There are at least two O'Reilly "Cookbooks" for electronics.
The best way to do this as a hobbyist, if you don't want to read textbooks, is just to mess around and soak up information from blogs. There is an awful lot of "do this because it works" in electronics. Most of it is backed up by theory somewhere - e.g. why is 100nF so often used as a bypass cap value? - but really you don't care as long as you follow the recommended application circuit in the datasheet.
I thought about electrical engineer but it does not have to be an engineer. Like a driver does not need to be a BMW engineer and know everything about the car.
I think your second example summarizes it quite nicely.
I am a physicist by education and an IT guy by career, so to speak. When my son asks me about basic physics I usually give him an erroneous answer, good enough for him to go ahead. This is what I would love to have in electronics.
But as you say (and with which I agree), years of tinkering is probably what builds a cookbook in your head.
I think there are three main levels in the approach to hobby electronics: 1: do it as the book says so it will work, 2: build experience also by making modifications so one can know in a pure empirical way why it does or doesn't work (for example using an electrolytic cap for RF decoupling), and 3: learn the theory behind parts and how they work, in order to be able to design from scratch or make heavy adaptations. 1 and 2 require time and will, 3 requires also math knowledge, and can be slow to conquer. I have personally been stuck too long time at 2, and now am still somewhere like 5% of 3, which all things considered is not bad at all.
It's a myth that electronics design is math-heavy, because you can do it with pretty much just +-/ and some ² and roots. Even for e.g. filter design you don't actually need to be able to do (or even understand) any of the calculations yourself, because tools automate it away. Analog design with "basic blocks" is pretty straightforward, "free form design" not following basic blocks (usually resulting in part count reductions or performance enhancements) is much harder. The latter is what often produces "trick circuits" which most people cannot analyze on their own and possibly cannot analyze using SPICE.
There are at least two O'Reilly "Cookbooks" for electronics.
The best way to do this as a hobbyist, if you don't want to read textbooks, is just to mess around and soak up information from blogs. There is an awful lot of "do this because it works" in electronics. Most of it is backed up by theory somewhere - e.g. why is 100nF so often used as a bypass cap value? - but really you don't care as long as you follow the recommended application circuit in the datasheet.