The many ways that baking is winter therapy. With a delicious ending

When people talk about baking, they often focus on the final product. The tender cookies, the domed muffins, the rich brownies. But the real draw of baking starts long before you roll out the pie crust.

Baking can be many things: an act of creation, connection, control. There’s something comforting about the structure of it: the measuring, the stirring, the transformation of a handful of ingredients into something delicious.

Even if life doesn’t always feel orderly, follow the recipe and things should turn out as planned. It’s like therapy, with a present at the end.

“Baking is how I best connect with the world around me -- making something wonderful and sharing it with others and seeing how much joy they receive from something I made with my own hands,” says chef Joanne Chang, co-owner of Flour Bakery in Boston and an author of baking cookbooks.

"It’s a way to make the world a bit sweeter one cookie, cake, pie at a time.”

When it’s cold outside, there’s something cozy about a warm kitchen and the aroma of something sweet.

But baking can also be catharsis for more volatile feelings: The term “rage baking” was popularized by writer Tangerine Jones, who turned to flour and sugar to channel her anger at the world’s injustices.

Baking can be about maintaining traditions, or possibly curiosity (what is julekake, anyway?).

Hannah Skobe, a doctoral student in astrophysics in Pittsburgh, loves the chemistry aspect of baking — how butter behaves differently at different temperatures, for instance, or why the proteins in egg whites break down when they are over-beaten.

She also finds the process therapeutic, a much-needed break from work.

Ron Ben-Israel, who focuses on elaborate wedding cakes as chef and owner of Ron Ben-Israel Cakes, in New York City, was drawn as a child to “watching as ingredients change through technique” in his mother's kitchen.

"Especially the process of whipping egg whites into meringue fascinated me,” he said.

For him and others, there's an element of nostalgia. A parent’s rugalach recipe, the pie their favorite aunt made every Thanksgiving, the cookies they helped decorate as kids.

Or, it's a way to mark the calendar: a crunchy, buttery crisp in the fall after an apple picking expedition, Irish soda bread on St. Patrick’s Day, a favorite birthday cake that must be made every year.

Alex George of the blog Lily P Crumbs finds something satisfyingly tactile and tangible about baking. Cracking eggs, creaming butter — there’s a lot of sensory pleasure to be had, especially in a screen-centric world. Kneading dough for bread, spreading the icing on cinnamon rolls.

Her readers, she says, “love the process as much as the payoff."

George loves inventing new kinds of baked goods, seeking inspiration whenever she tries a new food: “Savory food is my favorite kind of muse. One incredible French onion soup I had recently inspired my caramelized onion biscuits with French onion soup compound butter.”

Bernard Wong, an avid home baker in New York City, also enjoys delving into new techniques. He has experimented with laminated doughs (think croissants and puff pastry), and has recently played with the East Asian technique — known as tangzhong in China and yudane in Japan — of pouring boiling water over flour to partially cook it, resulting in softer, fluffier breads.

Wong takes pleasure in satisfy a craving for something by making it himself. For instance, he couldn’t find anadama bread, a traditional New England yeast bread, “but I know how to make it.

“It’s economical, I get to control what’s inside of it, and it passes the time when I’m in my apartment and keeps my hands busy,” he said.

He often chooses high-quality ingredients and still saves money compared to buying the finished product. He splurges on expensive chocolate like Callebaut and Valrhona, for instance, and jams as many chips as possible into his cookies.

Even better, confections like these are shareable and can be a way of expressing a sentiment. It might be as simple as “I missed you,” or “I thought you might need something sweet to get through this moment.”

Skobe recently made a banana cake with cream cheese frosting for her co-workers: “I loved seeing all of my friends come to my desk to grab a slice.”

As Chang puts it: “I’m grateful I get to do something that I love so much and that others love so much too."

At its heart, baking feels hopeful. It might be about feeding others, or celebrating, or creating a moment of calm in an otherwise chaotic world, but it’s also about the belief that if you measure the ingredients and follow the steps, something good should come out of it.

Oh, and julekake? It's a Norwegian Christmas cake.

Katie Workman writes regularly about food for The Associated Press. She has written two cookbooks focused on family-friendly cooking, “Dinner Solved!” and “The Mom 100 Cookbook.” She blogs at https://themom100.com/. She can be reached at Katie@themom100.com.

For more AP food stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/recipes

An Apple Streusel Pie is displayed in New York on Nov. 9, 2018. (Cheyenne M. Cohen via AP)

Brownie batter is poured into a pan in New York on Oct. 7, 2020. (Cheyenne M. Cohen via AP)

A woman applies non-stick spray to a muffin tin in New York on Oct. 23, 2023. (Cheyenne M. Cohen via AP)

This combination of photos shows eggs, left, shortbread dough, center, and a muffin tin being prepped for baking. (Cheyenne M. Cohen via AP)

Tens of thousands of airline passengers are stranded by the Iran war that has spread across the Gulf region, but some wealthy travelers are getting out — by paying large sums for luxury flights to Europe via airports that are safe from Iranian drone and missile attacks.

Demand for charter flights has skyrocketed, with some people paying up to 200,000 euros ($232,000) as major airports in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, Qatar, were closed after the start of the conflict last weekend.

Travelers from Dubai, usually known as a safe and luxurious destination, are seeking to evacuate by traveling overland either to Muscat, Oman, about a four-hour drive, or to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, more than 10 hours away. Then they board one of the few available commercial flights or take a charter flight, whose costs have soared since the start of the war.

“The demand is huge, and we can’t deliver enough aircraft to respond to the demand,” said Altay Kula, CEO of the France-based private jet broker JET-VIP.

Whereas normally a charter flight on a private jet that can accommodate up to 16 passengers from Riyadh to Porto in Portugal may cost around 100,000 euros ($115,800) these days, the cost has doubled, Kula said.

“This increase in cost reflects the aircraft’s scarcity, the repositioning costs as well, and the operator risk assessments. So this is not speculative pricing,” he added.

Prices can vary depending on the departure point, the type of aircraft and the route constraints, said Ameerh Naran, CEO of Vimana Private Jets. For flights from the Gulf region to Europe, prices are ranging from 150,000 euros ($173,800) to 200,000 euros, he added.

In order to reach functional airports such as those in Riyadh and Muscat, some travelers hire private security companies that coordinate transportation in vehicles ranging from ordinary passenger cars to coach buses.

Due to the heavy traffic, wait times at border points with Oman can be up to four hours, while costs range in the thousands of dollars, said Ian McCaul, operations and planning director with Alma Risk, a U.K.-based risk management and security firm.

Those seeking to leave are predominantly stranded travelers, as opposed to residents, McCaul added.

He estimates his company has made transfer arrangements for more than 200 people and advised several others in recent days.

Vimana's clients include business executives, families and entrepreneurs, as well as remote workers who had been based in the region, Naran said.

Elie Hanna, CEO for the Middle East headquarters of Air Charter Service, based in Dubai, said most of the flights out of the region are leaving from Oman. The prices are so high, he said, because few charter planes are available since most of them are stuck at airports that are now closed.

The clients he is seeing range from people who regularly charter private, as well as people who generally fly commercial but are trying to pool resources with other travelers or families to share the expense.

“Everyone is stressed," Hanna said. "To be honest, everyone is trying to accommodate as much as they can. Muscat Airport is overloaded with flights and everybody is stressed.”

Experts from the International SOS security and health services company expect the fighting to continue to affect transportation and energy infrastructure for weeks.

A few people walk in a public plaza in downtown Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/ Fatima Shbair)

Light traffic moves along a main road in downtown Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/ Fatima Shbair)

ADDS CAUSE OF BLACK SMOKE IN THE BACKGROUND.- A plume of smoke caused by an Iranian strike is seen in the background an an Emirates plane is parked at the Dubai International Airport after its closure in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Sunday, March 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)