Ruffles 1.0, or How I KEEP Learning to Embrace Failure

Test subject: White Rose Cake by the beautifully emotional Thalia Ho. This thing tasted like a wedding cake got drunk on its grandmother’s Avon, a.k.a. my ideal flavor profile.

There’s a weird thing that happens to us as we get older. When you’re young, you’re so eager to jump into things you’ve never done before. You don’t feel embarrassed or morose about your stick figure drawings or sloppy, half-formed stories.

But at a certain point, you start feeling bad about all the things you should be better at.

If you didn’t start learning French at ten, then you couldn’t possibly start it at 25.

If you didn’t grow up in tap shoes, then you couldn’t possibly learn it at 30.

If you didn’t become an expert painter/sculptor/drawer by 35, then I guess I’m just not meant to do it.

Egads. I’ve been talking about myself this whole time and not necessarily a universal “you!”

This is, of course, a silly way to live, and only sillier the older I get. Nearing forty (although I’m ready to start telling people I’m 50), it feels odd to think back on all the things I didn’t try doing because I wasn’t already good at them, as if age, and not dedicated practice, is the thing that makes us better. It doesn’t make any sense, but I imagine we all haves lists of things it’s “too late” for us to start doing. We all have a boat we think we missed, not realizing it’s more of a car we can start driving anytime we want to.

For as terrible as the last year was (2020), one great thing to come from it was that a lot of us were able to finally give time and energy to the things we thought we wanted to be able to do. For some of us that meant making bread. For others, it was about handicrafts or writing or learning a foreign language. Choosing to isolate ourselves for the public health, we were forced to slow down and take up some of the things we always said we’d do “if we had the time.” It turns out that role-playing as someone who does these things can be more fun than the reality of their practice (I’m looking at you, the Rigors of a Sourdough Starter), but while a lot of cynicism was lobbed towards these pandemic projects, I love how many of my friends and family were able to put aside the shoulds of being a skilled adult and embrace a state of amateurism.

Now what does this have to do with ruffles on a cake?

EVERYTHING!

Just look at that beauty up there, bedecked in a conflagration of ruffles, loops and curtains of over-aerated buttercream! That cake is decorated WRONG. That buttercream was made WRONG. Like, SO wrong. Like, go look at a YouTube video about how easy it is to ruffle a cake and then take a look at the sheer negative space hanging off that beauty up there.

There have been many times in my life when I would have Iain-from-the-Baked-Alaska-episode-of-Bake-Off’ed this cake straight into the bin (IYKYK) when the buttercream came out too slack and bubbly. Although if I’m being honest, that bin would have been my mouth, because I eat my failures to make sure no evidence can be found… also, because things are just as delicious whether they’re ugly or perfect.

At a different time (approximately anytime before March 2020) I would have rage quit the piping because it wasn’t easy. It hurt my hand, and I wasn’t great at it the first time I tried it. YouTube showed me how perfect it could have been. My fudge fingers showed me how imperfect I am.

But you know what? This cake is pretty cute. Just look at it!

Of course distance from the camera helps me lose focus on Rose Cake’s pits and crags. The aerated buttercream’s holes get lost in the pillowy folds of its ruffles. But you know what else makes me appreciate this cake? Remembering that I’ve never, literally never, used this piping tip before. In fact, now that I look at it, the tip I used is fully called a “petal tip.” So… I’m learning!

I’m learning and that’s exciting.

There’s a freedrom when I accept that I’ll never be “great” or “expert” at something like piping. It’s okay to just be “okay.” It’s okay to be a little bit better than I was a year ago. It’s okay to not be any better, too. It’s okay to find my limits and celebrate my failures with two pounds of cream cheese frosting.

We can all still learn if we want to, or aren’t too scared to, or aren’t too embarrassed to be caught trying to.