It’s odd that one of the most therapeutic things I only started doing because my older cousin stopped doing it.

One of the tell signs that Kristina Atienza is stressed beyond belief? Baking. If one took the time to look up in some sort of dictionary what the definition of stress baking was, you’d see a picture of face there.

I have no idea what it is about baking that brings any of my stress levels from a 10 to a 2 in a matter of hours. And it’s baffling to me for the fact that I didn’t always used to bake. I just got annoyed that it went from me easily having access to baked goods compliments of my older cousin to not having any at all. So instead of becoming a severe pest and demanding that she continue baking, I decided to just try to do it myself.

There were so many failed attempts it isn’t even funny. Things would be severely under baked and overly gooey or burnt and a little more rock solid than anyone could want. But I kept trying. I stopped trying to just follow what she did and started doing my own thing. You know what’s the craziest thing about it? It was one of the best things I could do for myself to handle stress. My friends would be concerned back in high school if I just came into school with a plethora of baked goods, because yay Kristina was productive and tried to remain calm but something is wrong because she needed to bake.

Now it’s just more or less something that brings me a significant amount of peace into my life. There’s just something about the mindlessness that overtakes me when I’m following the recipe. I love testing and expanding from what I already know. Like its great when I just use these different premade mixes and just venture just slightly into a different twist on it. I’m probably most proud of how far I’ve come from barely using anything other than frozen cookie dough. Yes I still use Pillsbury cake mixes (they’re my favorite and almost always are reasonably priced) but I’ve just grown from just putting two different cake mixes into one pan and throwing some crushed oreos on top.

My favorite two creations are easily the cookies and cream cake (white cake mix and oreos in various stages) and the Reeses Peanut butter brownie cups. It’s special to me because those seem to be the favorites of my friends.

I suppose that’s my all time favorite thing about baking. Cause I use baking as an outlet for my anger and frustrations to just do something that might make someone else’s day. Seeing my friend’s faces light up is just an unreal experience because that kind of happiness cannot be bought. It’s always worth it to see all the effort I put into my own twists on baking make someone’s day. It makes me feel better about my life and that I’m not just screwing up.

Baking just seems to be that perfect solution for stress. I can forsee so much more cooking and baking in the future because the fall semester of senior year is peaking from the horizon and this is the final stretch for this semester before I can reward myself with the lovely adventure that will be India 2015 – 16. It’s a silly little thing but it’s a healthy way for me to deal with my emotions and I suppose that’s more than enough to keep this senior college student surviving this roller coaster known as her life.