Since childhood, I had seen my mother cooking and baking different kinds of foods for us. As time passed, my passion for cooking increased and finally I got a chance to bake a cake.

It all started on my mother’s birthday when I decided to bake a cake. I searched for my mother’s cookbooks but couldn’t find one. Nevertheless, I started baking with a dim memory of some instructions in my mind. As I cracked the eggs in a bowl, unfortunately, one of it spilled on the floor and I had to clean up the horrible, sticky and smelly mess.

Since I was desperate to get on with my task, without seeing the label on the packet, I put five spoons full of salt instead of sugar in the batter.

Then, one of the important steps in baking is to grease the mould before pouring any batter, which, unfortunately, I forgot. Without greasing I put the batter in it and happily placed it in the oven to bake and went into my room to read a book.

After an hour or so, I smelt something burning and then remembered my attempt of making the cake so I quickly ran to the kitchen to check.

‘Oh Gosh! I have forgotten to take out the cake. So stupid of me!’ I thought. Since the oven was too hot, I burned my hand while taking out the cake in a hurry. Thus, leaving the cake on the kitchen counter, I quickly went to apply some ointment.

I almost had tears of frustration and anger in my eyes. ‘Whatever it is, it is something I made and I am going to see it to the end,’ I thought. So I came back to the counter and tried to take the cake out from the mould but found it too hard and burnt. It remained stuck to the mould’s edges. I beat the mould in every kind of geometrical shape I knew but all in vain. I then threw the mould so forcefully on the floor that the cake finally got scared enough to come out.

I had thrown the mould so brutally that it made a terrifying noise which woke my mum up.

What happened next? To cut a long story short, I had to face the music and eat the burnt cake myself as a punishment. I vowed never to bake again. It was certainly a cooking disaster.

Published in Dawn, Young World, February 16th, 2019