pound cakes and lessons learned

I am in awe of anyone who bakes successfully.  There is something about baking that has always eluded me and I have never been very good at it.  My cookies are too flat, my cakes are too dense, and don't even get me started on the praline fiasco of Christmas 2010.  Baking is a technical art and there is little room for error.  Perhaps that is why I seemed doomed to failure. 

Last night I felt domestically inspired and pulled out a recipe from my grandmother for Cream Cheese Pound Cake with Strawberry Filling.  Well, to be exact the recipe itself came from Better Homes and Gardens, one of many issues my grandmother piled into my arms on my recent visit.  I think she was trying to tell me something.  Well anyway, the recipe didn't call for anything too unusual and it sounded manageable.  As long as I used the right ingredients in the right amounts and followed directions exactly, I should end up with a delicious cake just like the one in the picture.  Antique cake plate, strawberry garnish, festive linens and all. 

What I ended up with, however, was an oozing, somewhat mushy mess on a dinner plate.  I'm not quite sure exactly where I took the wrong turn.  I know I measured the sugar wrong at first, but I caught my error and added more later.  I know I used a bundt pan and not a tube pan, but they're practically the same thing right?  And I know my oven bakes at a deceptively higher temperature than its setting, so I turned down the heat.  But that's the thing about baking.  One small detail can be off and things just don't turn out.  Add your sugar too late, use the wrong pan, or crank your heat a few degrees too high and you could end up scraping strawberry lava from the oven floor. 

I am so glad the rest of life doesn't follow this pattern.  It's so reassuring to know that I can make a little mistake here (Hello, bangs?) and a little error there (What do you mean you can't put potato peelings down the garbage disposal?) and things will ultimately balance out.  And often what seems like a misstep at the time, actually turns into something quite beautiful.  (So I quit my job and packed my things but now I can't move to Seattle after all?  Kansas City here I come!)  Even the daily hiccups and little catastrophes are a part of a wonderfully complex masterpiece we call life. 

So don't be afraid to throw some ingredients in a bowl, mix it up, and bake it at some mystery temperature.  That mess you call a failure?  It's just one more lesson learned.