“Why are you baking?”

After all, I’ve been a media professional for decades, and I will always be a writer at heart. I should play to my core strength, a few said. It’s not a logical progression, said one. The world can only remember you for one thing, went others.

But my online bakeshop, O’Chim, is an answer to an accidental aspiration, unimagined and unplanned. It was the symbiont that attached itself to my day job, and fed off the pressure I experienced there. The higher my stress levels at the office, the more I turned to baking, enjoying its precision and chemistry.

Whatever came out of the oven all those nights wound up in the office the following days, and it warmed me to see that whatever stresses we faced on the job, my cakes or pies so quickly vanished into smiling faces.

At least folks were getting some happy as a direct result of my trying to manage stress.

“Why are you baking?” Is a question I get asked repeatedly, sometimes in the shape of an arched eyebrow

PECAN PIES

I started loving pecan pies nearly 25 years ago, acquiring a taste for them as a university student in Texas. When I returned to Singapore, making them at Thanksgiving was my way indulging in nostalgia once a year.

My first year back home in the mid-nineties, I couldn’t even find pecans. So I used walnuts, and tried to distract anyone who noticed and asked. Over the years I experimented with other items – breads and cakes – but kept returning ultimately to the nuanced and complex nature of pies.

Because I found original pecan pies cloying, I reduced the sugar. I made my own pie crusts from scratch, avoiding store-bought frozen crusts because they invariably cracked. I cooked the pie fillings in a saucepan before pouring them over the pecans to make sure it would maintain its custardy texture without burning the crust.

Over the years, the recipe evolved, getting closer to what is today our signature pie. It was the pie I took to dinner parties, watching people light up. They’d say things like, “You know what’d be great with this pie? Some single malt…,” or “Oh my god. I haven’t had this cake since my late mother made it. I’m so happy”. My favourite was: “I think I just saw heaven.”

When I finally made the call to leave my job, a dear friend asked if she could order a pie or four for all her year-end parties, starting with Thanksgiving dinners. Another followed suit, presenting my pies to her clients to express her gratitude. Still another placed an order for several for her office Christmas party.

I was so grateful. I realised it’d been too long since I felt such a deep sense of satisfaction, that it was good just to brighten someone else’s day with something I made.

So here I am, baking. I figured, if I could bake for happy, the question couldn’t possibly be, why I am doing it. What it should be, is why the hell not.