When you start to learn anything new, expect some failure. Failure isn’t a bad word. Failure is part of learning. It’s how you will get better. I promise, with time, you will improve. Now perhaps you’ll have a knack for it like a duck takes to water, but for the rest of us, I have some great advice. When beginning to bake, prepare for crummy cakes.
My love of baking was renewed with watching The Great British Baking Show while dealing with complications from a prolonged illness in early 2018. I was feeling sorry for myself most of the year thinking about how my neck couldn’t bend without extreme pain, I couldn’t read, look on the computer, I had no voice, couldn’t eat solid foods and my arm was stuck by my side. All I could do most days is watch a little television.
As silly as this sounds, this simple cooking show gave me renewed hope, specifically the Master Class series. It was the moment I took notice of Mary Berry’s hand. I thought it was from arthritis; turned out it was from Polio. And yet, she handles baking with grace and poise. Episode after episode, she created masterpiece cakes worthy of royalty. Could I bake one handed? As I watched her move with suck precision and skill, I got the courage to try! What is the worst that could happen? Oh my….Let’s just look. I’m warning you, it’s not pretty.
My first attempt at Genoise sponge was… 
Well it was a sweet scrambled egg with a smattering of flour pockets. 
And then came the over baked crummy, 
broken slabs. Chickens were thrilled. 
This was one of my best. Ruined a pan getting it out as I learned non stick means nothing in cake baking… 
I still rolled that little guy up. 
I had lots of cracks and it was dryer than a dog bone. 
But I made my first swirl! Woot! 
I decided to try something simple, an all in one. Only, I had issues with stirring batters. Yuck! 
This resulted in really claggy, 
Solid, 
Weapons of cakes. 
Perhaps a good old boxed cake? Some progress, but oops on the temperature. 
And I kept making the mistake of believing that nonstick pans are indeed non stick… 
That’s a lie. 
And then came the bad recipes I found online. This wasn’t supposed to happen… 
It was kind of funny my best looking cake was a terrible recipe with too much sugar to the point it couldn’t dissolve in the batter. It was so sweet I needed a dentist immediately. 
This ended up being my best cake. Only took about two weeks and just in time for a birthday. 
Mine. Yes, I am super thrilled I have a semi-tasty cake with my own hard work. And bonus! The baking was lossening up my frozen shoulder! I can actually bend it and rest the plate on my hand.
So if you stuck with me this long, keep trying when recipes go wonky. You’ll eventually get some desirable results. And this applies to anything in life. It took me nearly a year to be able to even blog about this post due to pain prohibiting much time online. I thought about giving up on lots of things. But I persisted. And I got better. Check out this lovely cake for instance. You will get better, too. And in the meantime. Be sure to prepare for crummy cakes of your own.
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