NOTE: My upcoming book is requiring time to meet exciting deadlines. In order to maintain a 12/9/25 pub date, I will be blogging once every two weeks for a while. That means my next blog will come to you on Monday, 9/1/25. See you then!
Years ago I bought an expensive sandcastle bundt cake pan. And so, last week I devised a plan. It would be simple. I’d prepare dinner and bake a cake for my family to celebrate my own birthday. I had made this cake before. But in a hot second, I messed up and didn’t know it until it was too late (see video).
The family, not knowing I had a yummy cake on standby (store bought!) showed great compassion as I placed the messed-up cake in front of them with lit candles and a smile. I lingered, apologizing for the mistake and thanking them for their kindness. Then I brought out the store-bought cake and put it front and center.
Because it was my birthday, I knew I could choose a table topic of conversation. My topic of choice? “How can we make mistakes matter?” The response of our guest, perhaps pertaining to sports, but applicable to burned cakes was:
“In winning you are gracious; in losing you seek gain.”
We seek gain by learning from our mistakes. I seek gain but putting on my readers before setting the oven temperature for a birthday cake … for starters!
The Treasure: If you’re not making mistakes, you’re probably not doing anything.
If you’d rather read than watch the video, here’s the full video transcript:
I made a mistake this week. I wanted to build a cake—a sandcastle cake. I had the ingredients and made it from scratch with my grandson and put it in the oven, but I made a big mistake. I set the oven for 475 instead of 325 and I burned the cake. I made the mistake because I read the directions on a small phone without my glasses, and I ended up not being able to use the cake, except I do have a plan for the cake. I’ll tell you that in a minute. I decided I can’t really use that cake. So I went to Publix, and I bought a cake and I had them write on the top “Mistakes Matter.” And we’re going to talk about that a little bit as a family tonight. My mistake wasn’t very costly, but some mistakes can be, but all mistakes are valuable if we use them well. So, I took a hunk out of this cake just to see if I could eat it. It actually isn’t too bad inside; it’s kind of dry, but it tastes char-grilled on the outside. And so, I decided I’m not going to make another one, I’m going to make it easy and get a new cake.
Leave a Reply