I Messed up the Caramel + A Lesson in Perfectionism

I Messed up the Caramel + A Lesson in Perfectionism

(Self) Love Note Vol 3

Caramel is one of those things that can be easily fucked up.

If you make it and the temperature doesn’t get hot enough, it gets messed up. Too hot, and it will also mess up. Stir it too much? Or not enough? Yup, messed up. In short, caramel is fucked. It’s also delicious… go figure.

Like many people, in the past year, I immersed myself in The Great British Baking Show. I learned words that quickly became a delight to say (like “frangipane”), was reminded I never want to be vegan and, why on earth would someone even attempt to make an ice cream cake in 100-degree weather? Or a chocolate collar in THAT heat? COME ON.

Watching TGBBS has inspired me to try baking a lot of things. Before Covid lockdown, I maybe baked once a year, and it was the same cake always. But being in quarantine reminded me how much I enjoyed baking as a child and so I started to get into it again. Spurred on by watching Caramel Week for the third time, I decided to make Millionaire’s Shortbread.

I should clarify that this is all made even more fun by the fact that I get to give my baked goods to my boyfriend, Man Candy, and his friends. I feel like the Cool Mom who sends her kid to school with the best cupcakes every week- sure to lock in his popularity around the playground.

Back to the MS. The first time I made it, I failed epically. For those who don’t know what Millionaire's Shortbread is, it’s basically a large Twix bar. A shortbread cookie, topped with a layer of caramel and a layer of chocolate ganache.

In theory, it looked simple enough. And delicious. So I dived in, never half-ass, only WHOLE ASS in full Sarah style.

I scoured the internet for recipes and dissected several – I am kind of obsessive about reading and learning and figuring things out and DOING IT THE BEST I CAN DO. I acquired ingredients and, when it was time, carefully followed every step to the T. I made my cookie. I stirred and stirred, what SHOULD have been caramel, and I melted chocolate without scalding any. Except when I was done, it was a massive mess. Like, epic one.

With my fingers I picked about the carcass of my failed Millionaire’s Shortbread, trying to figure out where I had gone wrong. BUT I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT?! WAAAAAAAAAAH. I scared away bluchy-gross chocolate that wouldn’t solidify, and an amebous-like layer of caramel that had both managed to make the cookie soggy and be disgustingly UN-caramelly at the same time. Look. It was nasty. That’s all you need to know.

“Babe,” I shouted to Man Candy. “I fucked it up.”

I felt awful. I felt like I total idiot. What had I done wrong? No, really, I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED?

 Man Candy approached the kitchen with trepidation. Whilst he is by far the calmer of us two, I can see him treading carefully. “I’m sure it’s not that bad,” he assures me.

“On no, it is.” I say, eyes fixated on the mess before me.
“Come on, it can’t --- woh,” he stops in his tracks when he sees It. “OK. It’s OK.”
I looked up. Tears in my eyes. “I fucked it up.”
“I can see that,” he says, laughing a little bit.
“What the fuck, it’s not funny!” I protest.
“It kind of is,” he says. “It’s no big deal, babe, you’ll get it right.”
“Right, but I didn’t,” I argue.
“It’s just the first one…”

Ugh. Why is he so logical?

Imagine now there are two Julia Childs sitting, one on each shoulder. Ghosts of Julia. Or maybe The Pioneer Woman is a better vision. Whatever. Two celebrity chefs, one on each shoulder. (Or Paula Dean before she fell from grace?) One is the Evil Chef, the other is the Rational Chef.

Evil Chef: Sarah you suck. Big time. You failed. You’ve never screwed up baking before. Totally lame.
Rational Chef: OK but you tried something new. And it’s caramel. Lots of people mess up caramel.
EC: If you were really good you would have gotten it right the first time.
RC: It’s a cookie. Chill. You read the instructions. It didn’t go great. You can do it again.
EC: Why even bother trying again?
RC: You can even use a different recipe. You can keep trying it. It’s just a cookie!
EC: Everyone is laughing at you—
RC: NOBODY is laughing at you—
EC: EVERYONE IS LAUGHING AT YOU, you are a failure.
RC: Man Candy is laughing because he thinks you are cute when you are frustrated. IT’S JUST A DAMN COOKIE FOR FUCKS SAKE IT ISN’T A REPRESENTATION OF YOUR VALUE AS A WOMAN!
EC: YES IT IS! YOU FUCKED THIS COOKIE UP AND THAT’S WHY YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN MARRIED OR HAD KIDS—
RC: Really? That’s a little much.
EC: What? That’s like her biggest Fear Story. I can totally use this one again here.
RC: It’s. A. Cookie. She can make it again. She can do it 10 times, and nobody will care.
EC: Fine.
RC: And maybe it’s good she screws this up? I mean, it gives her a chance to get better at not HAVING to be perfect at EVERYTHING. Maybe this is really liberating for her.
EC: Eh…
RC: IT IS! If she can separate her value and worth from this, she can start to remind herself that perfection isn’t entirely required in life. She is loveable and valuable whether or not she gets the Millionaire's Shortbread right. Ever.

*And POOF both of the chefs disappear. *

OK, That isn’t really what happened but, that is a bit of what my thought process was like.

Halfway through sliding the cookie-sludge into the trash, I had a realization that screwing up baked goods is actually a GIFT. It is. It’s a reminder that we can try new things, make mistakes, and decide to do them again. It’s a reminder that we can screw things up and that life is still TOTALLY OK.

We can not take things personally.
We can breathe.
We can detach ourselves from the outcome of the process and appreciate it for the process itself.

DING, DING, DING!

Since my epic failure, I have softened to the idea of baking bad things. In just a few days, I changed my entire attitude. I no longer feel like my ability to correctly make a lemon loaf PERFECTLY is a reflection of ME.

It’s just shit.
Shit can go wrong and life is fine.
Shit going wrong is not a reflection of my value as a human being.
Everyone has shit.

I’ve become keenly aware that my need to do everything perfectly comes from a long history of codependency. Having spent so much of my life dependent on others’ opinions of me for my OWN opinion of myself, I learned to value doing things in a way that would please others.

When you “screw up” people don’t like it. And so, I’ve always needed to do things right to feel I am worthy of love.

There is no major life lesson here I can sum up in a pithy quotable. But I DO invite you to think about things for yourself.

Are you a perfectionist? How do you feel about “messing up?”
If you have a fear of failure, where do you think it comes from? 
Can you remember a time in your life when “messing up” didn’t feel like such a scary thing?

Xo

PS – We are continuing the conversation in my private and free, Facebook group all week long! I’ll be going LIVE  as well to talk to you guys and hang out so we can all explore the idea of our own perfectionism. Join me there!