When Life Hands You Cake Crumbs...

July 28, 2011

Last week was a lesson in flexibility. I posted way back in March that we had ordered a new front door and it would be in "soon." I had no idea it would be another FOUR months before it arrived. This has been an extremely frustrating experience and, needless to say, if we could do it all over again, we would go with a different company. At first I was excited, then overwhelmed, then frustrated, then angry and finally just over it.

By the time our door was being installed last week, I expected things wouldn't go smoothly and unfortunately, I was right. Normally this would have been really upsetting, but when things are somewhat out of your control, you just have to roll with the punches. I came to this realization when baking a cake to celebrate our newly installed door.

I had a plan all worked out. I was going to make a orange cake with poppy seed filling, butter cream frosting and a red door on the front. (I was taking it to an OSUF meeting so I thought the orange and black inside would make up for the red outside.:)) Luckily when you make an 8-inch cake, that leaves enough batter for a 1/2 dozen or so cupcakes, so I made both. I was kind of in a hurry so I ended up trying to take the cake out of the pan too early. It completely fell apart.

I didn't really want to throw it out, so I decided to go to plan B and try to make cake balls for the first time. I was pretty proud of myself until it came to the dipping part. I was using almond bark and it wasn't going so well. I later learned there is a dipping tool you can get that makes it a little easier. Spoons weren't doing the trick. Once I topped them off with poppy seeds, they tasted pretty good, but looked too ugly to serve to anyone other than family.

I then turned to my last resort - cupcakes. My coworkers seemed to like them and I think they turned out better than the cake would have, so maybe it was a blessing in disguise. A lot of not-so-ideal things happen to us, but they help us learn to experiment and make better decisions the second time around. In a way I guess we should be thankful for that.

Here is a little before and after action.