Maybe I needed different eggs?
Or possibly better quality flour?
Perhaps I should invest in a shallower cake tin, or swap honey for brown sugar?
It kind of tastes alright, I guess.
Maybe I could just shave the dark bits off; hide them with icing.
Maybe remould it into something else.
Maybe pretend that’s how it’s always meant to have been – like the story of the tarte tatin.
Or I could stop kidding myself and admit I didn’t set the oven correctly.
It doesn’t matter what quality ingredients I have.
It doesn’t matter if I ice over the issues.
It doesn’t matter if I look the other way and pretend that’s how it should be.
None of that matters if I still have an environment that’s not suitable for what I want to achieve.
The output – the cake, bread, biscuit, cookie – is different depending on what you’re wanting to deliver.
And we ensure that the environment – the oven’s temperature, shelf chosen, cooking time – is conducive to that delivery.
Otherwise, we can spend a fortune on getting the best ingredients, the most practical equipment, issue-hiding icing, and our chef’s training, just for that environment to undo all our investment.
What are we trying to bake?
How do we set up the environment – the culture – for success?
Or do we keep burning through ingredients and icing over issues to make-do?
