts after reading my articles, it will quickly start gaining momentum). All posts are welcome and, in fact, are highly appreciated. Don't be shy - give us a shout!