1. Patience: You need to let the oven do its thing and you need to patiently walk through the different stages of cake decorating.

2. Perseverance: just when you think things are going just the way you wanted and suddenly all hell breaks loose! For eg. accidentally denting a perfectly smooth frosted buttercream cake and then having to go over it again with the bench scraper with all the decorations in place! It happens and it happens a lot..

3. Humility: Don’t let Mr. Ego take over because chances are that even after doing 1000 cakes there would be days when you will bin or scrap the bake maybe coz the it was a bit under baked or a tad bit over baked or didn’t rise at all. Treat each cake as it is your first.

4. Playfulness: Have fun, relax and enjoy every bit.

5. Optimism: blind hope and faith that next time it is going to be even better.

6. Forgiveness: when things go wrong learn not to be harsh on oneself (others would do it for you anyways, so be gentle to yourself). After all to err is human, to forgive divine.

7. Creativity: If one is playful, one is creative and then it can never get monotonous or feel like a chore.

Well I do have to confess, this mantra is not originally mine. I chanced upon them on a totally unrelated pottery blog and thought, it applies to cakes too!!

So here’s putting all those skills to cake and also to life.