Fair warning: 4 min read on how to seize the opportunity against all odds 

I do all the complicated Christmas baking. You know, those delectable creamy kinds of deserts that take 3-5 hours to make. My husband bakes five million of square shaped sugar cookies and feels like a five start Michelin pastry chef. I do the delicacies.

There is one particular pie called Meter Pie that literally everybody likes; us four, all our guests, all our friends we share it with, everybody who has ever had the privilege to taste it. I may write up the recipe so that you can become a local meter pie celebrity, too. It is relatively easy to make, a bit time consuming but there is not much to mess up.

Then there is Honey Pie, the one that drives me mad. The one that when it is prepared right, is so good that everybody loves as much as the Meter Pie. I rarely make it because, unlike the Meter Pie, there are virtually a trillion ways to mess it up. All the recipes I have tried over the years are missing something and I consider that something to be crucial to succeed.

Honey Pie has a secret recipe that absolutely nobody knows. I’ve baked it 4 times in the past 20 years and only once it looked and tasted as intended. By pure chance, I must add. I don’t know what it is, but everytime I make it, it comes out differently. And wrong.

My darling daughter, the younger one that didn’t go through the withering heights and valleys of bona fide puberty yet, the one that is quiet, talented, undemanding, modest, resilient, that never talks back, that is an exemplary student, daughter, sibling and literally a glue of this family, asked for only one thing this Christmas – Honey Pie.

My heart started pumping even before the moment those words came out of her mouth because my intuition warned me of every possible catastrophe. When I heard her say “Honey Pie,” my heart sunk. That child hasn’t asked for anything in about 5 years. She always quietly – with a smile and a thank you – accepts any present. The only measurement of her joy is the size of her smile and the period of time for which it doesn’t leave her face.

I must not fail. Somehow, I knew I would but I still decided to do battle because I am a warrior.

Long story short, I failed miserably. The layers were too dense and shapeless. The cream was too thin. When I assembled it in a honey waffle–cream–waffle–cream–waffle–cream–waffle fashion just as I should, according to the bloody secret recipe, there were way too many ends to cut out, the cream spilled out after I put the 3 inch thick Culina Mundi book on the top to connect the layers (yeah, right) and I felt desperate.

It was the only thing she asked for…

…in about 5 years.

In the morning after the pie “connected the layers”, I put my brave face on, cut out a rectangular shape (that should have been twice as big), poured Bakers dark chocolate on top and put it in the fridge to settle for about a day or two. My hopes were low but I still had to deal with the scraps.

Because sometimes I mistake common sense with confidence (sounds about the same, so…), I had doubled the recipe to give myself much needed courage. That didn’t help. Now I had to deal with 1 kg of scraps. I generously poured rum all over the asymmetrical pieces that didn’t make it to the presentable version of the pie and started crumbling them vigorously.

I intended to shape little balls from the mass and cover them in chocolate. The taste was undeniably scrumptious. The form, however, dissipated my all my confidence. After I poured hot melted dark chocolate on the little spheres, the thin cream betrayed me again and the balls started looking like deflated mushrooms. This was when I lost it. I smashed all of it. Repeatedly. With my bare hands. I didn’t care if it made tiny splashes on the wall or all over my work station. I was so infuriated because

it was the only thing she asked for…

…in about 5 years.

I know it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things in the universe but at that moment it mattered the world to me.

I needed to calm down and decide how to continue without having to accept defeat. I hate waste. Especially when food is wasted. Especially in our family. I value food highly. I’d hate to be the person who is too stupid to throw away food without giving it to someone who needs it, feeding the animals or composting it.

The mass was too soft to roll into the small balls or try to create any shape that wasn’t a blob. My darling daughter doesn’t like coconut, which would have been an ideal additional ingredient. I also didn’t have any nuts that I could use to give the mass more cooperative density. She came downstairs hearing me using expletives and smiled. She knew something was amiss and always makes fun of me when I am, shall we say, displeased about something that doesn’t go well in the kitchen.

I needed an intervention and she offered it in spades. Her smile stopped the lightning bolts coming out of my eyes, her “hmmm, it’s so good!” after she dipped her finger in the gooey mass of scraps adjusted my increased heart rate, and her calm presence suggesting “we could just crush some plain Digestive biscuits, form the balls and cover them in the biscuit crumbs” solved my problem instantly.

And so we did.

We shared all the deserts with our guests and wrapped them for their 12-minute journey home, so they wouldn’t starve.

The next morning, I saw a message from my other daughter (that sometimes doesn’t answer my texts until days later and – this is important – has absolutely no interest in cooking or baking):

“Those dessert balls are amazing!! Like the chocolaty ones. What’s in them?

I replied:

“Funny. They are actually scraps from the Honey Pie, mixed with dark chocolate originally intended to be a top layer, a decent amount of rum, and wrapped in crumbs from the Digestive cookies.

I said ‘funny’, because rum balls were a traditional part of our Christmas with my mom. We smashed all sorts of imperfect cookies, and scraps of various pies, added good quality rum, formed balls, covered them in chocolate and wrapped them in coconut. They were always the biggest hit, which is ironic, considering that they were never the intention, but a bi-product of Christmas baking.

I am glad you like them.”

“Cool. OMG they are so good!”

Everything, if you see the analogy. Nothing, if you don’t.

Maybe you feel like a scrap, an afterthought, a mistake or a bi-product. Somebody not worthy to look at, somebody overlooked, somebody destined to stay on the curbs.

But you know what?

I always, metaphorically speaking, have fine quality rum, an excellent chocolate to cover you with and the best cookies in the world to wrap you in them so that you will become the biggest hit of the season.

Summer School Of Style Starts again soon:

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