This post isn't about cake

 

Miriam's cake isn't finished yet. There's a load of laundry sitting on the couch. And my mummy bandages are in the dryer. 

We're doing review for our primary program again tomorrow and Alexander is letting me borrow his "spooky vibes" kit that he got for his birthday a few years ago when he was bemoaning the fact that our house was low on "spooky vibes." It's a stuffed pumpkin that has a number of spooky things inside that I thought we could pull out and that would tell us how we'd sing one of our songs. 

He couldn't find all the spooky things that go in the pumpkin (we're missing the cat—the big kids often hide it because when Phoebe finds it she likes to squeeze it and it has a little voice box inside that starts yowling...so...I don't know where it is and whoever hid it last can't seem to remember where it is) but he found a good number of things.

We have Frankenstein's Monster, which I thought the kids could sing in low monster-y voices for, with their arms out zombie-style. We have a witch, which I thought I could get our rhythm sticks out for and we can cast spells or stir cauldrons (tin cans) or something. And there's a mummy...so I pulled out Rachel's halloween costume from 2014...which I have kept in case my kids ever wanted to, you know, repeat a costume (that has yet to happen except for babies who have no say). They've been sitting in a box for over a decade so they were a little musty, so into the wash they went.

While listening to the spin of the washer spin and crackle of garbanzo beans (Andrew is soaking garbanzo beans to make Miriam's birthday dinner—she wants falafel and hummus), I assembled Miriam's cake and I thought about stuff. 

Having time to think about stuff is important. 

I don't mean just sitting around meditating (though that can be nice, too). I mean having time while you're doing tasks like...folding laundry or washing dishes or frosting a cake or going for a walk...where you're not bombarding your mind with other people's voices and instead listen to (and sort out) what's going on inside your own head. 

I read an article about this recently...and I linked to one (above) but I don't think that's the exact one I read. But it was close enough—basically saying that when you're bored you start to sort out the meaning of your life...and we miss out on a lot of that because we live in an era when we never truly have to be bored...but boredom is important. 

That is not to say that Podcasts and music and television and movies and social media and whatever don't have their benefits. They do. 

But so does the crackle of garbanzo beans. And that was the only thing keeping me company in the kitchen this evening while I was putting together Miriam's cake. 

And I thought about when I first started making cakes. 

I'm not a professional baker now, by any means. I just took like 5 years off while Rachel baked everything and I baked nothing. And, honestly, this cake came from a box. 

I'm still relishing the wise words of my friend Amanda, who shared a memory of her pre-child self lauding her baking skills and wondering why anyone would ever use a cake mix because it's not that much more effort to just...bake a cake. And she said something like (wildly paraphrasing here), "Yup. That was a fun phase of life. And now I'm in a phase of life where I really appreciate cake mixes. They're both good phases!"

Another wise friend (I can't remember who right now) mentioned that she's in the phase of life where she just buys the whole dang cake. 

I think it was Joy. 

Yeah. It was probably Joy. 

And that's a fine phase of life to be in, too! 

So, this cake came from a cake mix. 

I looked at from-scratch recipes and thought to myself...I just can't. And so I didn't. I used a cake mix. 

Andrew stopped a the grocery store on the way home from campus yesterday and among many other things, grabbed several cake mixes so I don't even have to entertain the idea of making a cake from scratch for a long time. 

He got Pillsbury ones because they haven't skimped out on their box size (unlike Betty Crocker).

Anyway, I thought about that while I was putting this cake together and gave myself grace there. 

We're doing just fine. 

And then I thought back to how when I first started trying to be a cake decorator I knew so little but wanted things to be so perfect. I didn't even know that crumb coats were a thing. 

I would try to frost a perfect cake on the very first go round. I would be so frustrated with myself as I pulled up more and more crumbs into the frosting, turning everything into a ginormous mess. I would drive myself to tears trying to get the icing to be beautiful and it just...was so impossible. 

And then I learned about crumb coats. 

It's a technique professional decorators use, wherein they apply a thin layer of frosting, trapping all the crumbs in the frosting, and then chilling the cake for a bit to let things set before taking it out to put on the beautiful, crumb-free coat. 

And I thought...what a joy it is to know that messes are part of the process. 

They're not undesirable or bad or wrong. They're part of the process. 

It's difficult (impossible?) to get a beautiful cake without the messy bits to act as a buffer. 

You need the mess. It feels like a mistake (perhaps, at least at first) but it's not. It's imperative.

Trust the process, embrace the mess.

Your cake is going to turn out beautifully.