If At First You Don’t Succeed, Bake, Bake Again

‘Tis a lesson you should heed,
Try, try again.
If at first you don’t succeed,
Try, try again.’     –William Edward Hickson, Try and Try Again

This post is for anyone who has ever had a hard time baking and felt discouraged to go on.

It happens to the best of us; it really, really does. Just watch any reality cooking show long enough and you’re bound to see a chef mistake salt for sugar or lose their temper when their soufflé falls. And yet they push on; they keep going. And so should you.

Half of the times I make something, it doesn’t come out as planned. I write a recipe based on the certain techniques I know will always work, like creaming butter and sugar. Could anything be better? Well, looks can be deceiving. These looked good going in the oven…

But I guessed.

And I bent a few rules.

And when that batch of cookies came out of the oven they were flatter than Kansas, and it was back to the drawing boards.

Whoops! I wanted to quit and say “That recipe just wasn’t ‘meant’ to come out”. But deep inside I knew just because I was knocked off that horse didn’t  mean I should give up. What I really needed was some inspiration.

Hi, my name is Evan Thomas, and running this blog is what I do.

The best thing I could think to do was learn from my mistakes. I went back to the drawing boards, compared the recipes to other cookie recipes, and—when all else failed—consulted an expert.

Because google can be pretty helpful sometimes.

After I figured out everything that could have possibly gone wrong, I found a way to make everything go right. I got back into the kitchen and tried again. And you know what? It worked.

(recipe to come)

If at first you don’t succeed, bake, bake again.