Something I am intimately familiar with…
I’ve failed at a lot of things. Most notably I failed at finishing college. Three times. Yep. That’s right. THREE. TIMES. However, unlike the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off I cannot hack into the school system and change these numbers. Sometimes, I wish I could.
While each attempt wasn’t a complete waste of time, it was a waste of money. I shudder to think what I would owe in student loans if I did this now instead of 10+ years ago. My first attempt was a two year stint at Ripon College. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I met my now husband at the beginning of my sophomore year. Toward the end of the school year I decided not knowing what to do was costing a shitload of money. So I applied to tech school. I started the Hotel and Restaurant Management Program. It started out well enough. I had worked in food service and at a B&B so it seemed logical. Then I had heard that job placement after the program wasn’t that great and people were moving to Las Vegas for a decent job that didn’t start at busing tables. I didn’t really want to move and still didn’t really know if this was the right program for me. (Side note-I firmly believe that one of the problems is society telling everyone they can be WHATEVER they want to be when they grow up. Too vague. This world still needs janitors. Not everyone can be an astronaut.)
So, the third time I started school was still a program through a technical college. This time is was the Medical Administrative Professional program. I was working at an eye clinic and figured I could keep working in healthcare gaining experience while working on the program. At the start of my second year, the school decided to nix that program and gave all the students a choice. Finish the rest of your classes by the end of the school year or enroll in the Health Information Technology program. I didn’t want to change programs and trying to slam the rest of my classes into less than a year seemed a little crazy. By that time, I had started a job at my current employer and I was doing essentially what I had been going to school for, so I decided to tack on failure number three.
I look back now and realize that the career I have is completely opposite of anything I EVER thought I would be doing. So even if I had finished, the degree would just be a degree. A piece of paper in a frame. Which I know still does hold me back from certain jobs. But I’m happy where I am. For now…
Since I am no stranger to failure, it should not come as a surprise when cakes, cookies, pies, you name it, don’t always turn out like they should. A couple weekends ago, I promised my husband’s step-father a belated birthday cake. A dreamsicle cake. I should not promise things.
The cake came together well. Batter tasted good. Into the oven they went. Impatience got the better of me and I decided I needed to rotate the pans. Big mistake. HUGE. The middle of the cakes still hadn’t really risen to the height of everything else but I moved them so carefully I thought it would be okay. Spoiler alert. It was not okay. They fell. I was so disappointed. Mainly because I had been wanting a piece of the cake myself! Andy called to say that the cakes didn’t quite turn out and what flavor they would like instead. And because they are wonderful people, they said they didn’t care what it looked like, they would still eat it. But, I have my limits and this cake was not leaving the house. The cake did actually taste good. Light, with just a hint of orange. But, I was still not letting these out of the house. So back to the drawing board. They decided on oreos over peanut butter. So I made a cookies and cream cake. Which turned out pretty well. I was told it was awesome.
I used my now go-to chocolate cake recipe from Liv for Cake. You can find that recipe here.
I made my standard buttercream and split it up in about half. I chopped up some oreos and put it in one batch and left the other vanilla. The half with oreos went in between the layers and the vanilla half went on the outside of the cake. I processed some oreos to fine crumbs and covered the bottom halfish of the cake with those. Covered the top with ganache and decorated with a few pipings of buttercream and mini oreos. Talk about sugar overload!
Be proud of your failures. They are the reason you are where you are today.
And the reason that I kept the fallen cakes in the fridge so every time I opened it, there they were staring me in the face. I suspect I would have kept them there forever just as a reminder, but Andy threw them out today. I’m sure there will be more fallen cakes but I won’t let them get the better of me and I’ve learned to overcome the shame that creeps in alongside the failures.
Ann