To Blog: Why? What? and Pumpkin Coconut Sour Cherry Bread

So here I am again a few days later than I thought I would post this because I've been thinking about many things relative to this blog, the most salient being: why blog? Or more precisely, why blog about food in my case.

There are many posts out there about why blog. Some of them make a lot more sense to me than others but they're all valid to their own authors, and in the end I have to find the reason for myself. A while back I had whole new plans for this blog which all revolved around food, and of course as things are wont to do, things changed. Then I decided that I would post photographs and other things and write fewer recipes and that it would become a more general blog, and that got under way, but somehow I was driven back to more recipes and fewer other things than food, basically only food.
The thing is, dear readers, that I really love food, but I'm not sure I love blogging about it anymore.

When I started blogging about food almost three years ago, I'd been blogging for a year on another platform and was a bit frustrated with my blog because it was general and I felt the lack of focus meant that it was more of a journal than anything else, and between you and me, I've never been much of a journaler. At all. Then one day while doing a recipe search, for a cupcake recipe of all things, I discovered food blogs and started perusing them and loving them, because I love food, and after a while I thought to myself that the simplest way to create focus in my blogging would be to blog about food. Thus Saffron & Blueberry was born.

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Let them eat Coconut Sour Cherry Brioche

Seemingly, when the internet is "broken" so is my ability to think of anything to say in a blog post. For a long time I tried to think of what angle I would take on these brioches; I think I was also blocked from the effort of writing the post about my grandfather and feeling pressured to say something equally meaningful when writing subsequent posts. The truth is I don't know if I can ever replicate the depth of feeling in that post, and I probably shouldn't try since few things elicit such depth of feeling in me anyway. So instead of trying to emote all over the place, I'll tell you about brioche.

Why did I make brioche? That's like asking me why I have sudden cravings for things. Do you know why you (if you cook or bake) have sudden cravings to make things? It's only this week that it's truly starting to warm up here, though if you're not directly in the sun it's still quite chilly, and all the mucky weather we'd been having previously made me really want brioche. Brioche is comforting, of course how could it not be with all that butter. Here, you can't just pop down to the bakery around the corner and get a beautiful brioche with a little head poking out of its rotund body, so after much hemming and hawing, it became clear that to enjoy some I would have to make my own.

Actually, I'd been meaning to make brioche for a long time, I just was never motivated enough to actually do it. And then I got on this brioche kick and that's all I was making for about three weeks, not every day of course, but just trying out different recipes, and in particular testing to see if I could substitute coconut milk in various brioche recipes. Why? The truth is that I had a can of coconut milk, which I don't often use, and I didn't want to make pudding or curry; I just wanted to add a bit of coconut flavor to something in which you don't usually see coconut. So, mild obsession with brioche + can of coconut milk that needed to be used = some sort of coconut brioche.

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Coconut and a Guest Post

While she's away across the pond, my lovely friend Jamie, of Life's a Feast, needed a bit of help with blog maintenance. Being without a computer can be tough going when you're trying to post regularly. So I volunteered to help with "upkeep" by posting a cake (or two) over there. If you don't read Jamie's blog, I suggest you start doing so because she is truly a word-genie. I hope I didn't embarrass myself too much guest-posting for her.
A main ingredient and the crux of the story: coconut. I hope you check it out over here and enjoy it.