Monday 5 March 2012

Getting my cookery mojo back

Made a chocolate cake yesterday. 

It was (and what remains, still is) delicious.



The only reason this is important is that I needed a confidence boost. 

I enjoy cooking and I'm good at it.  So, when I made some vegetable soup last week and it turned out to be as interesting as dishwater, I panicked.  It also looked like dishwater.  This is not how it works.  I can make vegetable soup - done it many, many times with uniformly great results until this one epic failure.

Instant crash of confidence.  If I could not make vegetable soup, using the same ingredients and whatnot that I've always used, who knows what else might fail?  Possibly I would no longer be able to make cake.  This was a tormenting thought.  Cake has ALWAYS been my thing.  Failing with cake would be unthinkable.

When confronted by a crisis of this nature, I did what I always do.  I procrastinated and let my inner self nag me.  Surely it was better not to make cake than make cake and fail? 

"We're talking about cake here.  You've been making cake and cooking regularly since you were 10 years old.  And let me remind you, that is now a very long time."

"Gee.  Thanks, inner self.  You really know how to give a person a boost."

"It's not meant to give you a boost, moron.  It's a reality check.  Get that butter out of the fridge and BAKE."

My inner self has these dictatorial tendencies.  I cringed away and whimpered.  And got the butter out of the fridge and baked.  In a blur.  On auto-pilot.  In exactly the same way that I'd made the failed soup that started this whole confidence crisis.

It worked.  I feel better now.  I still don't know what went wrong with the soup, mind.

This probably has wider applications, but I'll take being able to cook again for now.

1 comment:

  1. It looks delicious... and to a self-confessed chocoholic, such as myself, it looks bloody gorgeous!

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