Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Kitchen Things

So as anyone who knows me can attest, if there's one thing I am not, as a rule, it's a perfectionist. I like things to get done, but I'm not fussed if they're not finished in the finest possible form they could be. For me, the pleasure is in finishing on time, not taking as long as needed to finish immaculately.

Except with baking, for some reason. I was reminded of this anomaly today, while trying to bake a cake to welcome Andy home. I mixed with painstaking slowness, making sure everything was perfect. I measured the baking soda 3 times, for goodness sake. But when I went to pour the batter into pans, I discovered that my mixer wasn't properly calibrated, and that a bunch of butter/sugar hadn't been beaten in. Despite my efforts to fix it, the cakes came out dense, overdone at the edges and just generally Not Great.

So I made them again. From scratch. And this time (I suspect due to my incredibly awful oven) they cooked OK, but mounded up terribly. And I'm fighting the urge to make them AGAIN, even though it's already 10:30.

Why am I so demanding about my baking? It's not just cakes, it's everything. And it's weird. I'll pass in a paper that's only meh, something that affects my career potentially, but I won't serve slightly overdone cake to my own boyfriend. It's like my domestic gene is working overtime to compensate for the Lost Years.

1 comment:

a said...

The second one turned out fantastic. I wouldn't have minded a third one. I'm a little miffed the first one wasn't in the fridge. I am no perfectionist about eating baked goods, we all know. How overly dense could it have been?