It started out okay. I actually had to make two cakes- a Mocha Toffee cake for a friend's birthday, and the Rum cake. No big deal- I baked them, cooled them and got ready to take them out of the pans. The Mocha Toffee cake came out beautifully. I wrapped it up and then moved on to the Rum cake. When I
looked in the pan, my heart sank.....and so had the cake. In all my years of making these cakes I have NEVER had one not turn out. I was hopeful that it would be alright once I got it out, and I prepared to package it up for delivery. It was getting late, I was tired and I wanted to be done. I convinced myself that the cake would be fine-even though it didn't look quite right. I started to clean up. My husband had already gone to bed and I was hoping to do the same. I told myself that my friend would understand if the cake wasn't perfect. I would tell her that I wouldn't charge her for it and she would probably overlook the fact that it was kind of sagging and soggy because it would most likely still taste good. It smelled good, anyway.
I really, really wanted to believe it-and I almost did. But the voice in my head would not let me. It told me that I would not be able to sleep well. I pictured my friend serving the cake to her guests and maybe being embarrassed that it wasn't something she could be proud of. I thought about how I would be letting her down and then the voice in my head asked the million dollar question: Am I the kind of person who can feel good about giving someone less than my best? And the answer (unfortunately) of course, was NO! It would have been so easy to just go to bed and yet I knew that I couldn't live with myself if I did.
I should say here that the cake didn't actually look THAT bad. I doubt most people would have noticed anything amiss, but after making so many of them I knew that it wasn't quite right. If you expect people to trust you, if you promise something that is better than what they can get elsewhere, how can you hope to be successful if you don't live up to those expectations?
So, at midnight-I found myself washing a cake pan, and getting out the Kitchen Aid all over again. I made an entirely new cake from scratch and waited sleepily for it to finish baking. I went to bed at 1 a.m. and miraculously woke up without an alarm two hours later to take the cooled cake out of the pan and wrap it up. Fortunately, this time it turned out perfectly. This was a huge relief but it was also a mystery- I swear I made both cakes EXACTLY the same. Oh well.
Fast forward back to Friday morning, the burning eyes and the sleepy fog in which I spent the first few hours of my day. It was all worthwhile though, when I delivered the beautiful, non-soggy looking cake safely to my friend as promised. Will she ever know the truth? I doubt it. Will it redeem all of the other horrible mistakes I make in my life every day just because I did the right thing one late February night? No way. But at least I made the right choice this one time- I was the kind of person who chose to do the hard thing instead of taking the easy way out and that gives me hope that I will do it again.
