Enter baking a birthday cake. If you consult with Martha Stewart, she will send you off to the specialty bakeware store to stock up on the latest, greatest pans to make the most beautiful cake. You, of course, need a lovely cake stand upon which to display your creation. You must also have all the fancy tools to frost and decorate the cake, and spend hours practicing so that your guests will think you paid a professional to produce it.
Not in my house. I don't own springform pans because I bake cakes only for birthdays and special occasions. I've pared down my kitchen pots and pans to eliminate these kind of specialty items. On the rare occasions that I bake a cake, I generally just make a 13 x 9" sheet cake. I can, with a little ingenuity however, still manage a layer cake. Not a beautiful one but one that is tasty and that is good enough.
Today I made a vegan lemon cake recipe with lemon filling. I was thrilled to find this recipe as lemon curd and lemon filling are usually made with eggs so I have not eaten either in years. A filling, of course, goes between layers. I started with a 13 x 9" cake. Once it was cool enough, I removed it from the pan and cut it in half. These halves can be stacked to make a rectangular (almost square) layer cake.
I got ambitious and also split each layer so I could add more filling.
It took a fair amount of frosting to cover the somewhat uneven edges and the resulting cake was definitely not a showstopper. There was no fancy cake stand, only a glass baking sheet. It didn't matter. The cake looked good enough and tasted wonderful. There was no need to beat myself up trying to create the perfect cake when everyone was happy with this one.
12 comments:
That looks and sound delicious! I certainly wouldn't refuse a piece of vegan lemon cake! (So few people actually bake "vegan" recipes I have to take my sweets where I can.)
A tip on the cake stacking. I learned that if you turn the small side to match up with the tall side, it looks much more even. Not even a Martha Stewart tip!
Looks WONDERFUL!
I myself stick to the 365 scone mix..
It does look good enough to eat! Everyone in my house suffers from perfectionism, it drives me crazy! I'm learning to embrace good enough but neither of the boys is there yet. We have a lot of negativity here a lot of the time.
Ahh yes perfectionisim. I was convinced that life plan wasn't going to work for me early (7 or 8 years)... when I spent 3/4 of an hour crying over a 19/20 spelling test.
The stress and general negativity I saw it create in my mothers life probably pushed the scale toward "you know what, it's good enough". Now I have the opposite problem of convincing myself that anything is important enough to even attempt perfect for.
Kind Regards
Belinda
Thank you for this post. I needed this. I'm a bit of a slob but grew up with perfection so I'm always feeling guilty about my house. It could be better, of course, but sometimes there's more important things in life.
I think your cake look de-licious. I want to eat it right now! And who cares if it's not perfect? I think it adds to it's charm.
MMM! That sounds like a better version of our wedding cake. (It was disappointingly dry).
Hi Chili, Thanks for this post! It reminds me of a quote I've carried around in my head for years. Sorry,I don't know the source. "The work of the world doesn't wait to be done by perfect people."
Jan
Ohh, lovely. Lemons are in season in you area too. A friend just brought some home they picked off a tree on a visit to AZ.
If you need eggs, we've got plenty here...;-)
Type B here....but I know A types.
That looks delicious! I found that I started letting go of my perfectionism on a yoga mat. There was just no way I could achieve most of the poses in their 'perfection', so I gave it up and enjoyed my practice since then.
Chile~that cake looks WAY GOOD ENOUGH!
I know what you mean about Type A personalities, though. I know that sometimes I procrastinate and don't actually get the job done because I won't do it unless I do it right, when sometimes good enough is good enough!
Thank you all for the nice comments. The cake was delicious but far richer than the baked goods I normally make. I generally bake fat-free, even cakes, but didn't want to mess with the recipe when it was for someone else's celebration. I was happy to send the last piece home with her!
Now I need to do more exercise (and yoga) to burn off those calories.
That looks great in comparison to the one may daughter made for my birthday. It was the first time we had made a cake from scratch.
Bottom line, it was delicious and we could pronounce all thee ingredients.
Post a Comment