Autodidacticism - Baby Steps!

No, I 'm not sick! I'm just fancy and self-taught. Ha ha..(It literally took me about 4 tries to pronounce that right). 

Okay, that wasn't your average introduction so lets try that again.

 Hi there! I'm Jessica John, your average home baker with an above average passion and love for this art and also your new blogger now, I suppose.

So let's begin with the baking journey thus far,

Taking it way back to 2008: 

From having a series of burnt cakes ( honestly just two) to reaching that ultimate moment of baking a perfectly moist chocolate cake (according to 14 year old me) from the recipe I took off the cooking book that came with the new microwave dad bought that year, the love for baking surely got embedded in me as I began my sweet journey. I faintly remember strutting around the entire household as if Pierre Herme himself had come down to approve this cake and I as a baking marvel.

Well,as a young novice baker it was truly an accomplishment to get that soft moist cake right on the go with no tears shed. From making my first chocolate ganache to the Oh! so classic creamy vanilla buttercream, I slowly progressed to assembling layered cakes and playing with flavors with the same. I watched myself get a little better each time. Baby Steps! they said.

Over the next four years I would open up a little home-run business which I humbly called Jess Bakes. 

2015 and the journey Onward:

 I used my talent and gift of grasping new techniques in baking to experiment with flavor and design to create something that was so dear to my heart.

Jess Bakes got me through college and also gave me an idea of what it's like to be an entrepreneur. Having done a three year degree in Business Management, starting one at the time gave me a more practical view of what I was studying in theory. Though I did not flourish in the business as fast as I thought I would for the most obvious reasons such as lack of technical and professional knowledge, the experience of it all was so worth it. Having started the business with the little knowledge I possessed in this art, it was sheer practice, positivity , love and of course YouTube with a little bit of reading that gave me  the foundation I needed.                                                         

 Umm...But was that really enough ?

 I was soon to realize that it wasn't and that "time" here is our biggest enemy. It may sound a little cliché but it is the ultimate thing that we need the most and must be used wisely. Very wisely! 

Jess Bakes thrived in "beginner's glory" for a good 3 years up until quite recently when I made the (not so) smart move of taking a break from the business and experimenting with another cliché of life; a desk job (So much for 'using time wisely'). Probably not the best move for me at the time, but it sure made me realize how one can manage to be utterly unproductive for 6 months whilst being a robot and getting paid for it. Ha ha, none the less, the experience also made me realize one more very important and most significant fact about me that I was completely and madly in love with Baking and that very awareness was enough to make my next big move to get me closer to my passion.