high-bar baking

“I made more progress on my work today sitting in the break room eating cake than I did the whole rest of the week!” 

If only it were always that easy. But the nice part is, at least it is that easy sometimes. 

My boss is taking a few month’s leave (for a new baby who doesn’t seem to care that he might need my boss’s physical support but I need his EMOTIONAL support, it’s fine), and I baked a cake for the occasion. I even thought ahead! Incorporated his go-to coffee order and everything, made Zoe’s Devil’s Food Cake with Dorie’s Cookie Butter Cream Cheese Frosting (chocolate and cinnamon). 

He got sick and didn’t actually end up showing, but it’s not like I was going to let a cake go to waste. So the rest of the team and I ate cake and… sort of celebrated that he wasn’t there? A strange gathering, but a good one. I got to have some solid chats with my team members. And then I started doing what I call “productive complaining,” which is complaining about your problems in the hope that someone might have a solution. Ok, so it’s actually a retroactive label. I never think anyone can help me, and I’m truly just complaining. But if anyone happens to be able to assist, then I get to rebrand the whole session as productive! 

And that’s what happened here. I got a couple of the guys so interested in my freakish problem that we all went back to my desk to stare at it with me. They were right, it was exactly the problem they thought it was. But I was right too, because it was caused by a mechanism that shouldn’t have been allowed. And just that like, I was unblocked! 

That’s the good stuff. This is why we work with the humans. Because they can be pretty cool sometimes, if you just bother to talk to them. 

I also now have a boatload of cookie butter frosting in my freezer, because the recipe called for three (3!) ounces of cream cheese. Which comes in eight ounce packages. I don’t recommend making an x8/3 version of the recipe, because things got really dicey in the stand mixer. But I did it. So now I’m swimming in frosting. And I’m not complaining, because it’s delicious, if a little sweet. The cream cheese does what it can, but cookie butter + powdered sugar is going to carry the day there. A thin layer isn’t terrible. 

Believe me, the team doesn’t want to hang around for bad cake. And I have to be able to get my work done, people!