Chapter 131: Bake for 9 to 10 years (AKA And it's more than just rhyming)

I dabble with baking, I’m no pastry chef or anything, but I do know a few simple rules about baking. The temperature of the oven has to be right, as well as timing is pretty important. If you under bake it comes out too doughy, if you over bake its burnt and more than likely dry. There are certain ingredients that are pivotal to the recipe and then others that you can experiment with. It can be easy and fun, but at the same time you can under no circumstances be a reckless baker, if you are just throwing ingredients around or you aren’t setting the oven to the right temperature, or setting the timer to remind you, then you get a mouthful of nastiness.
I’ve had almost a decade of dating experience and more of baking experience and I can’t say that I’ve learned a whole lot from it except that I enjoy baking more than dating. But I will try to pull from my shallow well of knowledge to help you see dating in a baking perspective.

The first rule of baking, the temperature has to be right. In order for dating to work out at all there has to be a form of attraction between the two people involved. If there is no attraction, nothing is going to happen. There has to be something pulling the two people together; weather it’s shallow attraction, sense of humor, common interest/cause, something’s got to be there to begin with, otherwise you are placing the dough in a broken oven and you’re going to be waiting around for a long time with no finished product in the foreseeable future.

Next - timing. Sure, you have the oven ready to go, the temperature is just right, there’s the friendly banter, the constant flirting, so now it’s all about how long to go on before you admit to each other your true feelings. There are the anxious bakers; the ones who want to shout it out right away, but that’s like taking a cake out of the oven prematurely, it deflates. D&D was an anxious baker. He kept opening the oven to see if the cake was ready and I, being the cake, was not ready. Rather I sat in the middle of the oven petrified that someone actually wanted to bake me. Enough of the analogies with me, it’s getting comical thinking of myself as a cake.
Then there is the opposite, closing the oven door and forgetting you’ve got the cake in the oven. You continue to flirt and be friendly, but you’ve left the cake in the freaking oven and you forgot to set the timer! I think we all know what happens to a cake forgotten in the oven at 350 degrees, it burns, starting at the corners and working its way into the middle. A cake, err, girl could grow cynical or bitter from the outside-in waiting for the baker to open the door and take her out of the oven. If the baker is not careful the cake could grow to hate him for leaving her in the oven so long and in the end, it is the cake that ends up hurt and temporary ruined for other bakers to enjoy.

It’s okay to experiment with some ingredients, you can choose different chips to put into the recipe for chocolate chips, and the cookie can still turn out well. Those chips could be different personalities, hair colors, body shapes, senses of humor, etc. But then there are ingredients like the egg, or the baking soda, these you cannot experiment with, the real life equivalent to the egg or baking soda depends on your standards, for some it’s that they have to be a member of the same religion, they have to share similar values. Without similar values the cookies won’t turn out right no matter if you have the temperature and the timing worked out perfectly, things on the outside will look like they are progressing smoothly, but when all is said and done they end up flat and tasting a little off, for some people, they’ll keep eating the cookies no matter what (as some people will stay in a relationship they don’t really care about just for the sake of being in a relationship) and for others they will throw the cookie out and start over.

My advice to all you young aspiring bakers (guys), pay attention to the temperature and the timer and for all you baked goods (the ladies) if you feel you’ve been in the oven too long, get out before it’s too late, and chances are it’s not going to work out with the baker that put you there. But maybe despite all the similarities between baking and dating you shouldn’t take advice from someone who thinks its okay to compare them.