I tried to make a cake recently and it was a disaster and so I ended up throwing it straight in the bin Love it. Everyone gets fed up from time to time and literally or metaphorically bins the cake. All the same if you find yourself binning cake or its equivalent very often I wonder if you could look at it in a different way.

Often things go wrong, it is no big deal, in fact it is the exception for things to work first time or indeed every time. I find I generally have to do things, mend an electric socket, replace a headlight bulb on the car, fit a new tap washer about three times before I get it right. It is the just the way it is, I am clearly never going to earn a living as a 'handyman', but so it goes. I used to get miserable, cuss greatly, make bitter remarks ot the cat, and put the wife out in the garden and actually feel a failure over absurd little things like this, but patience and practice generally win the day.

Since you are presumably not a chef or perhaps don't claim to be an accomplished cook it stands to reason things will go wrong in the cake making department from time to time.

Therefore you laugh about it, decide what went wrong, and try again, perhaps you will fail again, perhaps not, but if you do again you will at least have failed better and that too is progress. And your mum might get off your case.

And another thing even the most disappointing cakes tend to taste OK as pudding (puddings seem to be unknown in some benighted cultures where they are called 'dessert course') with cream, custard or ice cream.