high-bar baking

You don’t have to be special if you have vanilla beans. 

I don’t think this is one I can make a metaphor out of, folks. Even if you have vanilla beans in your pantry, I think you still have to work to count as special. But with baked goods, even a boring Maria sugar cookie (no acid?!) is nothing to scoff at. 

The flecks of all the fragrant beans are simply gorgeous, especially on a perfectly white background. They call to mind ice cream summers and fresh pastry cream and all the genius things the French decided to experiment with while the rest of the world… fought in wars? What was everybody else doing while France got busy with eggs and butter and happiness? 

Thank goodness they did, because vanilla beans are the standard. I go through entirely too many Costco-sized bottles of vanilla extract, and it’s still never enough. The star of the show and everyone’s perfect wingman, too. Where would we be without vanilla. 

And maybe I will shoehorn a metaphor into here — you don’t have to be everything if you can be one thing well. You don’t have to give me the acid I crave (though I do crave it!) if you can deliver on the vanilla front. You don’t need every bell and whistle in the entire world, though I swear Maria sometimes thinks that you do. You just need to deliver. 

Whatever it is you said you’d deliver.