Baking is a science for a reason. These are the kind of wise words I can give myself a half hour later as I’ve given myself time to think on it. This is not something I can tell myself as I am recklessly throwing butter and powdered sugar into a mixture with my espresso ganache that had gloriously failed. Why did it fail? I’m not certain. Maybe because I used milk instead of cream. Maybe the milk wasn’t hot enough. Maybe not enough butter…not enough chocolate. I have no idea but it failed.

I was not going to realize my beautiful vision for a lush chocolate cake with espresso chocolate ganache and hazelnuts. It was going to be amazing. I had been dreaming of it for an hour. Why didn’t I just start again you ask? Because I was sad. I was sad that it failed. I don’t like failure. So I tossed the broken mess of a frosting and made my husband eat naked chocolate cake with me. He loved the cake. He loved it just as it was. Sometimes things are ok just as they are. Maybe it was meant to be a naked cake. Sometimes things just fail but what I saw as a failure my husband saw as a success. I needed that moment of positivity when I very nearly cried over split buttercream.

Baking is a science. You need to understand the basics before you can try and save something that’s broken. Start again if you can or try and find the success moment in the middle of what might feel like a failure. My cake was good. Moist…delicious. That was enough today.