5 Life Lessons From Baking  a Cake

Have you ever seen a cake so dreamy with delicious chocolatey goodness carefully streaming down its layers? ( No Apologies, I’m obsessed with Super moist Chocolate cakes)

Have you ever sat to consider all the work, dedication and time the cake passed through before it became this masterpiece that can be exchanged for good money?

That’s what we want to talk about today, not the process of making a chocolate cake, maybe some other time. But the way cake baking teaches us lessons on life.

1. Life is in Shapes and Baking pan sizes.

When it comes to baking, there are principles, recipes, measurements, when to use two-thirds of a cup or when to put in 2 whole cups, laws that can not be changed; wet stuff mix together, dry stuff mix together then you pour the wet stuff gradually into the dry. If you pour everything in at once, you’d have successfully made a lumpy hot mess. Some cakes require that you stick to time, some require consistent checking, some require your undivided attention from pot to oven, some require skilled placement and removal.

All these are basic principles that affect life as well. Life is all about principles and goals and codes and laws. It’s ok to be spontaneous, but a lot of the time, what you put in is what you get.

2. Failure is not a failure, it’s just another method.

If you have ever successfully baked a perfect cake at first trial, then you must be good – real good. But for those of us who, at first trial, managed to make a home-alone cake, (only friends and family could eat it ) well Kudos to us.

No one ever dreams to fail, but when you do, there is nothing wrong in admitting that you were at fault or you did something wrong and taking the lessons learnt in giant stride as you get back up.

In baking, as in many other professional tasks, making mistakes is allowed as it helps us grow, we learn and unlearn and relearn. We know what works and what doesn’t. So, we learned that adding more flour results in cookies and not cake or adding more egg results in sponge cake and not regular cake. Or that the cake has to be cool before icing if not it melts and falls off.

3. When Baking, Passion is King.

In baking, there will be terrible days, there will also be awe-so-amazing days.

Sometimes, you have people undermine the value you place on your cake just because they feel they know all the theory of it and feel it’s not that difficult. It is easier to judge something or someone from the outside. Same way, it’s easy to drive a car from the passenger’s seat. But, the truth is it feels a lot different when you’re inside.

4. Have a Trademark

Otherwise known as an Identity. When you see a Cake by WaraCake, you know its from WaraCake because of the presentation, when you see a statement cake, you know who made it because it’s their identity. Popular Cake Boss, Buddy Valastro, never bakes a simple cake. If it’s not a million dollar looking cake or Disneyland re-enactment, it doesn’t seem like a challenge to him. Every cake he makes always sounds impossible at first thought, but he goes on to make it anyway.

Be known for doing the impossible. Be known for breaking records. Be known for putting a bit of personality into your work.

5. Don’t Be Over Ambitious

The very first cake you learned to bake wasn’t a 5-tier wedding cake with royal fondant and a married couple mannequin. It was a simple one-layer plain cake. No icing, no fondants, no fruits or colors. Just regular sugar and butter.

Ambition is good, It is what drives you in life. Over ambition, on the other hand, is what kills. Small and steady steps become giant steps later on. As is with baking, until you successfully master one type of baking, you can’t learn another. Trying to do everything at once will never yield a substantial result, rather, learning about one thing at a time and mastering it before moving on to the next is what will bring result.

I hope that you remember the Cake and the processes it goes through when next you are going through any challenge.