Baking A Cake

My kryptonite is sweets. Cake, cookies, chocolate, pies, ice cream. You get the idea.

Occasionally I bake, but not as often as I would like. There's usually some butter, some eggs, some sugar, a preheated oven and a prescribed length of time. Knowing what is involved in the final project doesn't diminish the final project. I don't eat a cake and think to myself, "Wow, I can really taste the flour, sugar, eggs, vanilla extract and baking powder." (I just got hungry.) Although I know the cake is the product of its ingredients, it is something new and different. There is a synergy that makes it more than the sum of its parts.

This isn't about baking a cake.

I often find myself analysing the "ingredients" in life. I try to figure what is involved in creating the life I see others living. It doesn't make the final product any less special or fulfilling because I know what was involved in making it. In some ways it's even more special when you know that it is more than just the ingredients that went into the final product. For myself, I am not a natural baker. If I didn't know what the ingredients were, I don't think I could stumble into baking a cake, despite my best efforts. So I observe other bakers and learn from their methods and their ingredients. And that's how I learn.