Epic baking fail… feeling crushed

So, I bake a lot and I love it. And my cakes normally turn out well with few fails here and there, nothing out of the ordinary.

Recently, I got my very first order from a friend. A 2-layer, 6 inch vanilla cake with fruit filling and simple sports themed decoration which I’ve made before.

I allocated almost this entire weekend to baking the cake (eventhough it should only take a couple of hours), just in case anything goes wrong and I have to remake it.

So, I started baking Saturday morning. Both cakes (2 tins) turned out dense and mushy. Well, okay, I have time to make it again.

Opened a new pack of baking powder just in case the first one was old. Baked for a second time and the exact same thing happened.

Okay fine, It’s evening and I’m tired so I’ll just use a box mix. Nope, box mix was no good either. Dense and full of large holes.

Goddammit… will have to bake again tomorrow.

So, fourth attempt, started in the evening as I already had plans during the day. One of the tins broke while removing the the cake but hoorraaaay!!! They came out moist and fluffy and delicious. Now I can relax.

So, I left them to cool and had dinner and watched TV. Came back and there was a fly (which had not been there the entire time I was in the kitchen) buzzing around near the cake. NOOOOOO…… I could not risk having maggots in my cake so this went to the bin. It was 11pm by that point and I have work in the morning tomorrow.

So here I am, past midnight, still baking and I won’t even be done because the freaking cake tin broke and I can only bake one at a time. Will have to bake again tomorrow after work... I’m so stressed out and it made me cry.

I will never bake for a living, ever. Apparently it doesn’t agree with me.

TLDR; tried to bake simple vanilla cake. Failed 4 times, cake tin broke, fly contaminated the only successful batch, 5th in oven (don’t know how it’ll turn out) and can now only do one tin at a time. Cue stress and crying.