Weeknight Baking: Recipes To Fit Your Schedule
No Time To Bake?
Over the past several years of running Hummingbird High, I kept a crucial aspect of my life hidden from my readers: I had a full-time, extremely demanding job in the tech world. In my debut cookbook, Weeknight Baking, I finally revealed the secrets to baking delicious desserts on a tight schedule.
What is Weeknight Baking?
Weeknight Baking is a cookbook with recipes for baked goods, desserts, and sweets that do at least one of these things:
- Come together quickly…
- …Or come together quickly over a few nights.
- Use ingredients you have in a well-stocked baker’s pantry…
- …Or can be easily substituted with other similar ingredients.
- Store well for baking, decorating, assembling, or serving in the future…
- …Or are made with parts that do.
With rigorously tested recipes, productivity hacks, and gorgeous photographs, Weeknight Baking is destined to become a busy baker’s go-to.
Why I Wrote This Book
Throughout the years, many of you have asked me if there was a Hummingbird High cookbook in the works. I most likely smiled placidly (or impatiently, depending on my mood) and said something like, “I wish, but I really don’t have the time for that!”
Because unlike most of my peers, I had a secret–I wasn’t actually a full-time baker and blogger. In fact, for many years, I ran Hummingbird High while maintaining a very traditional nine-to-five, 40-hours-a-week desk job: first in finance, as an analyst, and then in tech as a systems engineer.
But working a traditional, full-time job in addition to blogging about baking at a professional level meant that I didn’t actually have a whole lot of time to bake.
So that left me with only enough time to bake on weeknights.
You know that weird and awkward amount of downtime you have, after you get home from work, you’ve made dinner, cleaned up, and completed all your chores? Most people spend that time vegging out in front of Netflix with a glass of wine, curling up with a good book, or, hey, even sensibly going to bed early to get a good night’s sleep. But not me. There I was, still in the kitchen, trying to figure out how to bake layer cakes and pies and cinnamon buns in that short amount of time.
The funny thing is, on Hummingbird High, with the exception of a cheery baker’s note now and again, I never candidly talked about what it was like to bake while balancing my job. As you guys know, my recipes were presented with beautiful pictures and meaningless chatter about my current mood or weekend plans. I rarely mentioned my struggles and time constraints. Blogs are where everything is perfect and has all the time in the world to spend as they wish. But I know that’s not true–and that’s why I wrote Weeknight Baking.
We’re all doing the best we can with what we have. And I’m going to help you bake any night of the week that works for you.
Buy the Book
“These are the recipes all home bakers want and need in their arsenal–plus tons of creative, inspiring variations–and Michelle breaks them all down into easy-to-execute parts. Weeknight Baking will turn any home baker, no matter their skill level, into a baking ninja.”
—Claire Saffitz, contributing editor at Bon Appetit
Behind the Scenes: The Making of Weeknight Baking
