Remember That One Time I Pretended I Was a Baker?

Unless you are a professional baker, you and I are a lot alike. We are home bakers. We stick to our tried-and-true, usual recipes and we bake in the pans we know work for us. Once in a while, we try something new. Does it always work out? No, it doesn’t. But sometimes it leads to something delicious, like amaretto pistachio cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese frosting.

A few weeks ago, I tried making my Amaretto pistachio cake in baking papers I’ve never used before, in a new oven on a setting I’ve never baked cupcakes on before. It was a complete failure. It was the last straw that night. I’d already messed up a batch of mini cinnamon Bundt cakes earlier that day and by the time I had a pistachio cupcake disaster on my hands and needed to start over, it meant a late-night run to the grocery store.

For those of you who have been following my story for a while, you know I lost my full-time job, my career in corporate communications, on September 8. As I seek to understand what is next for me, I’ve been baking and writing because I enjoy it and it’s an income generator. In the middle of the cupcake fiasco, I messaged my sisters and told them I am done. I think I said something along the lines of, “I can’t bake. What do I think I’m doing?!”

And then I redeemed myself. I started over. The result? Scrumptious Amaretto pistachio cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese frosting. (It was nighttime so I didn’t have good lighting for a good photo.) It wasn’t the first baking mistake I’ve made. Like the time I attempted to make petit fours and they should look more like this.

And I’ve made mistakes since. But I guess I like sharing good food with people so I’ll never really give up. It will take a lot more than a cupcake failure to take me out.

I hope you feel the same. Don’t let a few flops in the kitchen defeat you. No one is a perfect baker.

Sweet wishes,