I love baking precisely because it is a science.

The creativity comes later in the proportions of things like how much icing/filling to make.

Yeah. Baking is chill because the ingredients are effectively standardized and fungible so if you just follow the steps it’s hard to screw up. You usually only heat the baked good once and that happens in isolation.

Meanwhile, cooking is anarchy. Just because one piece of chicken breast took five minutes on medium heat doesn’t mean that the next one will. You constantly have to monitor and adapt to changing conditions and everything from ingredients to measurements to the very steps of the recipe itself is up for negotiation. And you have to do half the steps while heating the meal and if you ever take too long for something you burn it and it’s ruined.

When I bake I’m relaxed. When I cook I’m in nonstop crisis management mode.

Probably why I love cooking. I enter a flow state and I get constant sensory feedback in sizzle level and aroma and color. The closer cooking gets to baking (making rice, cooking a roast, etc) the less fun it is.

Granted, I’m probably biased by a culinary upbringing, years in a restaurant kitchen, and some variety of undiagnosed AuDHD, but I thrive in constant crisis management mode. It’s just so much fun. Baking is so boring, and there’s so little room for improvisation.