Try, Try, Again

For Christmas, I gave my 10-year-old niece a set of “Junior Chef” cookbooks. While I don’t share her love of cooking, I do have a heart for baking. I suggested we bake one new recipe of her choosing each month this year.

She was thrilled.

In January, she sent her first pick: Salted Caramel Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Icing.

Apparently, I underestimated the culinary scope of a “junior” chef. I imagined we’d start with souped-up sugar cookies or maybe a brown butter brownie. I was not prepared for homemade cinnamon rolls. Still, I had committed to this auntie-niece bonding adventure and was determined to figure it out.

The recipe called for one packet of yeast. I bought three — assuming I might mess it up once, but not twice.

Wrong.

I went through all three packets, killed the yeast each time, and never made it past step one. If not for the snowstorm outside, I would have gone back to the store for more. Instead, I surrendered. Attempt #1: failed.

Two weeks later, I returned with six packets of yeast, a thermometer, and several YouTube tutorials on proper yeast activation. By packet three, I finally got it right.

On to step two: mix the yeast with the dry ingredients.

Simple enough — until my mixer started smoking. I burned out the motor and, in the process, shorted the outlets along the wall. Which meant the oven didn’t work.

🫠🫠🫠

Still, I placed my barely combined dough ball into a bowl and hoped it would proof. While I waited, I called an electrician and eventually got power restored. Miraculously, the dough rose. Without a mixer, I finished the rolls by hand — no cream cheese icing this time.

Behold:

Far from terrible. A long way from Cinnabon. Proud nonetheless.

All of this to say: maybe you’ve been trying to begin something — and it hasn’t gone your way the first, second, or tenth time. The uncertainty. The failure. The frustration. Even the power outages. They are not for nothing. I didn’t make the world’s best cinnamon rolls. But I made them. And now I know what to do differently next time.

If the outcome didn’t matter, what new thing would you try today?