#bakingdisaster

Paul Hollywood would not have been impressed. Heck, this was so soggy even Noel would have known it wasn’t right!

So I walked away from it — defeated and annoyed. But that soggy mess still smelled so good it pulled me back in. I had to taste it. And when I did…it was so good!

Ok, maybe this wasn’t a complete failure then. Sure, the moisture had made all my wonderful layers stick together but it still tasted really great!

I finished eating and started thinking of how this could be improved. Then the next day I repeated the whole process but I cooked the vegetables before assembling the tarte to get rid of a lot of the moisture and I increased the temperature for the first half of the baking time so the liquid could quickly evaporate.

When I flipped it the second time, there were no soggy bottoms in sight. Success!

I could have just shared that second tarte on my Instagram tutorials — after all, it was the one that actually worked — but I thought I should share the disaster tarte too because there’s something to learn there.

Baking can sometimes turn into a disaster. Cakes won’t rise, cookies will deflate, tarts will have a soggy bottom. And it’s frustrating and it feels like a waste of time and it makes you want to just give up on the whole thing but if I’d given up after the first crappy cake I made, this bakery would have never come to be. You’ll never get to bake something awesome if you don’t get past a couple of disasters.

So my advice to anyone new to baking — especially vegan baking — is to learn from the disasters and look at them with a sense of curiosity. Question what could have fixed the mess before you toss it in the garbage and taste it to see if there’s any redeeming quality in it.

And do yourself a favor and start simple. Macarons or puff pastry are not for beginners or the faint of heart. Start with a cake or some easy cookies to get your feet wet and build your confidence before you move on to the more complicated recipes.

So now that I’ve shared my kitchen disaster, I want to hear from you. What’s the biggest baking nightmare you’ve had and did you ever fix it?