I married into a family that appreciates baked goods. I grew up never fully understanding the beauty of the perfect chocolate chip cookie. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law are very talented bakers and, simply by my own accord, I feel anxious about baking.

Every December the three of us do a full day of cookie baking. My mother-in-law creates a detailed list of all the treats we’ll make that day. Every year is the same. I ask for the least involved jobs because I do not want to mess up the holiday spread.

The thing is, I actually enjoy baking. I typically put on some music or a podcast and get to work. However, before COVID, I always felt rushed. I never felt like I had the time to really commit to a baking project. I’d end up stressed out, I’d make a mistake along the way, and things wouldn’t turn out as I had hoped.

Now, on so many levels, things are different. I have more free time than I’ve ever had in the last decade and I’m giving myself the space to enjoy things outside of work.

I’ve been baking a lot during the stay-at-home order. I don’t get too creative or outside the box. I like straight forward cakes that have multiple layers, fillings, and some type of buttercream frosting. I enjoy taking my time. I enjoy measuring the ingredients and weighing each cake before I put them in the oven.

I’ve also eaten a lot of cake during the stay-at-home order. I have really enjoyed that too.

Recently my husband bought me special cake flour that is locally milled. I was excited to up my cake baking game.

Last week I tried out the new flour for the first time. I was going big with this fancy flour. My plan was a multilayer vanilla sponge cake with two different mousse fillings covered in swiss meringue buttercream.

I sifted the flour, took my time folding in the egg whites, and paid close attention to how long the cakes were in the oven. While the cakes were baking I made two different ganaches, butterscotch and chocolate, that would eventually become mousse. It was about then that I realized I did not have enough heavy whipping cream to make the mousse.

No big deal!

Once the cakes were done and while the ganaches were cooling I headed to the local grocery store. Unfortunately, the store was completely out of heavy whipping cream.

Again, no big deal! I can adapt!

I Googled alternatives to heavy whipping cream and kept a positive mindset.

Sadly, the alternatives fell flat. Literally.

No big deal! I can adapt again!

New plan. This cake was now going to have a lemon and lime curd filling with a cream cheese frosting. It was going to be glorious.

The curd turned out beautifully. Although I didn’t have enough powdered sugar, I made some adjustments and came up with a decent cream cheese frosting.

All of the elements were ready and it was time to assemble this cake!

I sliced the sponges in half, piped on the lemon and lime curd between the layers, and frosted the top with the cream cheese frosting.

After dinner my husband cut into the cake and to my horror the bottom half of both sponges was raw. RAW! Even though the many toothpicks I used to check the cakes before I took them out of the oven came out clean those darn sponges were not fully baked!

I was so disappointed to throw out those beautiful cakes, but there was not much else that could be done. I spent probably a total of five hours working on that thing and it just ended up in the garbage.

The next day I woke up, felt motivated to redeem myself, and decided to make another cake. This one was going to be a banana cake with layers of chocolate mousse (after I went to another store to get heavy whipping cream) topped with a cream cheese frosting. I’ll spare you the details, but his cake suffered the same fate as the cake from the day before. It was raw.

I’m chalking it up to the fancy flour. It’s going to require some experimentation for me to find the best ratio of ingredients in order to fully bake a cake with this new flour.

All in all, that was a long story about patience and non attachment.

I spent hours (HOURS!) on those cakes to just throw them out. (Well I did attempt a rescue mission with the second one, but it was not pretty.) This disastrous cake baking experience made me think about my yoga and meditation practice.

I’m not doing my yoga practice to master something - granted I do want to refine my cake baking skills. I can’t do the practice to get attached to the outcome. Sometimes my yoga and meditation practice is messy. Sometimes (often) cake baking is messy. Regularly my meditation practice and cake baking agendas do not go as planned.

And that’s okay.

The willingness to adapt and be content with an unexpected outcome is a huge takeaway. The willingness to wake up and get back to it the next day is essential.

It’s all a practice. We just can’t be attached to the outcome. Even when the cake is raw.