Can baking make the world a better place? Crypton believes it can!

For me, baking is much more than a means to a delicious end; it’s also an excellent form of meditation. As I focus on assembling the ingredients for a banana loaf, or combining flour and butter to create a tart crust (my secret for flakiness is one tablespoon of white vinegar), I stay blissfully in the moment. Besides, nothing perfumes a home better than an apple pie in the oven! (I toss cubes of Fuji apples with organic powdered sugar, which yields a delightfully thick “gravy.”) My dogs, on the other hand, prefer when I bake them crunchy biscuits

Now, with global efforts underway to assist the relief effort in Haiti, baking has become more than a meditation: It’s an easy way for people to feel they are making a contribution to that lifesaving effort, however small.

Today, the excellent web site Supervegan is holding a bake sale for Haiti at the Angels & Kings Bar, while one of my favorite NYC stores, Domus Unaffected Living, has been busily baking cookies in an ongoing effort to raise much-needed funds.

You can make a statement with baking, and that statement will be humanitarian and heartfelt. Baking is so satisfying because it feeds a compassionate spirit’s hunger to help.

Of course, while you’re at it, you can also make a fashion statement, protecting your clothes with a cheerful apron. So, whoever and whatever you bake for – a person, pet, or cause -
why not do it in style?

Posted by Julia Szabo.