Accidental and intentional successes in baking

“We keep it messy.”

About the Site

Started in August 2016, Casual Confections was born out of Crystal sharing recipes she was baking on social media. Instead of sharing recipes or discussing techniques in individual comments, a baking blog allows her to share this information to a wider audience.

Currently, the recipes on Casual Confections are experiments. These are recipes found on other websites and blogs or shared by other bakers. The intent of experimenting with other people’s recipes is to learn new techniques and try new desserts. Some experiments do involve combining several existing recipes. Not all of the experiments work out whether due to the recipe itself or due to baker error. Casual Confections captures the successes and failures of these adventures to show that everything takes practice, bakes don’t have to be flawless, and, above all, baking is fun no matter the outcome.

The goods Crystal bakes for Casual Confections are shared with friends, family, and anyone who would like a taste. In 2018, several bakes were donated to fund raising events in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area: The Geek Gala, which raises funds for The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, and Cavendish Brewery‘s Yule Ball, which raises funds for The Harry Potter Alliance.

In early 2019, Casual Confections officially became a custom online bakery.

About the Baker

Crystal Davidson enjoys baking. For most of her life, she mostly baked cakes from a box mix and a shortlist of cookie types including Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookies. She learned to bake from her mom who made the majority of desserts that were in the house growing up. Crystal’s mom loved collecting recipes from friends, coworkers, magazines, and newspapers. In late 2015, her mom had bought a candy thermometer with the intention of learning to make hard candies as some of her coworkers would bring in some very tasty ones. Sadly, her mom passed away suddenly and never got to try her hand at the candies. It took nearly a year before Crystal took her mom’s brand new candy thermometer out of its box and decided to use it to try new confections. She started the baking blog, Casual Confections, and shared her baking experiments and lessons as she took on new challenges. Crystal’s bakes now include cakes from scratch, biscotti, fudge, ganache, glazes, donuts, bars, sandwich cookies, different types of frosting, and more!