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Are You a Night Baker?

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Night muffins. Why wait until morning? [Photograph: Robyn Lee]

Oh, how well I can relate to this passage from the Washington Post:

It is well past 9 p.m. I am dreaming about dough and batter, yet I am not asleep. The night is still young for obsessed bakers like me who enjoy the tranquilizing act of stirring a brownie batter, kneading a batch of yeast dough or tossing together a quick bread before bedtime.

Like Lisa Yockelson, the author of this piece, I too am a night baker. Between work and busy weekends, the only time I find to whip up a batch of cookies is late in the evening. I may be a bit more prone to burning myself, I may blow a healthy day on a few goodies, and my dreams might not get any less crazy. But anything from the oven just tastes better around midnight. Or a few hours later.

What about you? Are you a night baker?

37 Comments:

Heh, yeah. Most definitely. And a night cook. Just last night I baked an apple pie with extra-sharp cheddar in the crust. Lots of work, but well worth it!

I made aebleskiver last night... Ok, so techically not backing, but they are more of a breakfast thing.

Total night baker. We have a dessert in this household called "1:30 bars" because I was up until 1:30 am making them one night.

I am guilty of this, especially when I was sharing an apartment and didn't feel comfortable hogging the kitchen during sane hours. I still do it now that I live alone but work insane hours. When I was an undergrad, I would stress-bake at 2 AM while freaking out over the billionth Wallace Stevens paper I wasn't writing or whatever assignment I should've been doing instead. My roommates would usually wake up to a batch of cupcakes and a pie--an uptick in quantity would tip them off that it was mid-terms or finals and they'd commence their freak outs, too. I am probably responsible for at least three folks' "freshman 15" thanks to night baking.

I thought I was the only one crazy enough to bake at night. Kids are asleep, tv is on for backround noise and I am relaxing by baking and decorating cupcakes, cookies and cakes.

Absolutely. I almost always bake at night. It's like my way to unwind, and spend a few hours making something tasty. I'm also a late night snacker, so it works out well to sample what I've made.

Wow, did this strike a chord with me. Night baking is my LIFE. I can't remember the last time I baked something during the day (or early evening hours, even) unless it was over a weekend.

Me too! I made banana chocolates bread last night because baking helps me de-stress after sucky work days. I blame my night owl baking tendencies on my roommates since they got me into taking part in their drunken baking contests (probably not a good idea but no fires started to date). We'd always have baking matches after getting home from the bar especially since we always craved sweets after drinking.

Not as much of a night baker (save for the occasional muffins, banana bread or pancakes that I freeze for my kids) but definitely a night cook. I make some of my best meatballs, meatloaf and various other dishes after 9:00. As stated above...kids are sleeping, husband is in his office playing video games, tv is on to what I want to watch and I have the whole kitchen to myself...

So I'm reading Lonesome Dove and all they're talking about is baking biscuits, biscuits, biscuits. It's three am I'm in bed I can't sleep and all I can think of is biscuits. And so, at 3:25am I standing in my kitchen with Bittman's How to Cook Everything open to the biscuit making page. By 3:50am I'm eating eight warm biscuits with butter running down my wrist. Now tell me,does it get better than that?

In Texas, when daytime temps are 90 or more, we bake at night to avoid heating the house at the hottest time of day. When my college age daughter was helping me test pie recipes, we met in the kitchen at 4. She was out with friends until then. I was waking up early.

Speaking of Lonesome Dove, I am baking with a sourdough now.
http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2009/09/sourdough_pancakes_recipe.php

I am the midnight cookie baker. I find myself making thousands of late night cookies a year, especially right before Christmas, when I throw a cookie party for all of my friends. Between work hours and the commute home, plus precious sit-on-the-couch decompressing, I don't usually get the oven preheated until 9 at night. This week, I'm making several hundred cookies for a wedding. More sleepy, floury nights to come...

Wow I never realized this was a category of baker. I would not say I am not just a night baker but a night cook in general. Baking at night is especially nice for those dishes which cannot be consumed before chilling/resting for a period of hours(flans and frozen custard come to mind).

I never plan (or even want) to be a night baker, but I frequently am by default. In general, I am a much happier, more productive person in the mornings (I think my brain partially shuts down after 10PM). Despite this, I often find my days and evenings overcommitted and baking projects are pushed waaaaaaaay past dark.

I'm an inadvertent night-time baker. Mostly because I can't get the time planning for no-knead bread right, despite making it all the time! Somehow the 18 hrs wait always end up around midnight.

I feel inspired by night bakers everywhere. In university I lived above a bakery/cafe with a twitchy fire alarm. I would hang out with the bakers at 3 am while waiting for the fire service to let us back inside. A crazy bunch who worked from midnight to 8 am...

I feel like this post was written for me...

I'm totally a night baker. I somehow always end up baking late at night. It's the perfect antidote to a stressful day.

I am DEFINITELY a night baker! I'd often come home from work or class (I just finished culinary school) and bake though the night. I really like that I get the kitchen to myself and that it's much cooler at night. Plus, since no one's around no one gets to see my mistakes but me!

Everyone knows me to be a night owl and middle of the night baker.
Why? I am an insomniac and when Mr Tomato goes to bed this gives me lots of space and time to go in there undisturbed and do my thang.
All the best bakers bake in the middle of the night. When I was in my 20's the best french bakery in our town was just getting started baking when I was head back from the clubs in the wee hours. Now I know why. It's an ancient and arcane ritual. From the darkest of night comes things that are amazing.

Just pulled a batch of brownies out of the oven, so I'm going with yes. This recipe. Always a big hit whenever I bake them.

You know the Maurice Sendak book "In the Night Kitchen?" One of my sons copied a drawing from the book and turned it into a little refrigerator magnet for me. He says his very first memory is waking up from the smell of butter cookies and thought for sure that his pajamas would disappear and he'd magically float into the kitchen.

I bake all the time, but mostly at night. I have this thing about freshness and I absolutely positively cannot make breads and cookies and pies ahead of time. There are very few baked goods that taste good and keep their texture the next day, so I bake at night if I have to bring something somewhere in the morning. And the phone doesn't ring at night.

I think my favorite night of the year is the night before Thanksgiving. I'll make all the doughs a day or two ahead of time, and after dinner on Wednesday everything comes out of the refrigerator and freezer and I bake until two or three. Except for the crescent rolls, which don't go into the oven until the turkey comes out.

Last night I roasted tomatoes. No plans for tonight. Yet.

So glad to see that I'm not alone :)

I ONLY bake at night.... there's just something so soothing about whipping up a batch of cupcakes before bedtime.

I love to bake and cook at night, especially in the summer months...it is so peaceful when the rest of the house is asleep...

I put on a Julia Child DVD softly in the background and experiment with gluten free reciepes.
Last night I made GF crepes with rice flour to reheat for breakfast, a crusty GF bread, GF brownies and a blood orange sorbet was whirring in my ice cream machine as I played with recipes and baked my heart out.

Thank the Lord for the night-time...! (sorry Neil Diamond...)

LOVE baking at night. Put on some Michael Buble and make whatever I'm craving. A few nights ago it was spanakopita. And it was goooood spanakopita.

When I saw the title of the article, I thought, "This is so me!" There is two main reasons why I night bake:
- There are two other active cooks in the kitchen in the morning, so there is no space for me to play.
- I enjoy the quietness of night to bake and make a mess in the kitchen even if there is time and space in the daylight.

By the time the sun rises, I have made a mess in the kitchen and ate half of my work!

Night, day, it doesn't matter, then I'm in the mood I bake. Rye bread and bagels are my passions at this time.

betteirene - The first thing I thought of when I saw the title of this post was Maurice Sendak's "In the Night Kitchen", which I've been reading to my daughter for the last week. "Milk in the batter! Milk in the batter! We bake cake and nothing's the matter!"

pfft...you know it. I baked a batch of blueberry muffins last night and didn't end till 1 in the morning. It's now 7:50AM and the only reason why I'm still conscious and not passed out on my keyboard is because of my crayz insane sugar high.

unless i want to bake on a weekend (i usually don't), i have to bake at night! people think i'm crazy to bake after i get home from work (12+ hours usually, start sometime around 9pm if i'm lucky, 10pm is more like it), but then when i come in with cookies or brownies the next morning, all is well in the office :)
i also once stayed up until 1am making a mille crepes cake (smitten kitchen) for my friend who was leaving our group

I often bake well into the night most times by design but sometimes because I under-estimate the time ill need, like recently making a triple layer Boston Cream pie and ended up in the kitchen till past midnight but I actually enjoy the calmness that the evening has, less pressured

Best time to bake and to decorate those cookies!
Barbara Chapman

Although I try not to bake at night for fear of late-night over-indulgence on whatever it is I just made, I have been know to whip up a batch of my chocolate chip cookie dough to be made early the following morning because my husband promised some co-worker or another some "fresh-baked cookies tomorrow" in exchange for a computer application upgrade or whatever.

Totally weird. I thought we were a rare breed. However, I don't night bake by choice. It's just that by the time I get all the ingrediants together, it's already nighttime. Oh yeah, it also helps that I usually forget something and have to rush back to the store. *sigh*

Simply put, yes, yes I am! :D

Absolutely! If I'm not too exhausted from having to get up at an ungodly hour that morning, I get a late burst of creative energy late at night and will often bake, paint or both at once until 3 or 4 in the morning. This is why I'm going to be looking for restaurant work as opposed to bakery work when I'm done with pastry school -get to sleep in, wander into work in the late afternoon and gogogo until the wee hours. Yay!

Oh, most definitely. I often don't start baking until 11:30 or so. But now that I have a new roommate (husband!), I don't know if I'll be able to do this anymore. I'm pretty sure that the sound of my KitchenAid whirring at high speed at 1 am won't fly anymore. :(

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