My last post was my first attempt at making my own recipe. Not copying Martha Stewart or the back of the chocolate chips bag, but my very own, from scratch recipe. As I devised it, I got in my head the image of these beautifully round, plump, and chewy cookies that I could wow my coworkers with the next day when I brought the extras in. I was so excited as I dropped the dough onto the pans and slid them into the over. I waited anxiously for 10 minutes, staring at their baking forms through the window of the oven door. But I noticed something at about minute 5. My cookies were starting to look really flat. They were also huge! Not the little circular mounds of gooey-ness I wanted them to be. So I took the first batch out at 9 minutes, instead of 10. Upon hitting the air, the surface began to wrinkle and collapse in on itself. Disheartened, I put the next batch in for the full 10 minutes. This time, they came out dark and even more wrinkly then the last! For a few moments, I was completely devastated. Instead of the perfect little cookies I wanted, I had these weird, giant, wrinkled discuses of dough.
But then I took a bite of one. And hot damn it was good. Maybe I'm using hyperbole here. I don't care. They tasted great! It didn't matter if they looked nothing like I expected. They were cookies, and I made them. 100% on my own.
Let's face it. We've all had recipes that have...not gone quite as we expected. We search pinterest for hours trying to find the perfect dessert to bring to the staff meeting or the church bake sale, toiled over the mixer, using up the very last drops of our extracts, only to have the cookies come out of the oven looking like a toddler's play-dough modern art experiment. In short, bad. And it is absolutely soul crushing. No one likes to admit defeat and face failure, especially in an aspect of your life where you feel confident. it happens, and it sucks.
But it doesn't always have to suck. Baking is more than just aesthetics. When it boils down to it, taste is the most important aspect in whether or not a cookie - or any treat for that matter - is any good. I have eaten some beautiful treats before, where the baker toiled for hours to make each icing flower blossom identical to a real flower, or to make the fondant perfectly flat. But those treats often taste nasty! (like seriously, who likes fondant anyway?). I have also eaten treats thrown together in thirty minutes by my mom who just wants to have something yummy for after dinner. And those treats are delicious!
I guess what I'm trying to get at is, it doesn't always matter if one part of what you were doing doesn't fully meet your expectations. You just need to dig a little deeper to find the success. When it comes to baking, while appearance is important, the taste is what really matters. The deeper aspect of your endeavor. Your success that maybe you don't see at first. Don't hold imaginary expectations over yourself and presume every thing to be perfect. Sometimes you mess up and that's ok. Just keep trying! You'll surprise yourself sometimes. Maybe your awkward discus cookies are actually delicious.
Great encouragement!
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