Clothes ready, car packed and cake iced, I set off to a friend’s birthday celebration a couple of hours away last week. I wanted to do something special and so, said I’d bake and bring something. Being a bit of a perfectionist, I noticed almost immediately that the cake wasn’t exactly like the picture in my cookbook…
“Um, we don’t have time to figure out what’s wrong so we can ice it up and say nothing..”.
…2 hours later, everyone was gobbling down the heavy troubled impersonator lemon cake with their tequila shots.
So what was the issue? BAKING POWDER – a very important ingredient according to the baking gods.
After, I received a nice thank you message from my friend about how much she loved the cake and had consumed the rest of it as a hangover munchie, I was like… OK maybe the cookbooks don’t know everything? I could have discovered something AMAZING and a new way to save money and have heavier cakes which secretly people really want and love and want to eat and…
No, not really.
I learned a lesson though. Just because one vital ingredient was missing from the cake and it wasn’t perfect (however was delicious especially if you’re hungover or have had lots of tequila shots). It still worked out fine. People didn’t notice (or at least didn’t say they did) and I have something to reflect on both in my kitchen and in life.
Perfection isn’t everything, cakes are delicious and sometimes you need to just work with what you’ve got until you figure out how to do it better (or how to read recipes as in my case!).
You’ll be glad to hear that, since then my cakes have turned out much fluffier and I keep a press stocked full of baking powder, just because.