I used to think homemade meals had to look perfect to count. If I was baking or making cakes, they had to be perfect every time. This came from running a cakes & dessert business where people were paying for perfectly smooth icing and straight edges.
To be honest it's exhausting chasing that perfection every bake, you start to see the flaws more than you see the beautiful creation you just spent hours making. For me it also took out the joy and calm that I loved about baking.
Fast forward a few years to running my baking mix business Bake it by Giovannellis, where my clients were very different. They weren't chasing perfect they were chasing doable, or to be able to actually make cupcakes with their kids when they didn't have the confidence to do it.
It was also in the classes I started teaching for kids where I quickly realised they didn't care what we were making they just wanted the freedom to create and the freedom to not use a piping bag themselves.
In a way teaching people about baking taught me that perfectionism isn't made for the kitchen. The kitchen is a place for creativity, learning and love.
The kitchen is for creativity, learning and love. It’s where we gather around the island to chat (my favourite place), where we cook for people we care about, and where we get to try again without judgement.
So now I focus less on the perfectly iced cakes, or perfectly presented dishes and focus more on the creativity of cooking and the flavours of the food. Because we’ve all had cakes that looked beautiful but tasted average.