We are moving house in two days, but it’s my local friend’s birthday and my she is gluten intolerant in a big way and cannot remember the last time she had birthday treats. so, I’m making cupcakes as I believe in delighting those I adore. As a result of the move, I’m also functioning in a 75% boxed up kitchen, but I proactively prepped the cupcake dry ingredients several days ago… or so I thought.
While succumbing to the general chaos of the house in its current state, I’d apparently rushed the prep. When I mixed up the batter, something seemed off. I chocked it up to me not having baked this recipe in a month. I’m also mid-publishing process of my first cookbook. I’ve tested and retested all the recipes so much so that they are all a blur right now. My gut was yelling at me, but I didn’t listen and I poured out the batter into the cupcake papers. I didn’t even halt the process when the last cup came up only 1/3 full. I explained it away I shouldn’t have. Evidentally my brain (that often moves to the next thing quicker than it should) had skipped the step of “measure and add the flour”. That doesn’t work well in baking science!
About ten minutes into a twenty minute baking time, I opened the oven to a colossal burnt mess. Of course, I paused to take this picture below, knowing that there was/is some divine message or benefit that would be born of this catastrophe! There had to be something more here than “I was careless!” Right? Each time I don’t trust my gut instinct on something and it goes awry, I have 20/20 vision in the rearview mirror. I knew something was wrong. The signs were all there. I discounted them like a man who “doesn’t need directions”…. I got lost on the journey and ignored the warnings of imminent disaster.
I’ll jump past the details of the charred black goo, smoke and unfortunate aftermath. I’ll spare you stories of my angry realization that I couldn’t just whip up a new batch as I lacked cocoa powder at this house having smartly taken it all up in a load to the new house on Wednesday to get ahead of the kitchen unpacking. I’ll skip all that and share the great news: I managed to make a new dozen and not only do they taste amazing, but they also allowed me to snap a few much needed “cupcake photos” for the cookbook!
The big picture lesson was great too!
My plant-based and gluten free cupcake recipe now has a “with egg” option, or Swaption as I call these swap moves in my cookbook. I grabbed my brain during my trip to the grocery store and wrangled it into mindfulness upon arriving home. To do so, I accepted the humor in the situation and began laughing at the mess. I even full on doubled-over when I realized that I also didn’t have flax meal on hand, which is a required ingredient that I could’ve grabbed at the grocery store I just visited! I paused, thought and then giggled with a grin when I realized that not only did I have eggs on hand, I also had not yet added the water to the batter. This meant I could short it along with the absent flax meal and use the egg as a replacement! The ultimate baking PIVOT happened and now I can confidently include this alternative in my soon-to-be-published cookbook! Nicely done almost like I planned it!
Mindfulness lost and found. For me re-finding mindfulness amidst the destruction is often the key to thriving not just surviving it. Choosing a better reaction (laughter) in this case helped shake up my perspective and shoved me to “the right place” to finish the project with a flourish AND find the winning part of the oops! This feels good. I’m glad the angry phase of my dilemma was short lived and I could come out smiling!
Kibby Jardine 