Cake lessons

Have you ever tried to make something beautiful, or tasty, labored for a long time, sketching, painting, or chopping, mixing, obsessing, only to realize that your efforts are going horribly off course and… you’re going to have to abandon it all and start over?

If so, welcome to the club. It’s part of the human creative process, and it’s an incredibly difficult thing for our human ego to accept. Our quest for reality to look just like the picture in our mind, can make us painfully doubt our abilities so much… that we cross our arms and refuse to get our hearts broken again by even trying.

I’ve learned a lot from countless failures, in my pursuit of becoming a wedding cake designer. I now know how to make edible sugar paste stargazer lilies, petal by petal – after breaking quite a few. I’ve learned to make billowy Italian mousseline buttercream, after irretrievably failing to emulsify at the right temperature. More than pastry skills, I’ve learned about patience, humility and compassion. According to the tao Te Ching, “these three, are your greatest treasures”.

In this instance, patience helps me slow down. I realized that if I wanted everything to be top-notch, I couldn’t multitask. If I tried to make buttercream while baking a cake layer, I’d invariably overbake it, and have to trim the toasty parts off… wasting a ton of time (and cake!) So, I surrendered to the process of doing one thing at a time, and doing them well. Some people are great multitaskers, and I admire them. But I accept, that I’m not – and that it’s ok. We all process things differently, have a different rhythm in the way we learn and work effectively… so, being patient has helped me understand how I work; and how I can bring my best to a pastry project.

Humility is, to me, looking at a lopsided cake layer spinning on my lazy susan platter, and realizing I could probably do better! If I want to make the frosting as seamless as possible, if I want this cake to withstand the jostles of transport, then I’d better find a way to stack the layers with as much integrity as I can. I could cheat and just add more frosting to the lopsided part – but it might slide off. I could pile on a bunch of flowers to hide my error – but, I’d like to save that way out for the gravest of pastry emergencies. To proactively assess where I fall short, and figure out how to deliver a meaningful piece of art to a wedding without slacking… ultimately helps me feel most satisfied with my work. It helps me feel I’ve done my utmost, and left nothing undone.

I wouldn’t be a pastry chef, without compassion. Compassion from teachers who patiently tolerated my ineptness, taught me to have compassion for myself when working out new techniques on my own. Compassion, is what motivates us to do a good job for other people that we may not know, or ever see again. Compassion, made making a wedding cake more enjoyable! Putting on chill uplifting music, and thinking loving thoughts while making a wedding cake… made kitchen work like a meditation where I was sharing in the joy of someone’s big day. I have to think that things taste better, when there is care put into the process – and in my mind, everyone deserves that.

It could be that pastry chefs often pile on flowers, to hide imperfections they could fix.

It could be that we humans, pile on brand names, showy cars, compulsive entertainment… to hide insecurities we could fix.

It’s not a huge deal on a cake; but in our real world things can get very off course the more we pile things on, to distract ourselves from the work we could do… to be a better version of ourselves than yesterday. Where can we simplify? Where do we even begin?

Take a few breaths, and ponder what’s actually quite beautiful about you, even in your imperfections. Marvel at where you’ve been, and how far you’ve come. Where it feels right, notice where you can shine a little lightness on places that feel heavy. It could be a little forgiveness, a little well-wishing, gratitude, or cherishing what you hold dear. It doesn’t have to be a long time – it just has to be in earnest. Trust, that we’ll get wherever we want to be, not by piling things on, but by purifying ourselves;

breath, by radiant breath. 🙂