Resilience in the Kitchen: Overcoming Baking Failures with Grace and Grit

Picture this: It’s your first time making brownies, and you couldn’t be more excited. You buy all the ingredients, follow the instructions to the best of your abilities, and put your batter in the oven.

You take your brownies out—and they’re raw. You put them back again, and they come out too dry.

It’s frustrating, isn’t it? You put in the effort to make a simple recipe, and it doesn’t turn out the way you wanted.

Now, you have all these negative emotions that you don’t know how to deal with. Well, that’s why I’m here.

Today, I explore the best techniques to overcome baking failures with grace and grit. Let’s get right to it!

1 – Admit Your Failure

Whether it’s sadness, anger, or stress, people tend to ignore the feelings that come with failure because they tend to be uncomfortable. That’s understandable, but it’s also unhealthy.

Accepting and acknowledging failure is the first step to overcoming it. It helps you understand your feelings, where they’re coming from, and what you can learn from them.

For example, you try to make a cheesecake, and it doesn’t turn out the way you want. After analyzing your emotions and the source of your frustration, you realize the problem isn’t that the cheesecake didn’t turn out the way you wanted.

It’s that you have high standards that you can’t meet at this point. If you continue with this mindset, you’ll keep experiencing one frustration after another.

So, you decide to admit the truth and lower your expectations to avoid future disappointments. That’s a healthy way to go about it.

2 – Accept Your Skill Level

As Shakespeare once said: “Expectation is the root of all heartache.” If you’re still a beginner at baking, don’t expect to be Gordon Ramzy right from the get-go.

In fact, even Gordon Ramzy, a Michelin-star chef, makes tons of mistakes in the kitchen. You don’t believe me? Then, watch his grilled cheese video.

I’m not saying that Ramzy is incompetent. I’m saying that no matter your skill level, you’re bound to fail at one point.

You’re probably not a professional chef. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this post.

So, don’t be too hard on yourself and understand that making mistakes means you still have much to learn. Yes, it’s frustrating, but isn’t it also exciting?

3 – Don’t Take It Personally

People fail at countless endeavors all the time. That’s just the nature of life.

I know it’s easy to take failure personally, but just because your lemon tart turned out bad doesn’t mean you’re a failure.

Remind yourself that failing doesn’t define you as a human or diminish your value in any way.

You’re learning at your own pace. Just keep doing what you’re doing, and you’ll get there eventually.

4 – Channel Your Negative Emotions Positively

You know what would be better than accepting and dealing with the negative emotions associated with failure? Learning to channel these emotions into motivation.

For example, you can use that frustration to go above and beyond in the following recipe.

Buy the right ingredients, measure the components accurately, and put in the time and effort in each step. It may not be that simple, but I promise you it’s worth a try.

5 – Focus on Your Self-Esteem

This may sound weird, but I don’t hate failing as much as I hate the feeling it leaves me with.

Failure makes people doubt themselves. You keep thinking you’re not good enough to be a baker until the thought turns into a reality, and you eventually quit.

So, what do you do to fight this? Boost your self-esteem. Try to remember that you still have so much room for improvement.

You can also try making a simple recipe next time to avoid potential failure and give yourself a surge of confidence.

6 – Use Stress Management Techniques

Self-acceptance is an excellent way to overcome stress and doubt, but combining it with proper coping mechanisms will give you better results.

Sometimes, you just need to step back and take some time off to return with a fresh perspective.

Going for a long walk in the sun has never failed to lighten my mood. You could also try calling a friend or playing with your pet if you have one.

Ultimately, you want to keep a close eye on your stress levels and use any of these techniques whenever you feel overwhelmed.

7 – Learn from Your Mistakes

Look, you can use all the stress management techniques in the world, but they won’t do you much benefit if you keep failing over and over again.

Sure, failing doesn’t define you, but dealing with constant failure isn’t easy, even for the most resilient people on earth.

So, each time your pastry turns out bad, analyze your process and identify what you did wrong to avoid it in the future. That’s the best way to improve and avoid future failures.

Final Thoughts

I know theoretical talk is easy, and you may take some time to understand how to implement some of the techniques in your practical life.

Once you do, though, you’ll learn to overcome baking failures with grace and grit. So, keep at it and try different techniques until you figure out what works for you.