Measuring ingredients, whipping or mixing them together, putting your final masterpiece in the oven and waiting for it to finish cooking, smelling the fragrant scents of freshly baked desserts – there’s just an incredibly satisfying feeling when your creation comes out right. While yes, there are plenty of times when you pull the pan/tray out of the oven and it looks like some deformed blob and tastes terrible (that’s happened to me more times than I care to count), you can always count on the fact that your creation will turn out right at least once (hopefully). While baking can be very time-consuming, it’s worth the effort for many.

1. You know that feeling when you’ve whipped your egg whites to perfect, stiff peaks

I remember the first time a recipe told me to “whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.” Completely clueless as to what that meant, I spent hours watching videos and looking at different baking websites to try to figure out exactly how the yellow, translucent and liquid egg whites turned into this huge white solid. After numerous attempts, whipping egg whites became almost second nature, but it still feels incredibly satisfying when you’ve successfully whipped the egg whites until they don’t fall out when you flip the bowl over.

2. Macarons are not a big deal

Infamous for being difficult to make, you know you’ve reached a high level of baking when it’s not that big of an accomplishment when you’ve made macarons. Sure, sifting almond flour can be tedious if you’re sieve has really small holes, but the truly difficult part is mixing the dry and wet ingredients together to the right consistency. Repeated tries make the “ribbon stage” easily recognizable, and once you’ve mastered that step, it’s really not that difficult to make macarons.

3. You don’t need to pull out the recipes for everything

Not all of us are brave enough to just go into the kitchen and make something from scratch with no instructions whatsoever. However, there comes a point in time when you’ve baked a certain dessert enough to be able to know exactly how to make it without referencing the book every single step.

4. You measure your ingredients using a scale instead of by volume

While kitchen scales may seem like unnecessary work, they actually make your measurements much more exact. There’s a higher chance of the final product coming out like you want when using the exact measurements. In addition, working with only volume measurements makes grams-oriented recipes difficult to make, as one has to convert every single measurement.

5. You don’t poke holes in your cakes to figure out if they’re completely cooked

Most of the time people use a toothpick to poke a hole into their desserts once they think they’re fully cooked to make sure that it is indeed fully cooked. While this method works, for cakes, there is an alternative method to using a toothpick. If the top of the cake springs back when touched, it’s fully cooked and looks a lot better than having a random hole in the middle.

6. You’ve got a whole drawer full of pots, pans, spatulas, measuring cups, etc.

There are a huge number of varying utensils that need to be used while baking. While it’s not necessary to use a specific kind of pan for varying recipes, it certain makes it a lot easier and can save a lot of time.

7. You’ve also got a whole pantry full of ingredients

It’s always good to be prepared to bake, and you know you love baking when you pull out a new recipe (or just making anything really) and all the ingredients are there, ready to use. Plus, going to the grocery store every time you want to make something gets annoying.

8. The struggle when you’ve caramelized your sugar and the pot has been sitting on the counter

Caramelized sugar hardens quickly, especially in cool temperatures. Nothing is as painful as trying to scrape the now-hard sugar off the sides of the pot when cleaning up your work-space.