On Failure

Failure is one of those funny things -- everyone wants to avoid it and it will inevitably happen to everyone. Plus, everyone has their own definition thereof.

In my day job, I write software that does evaluations of various things (pass/fail) and the criteria for failure varies by what's being evaluated. It's not always "do this exactly or you fail", but often times there's an upper and lower limit around the exact match that also constitutes passing.

When I'm doing cake, I too often hold myself to the former definition of pass/fail -- if it's not exactly the way I envisioned it and the recipe does not turn out perfectly and all of my edges aren't 100% straight and I don't magically have beautiful handwriting in frosting even though my handwriting in real life is atrocious, then I've failed.

The facts of the matter are that short of lighting it on fire, completely missing the mark on what someone asked me to do, or dropping the cake before it can be served any time that you complete a cake and people are happy to eat it, you have achieved success.

Cake is a labor of love -- and just like the people we love, they're not going to turn out perfectly every time. There will be things that annoy us (too dry/cracking fondant, a not entirely level cake, a recipe that you haven't tried before that fails to come out right), but in the end as long as the recipient is happy, we need to let go of our inner critics and accept the praise that is rightfully ours.

I had a heck of a weekend working on my husband's cake. I was trying to scale up two cupcake recipes to full blown cake recipes and they did not come out as well as I'd liked. I even made two hockey puck cakes in the baking process due to not reading the recipe closely enough late at night and I ended up resorting to a box mix for part of the cake (which I often consider cheating, but sometimes you just want consistent performance).  I have a hate/hate relationship with my cake leveler and need to find a better one, so the angles on my cake are odd. And I can't write script on a straight line to save my life.  I was up until midnight Friday finishing the cake, it lost part of a bottom edge getting onto the board, and in general kept apologizing to my husband for not having the type of birthday cake I thought he deserved.

And I was wrong. It looked exactly like what it was supposed to, he was happy, and it was delicious eating.  I don't have to answer to Kerry Vincent on the quality of my fondant work, and I don't have to hold myself to that standard internally either.

In short -- lighten up and be willing to fail. Either way there's still cake at the end :)

Threadcakes

I did not, alas, win Threadcakes this year. I cannot say that I am terribly surprised or disappointed as the winning cakes were all pretty fantastic.

I can, however, take a few lessons away from what did win. Please note that this is my own analysis/opinion and does not necessarily reflect the reality of the Threadcakes judging.

1. Cake isn't really an important component. Yes, there should be some cake, but it's more of an afterthought than a main component. Cake is a building foundation, not an integral part and building tiers is a waste of time unless you're going to carve them into something intricate.
   
2. If you don't do fantastic gumpaste/fondant/and/or pastillage you are not going to win.
3. Corollary to 2 -- if the gumpaste/fondant/and/or pastillage is not incredibly detailed you are not going to win.
4. Cute does not win. See point 3 about incredibly detailed. Sure, it won the first year, but it hasn't even placed the last two.
5. Picking a cute but non-complex cake and executing it well will not be enough (see points 1-4).
6. I need to start planning considerably earlier next year and start on the gumpaste as soon as the contest opens if I have any hope of ever placing.

This might sound like sour grapes, but it's really not. It's more a reference for myself for next year as to how to possibly win/place/show.

Hello

In theory, this shall be a blog about my adventures making cakes, both past and present, but hopefully mostly present. It might also include comments on tv shows about cakes, reviews of cakes I have eaten out and about, cake tools, etc. etc. etc.

Knowing, as I do, that I am not the most together person about putting virtual pen to virtual paper, I am not guaranteeing any sort of consistent updating schedule. Some days I barely have time to make cake, much less post photos and write about it. However, when I do, I promise to try and be as clear and full of description as I can about the techniques I'm using and how they are (and are not) working for me.

My cake background is this -- I grew up with a mom who made and decorated cakes, but didn't really teach me how to do it. I picked it up again later in life -- starting out by just winging it, and then taking a class or two (I still would like to take a few more). A lot of the techniques I've done (fondant, rice krispie modeling, chocolate painting, etc) are things I've said "hey, let's see what happens here", so I'm coming from a non-professional experimental background. Which is not to say that I haven't sold cakes in the past, and won't do so in the future. I'm just, for the time being, replacing my site aimed at selling cake with a site aimed at talking about cake (and possibly selling it as time permits) because I have not had the time to fully devote to making it happen.

I've done Threadcakes twice now -- the first year it was so bad I did not even submit, and this year's entry can be found here. I'm still waiting to hear on the judging but am reasonably certain it won't be me winning this year, and that's okay.

Feel free to ask questions, comment, brag about your own cakes, etc. There's room for everyone at the decorating table.