Baking and the Law

Law is like baking. Or running. Or ballet.

Learning the law is a skill, and for some reason this isn’t obvious to most law students, or many practitioners. It’s viewed as  a lofty intellectual pursuit, where people can have very robust intellectual conversations about various aspects of the law. And sometimes it is, I suppose. But mostly, it’s a skill. And in your first year of law school, and sometimes second and third, you have to remember you are  learning a NEW skill and learning to master something you’ve never done before.

So, I present to you, how I learned to roll a cake.

See, I’ve been baking since I was a little girl. I started baking with my grandpa, learning to make banana bread, and brownies, and cakes. My mother also loved to bake, and mostly learned from her father. And she loved to decorate. My birthday cakes were the envy of the neighborhood. She also taught me to work with chocolate. I bring all of this up because I don’t consider myself a baking novice. I’m not an expert, but I thought I had skills. So, when my British husband declared that he really missed yule logs (which can be purchased in the US, but the store bought is never the same I guess) I leapt at the challenge to master a new baking skill.

So, I first watched about 3 videos on “how to roll a cake.” I learned that you 1) use a jelly roll pan (thinner pan, like a cookie sheet), 2) put the cake RIGHT away on a towel, and 3) roll, and then 4) unroll and frost, 5) roll the cake again.  I watched the video for tips, and soaked it in. I paid attention to what kind of towel to use, whether to use parchment paper, how warm the cake should be, and I felt ready. I used my normal chocolate cake recipe, and got to work. You see, I’ve baked cakes so many times before, and I really like my recipe. I’m comfortable with it too.  I was excited, and got to work. Baked the cake,  put it on the towel, started to roll, all seemed to be going well. I set the roll aside to let it cool. I felt pretty pleased, and was excited to unroll it and frost. But, it came unrolled in pieces. Delicious pieces that I ate, I’m not a fool, but it wasn’t supposed to unroll in pieces. (There is also a note here on how failure CAN be delicious, so long as you learn form it)

The cake just fell into pieces!

So, the next day I decided to try again, after all, it’s what one does. I asked the internet for more advice, watched a few different videos to see if I could learn anything new. The only thing I picked up was that I may have rolled it while it was TOO hot. So I did everything the same, but waited until it was warm, instead of hot. Rolled it again. This time it came out in LESS pieces, but pieces just the same. My husband and I were delighted to eat the mess, but I kept pondering what I needed to do to roll this cake.

I’m not going to lie, this was frustrating. True, I was enjoying the delicious cake, but it was still frustrating to not get the results I wanted.

So, instead of just watching videos on the actual rolling of the cake, I opted to go look at some yule log, swiss roll, or roulade (all rolled cakes) recipes. I noticed something strange; the recipes were not like my recipe at all. The ingredients were vastly different. So, I picked a yule log cake recipe, and tried again. This time it worked! The different recipe meant a different cake consistency, so a better roll!

So, why does this matter? Why is this like studying the law? Well, first and foremost, I went with a preconceived notion of what I knew, or what I could do. It took two attempts before looking back and thinking that might need to change my initial recipe. But that made all the difference. Often, students come in with a preconceived notion of what they know, or how to study, or even how to write. They are often shocked to find out that the writing is vastly different from what they knew prior to law school, or even what they considered good. Remember, my sheet cake recipe is delicious, and undisputedly so, but it didn’t work for what I wanted to do, which is to roll the cake. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make a great sheet cake, it just doesn’t work in THIS context. This is similar to your writing; your prior writing skills may be great, and work for some things, just not law school essays. You might also think you know how to do certain things very well, maybe you even took a constitutional law or business law class in your undergraduate years, or worked as a paralegal. But that information might not work in THIS context.

The second thing to take away from this is timing. I wanted to make the cake for Christmas.  But, as I’d never rolled a cake before, I started practicing in September. Plenty of time to practice, as it wouldn’t make sense to roll a cake for the very first time the day I needed it to count! In a similar way, you would never write a law school essay the very first time on test day! You practice, and probably starting in September as well!

Lastly, you should take away the importance of tenacity. I finally perfected the cake in time for Christmas eve, but much  to the delight of my husband, it took about 8 cakes total to perfect. You should be practicing roughly the same amount of essays, sadly, they are just less delicious. But the idea is the same, you practice an essay, look for ways to improve it, write another. Work on mastering more law, work on perfecting your writing technique, and keep doing that until you are certain you can do it in timed conditions for an exam.

Waiting...will it unroll and roll back properly?

Success!

Decorated, on Christmas Eve, with ganache and chocolate holly!

This Autumn I’m working on chocolate collars, and chocolate flourishes. Remember I said my mother taught me to make chocolates? Well, that was using molds, which means you essentially pour chocolate into, well, molds, and let them sit. There is a skill, but it’s fairly basic. A chocolate collar, or flourish, requires what is essentially freehand drawing with chocolate. I tried my first “collar” today, and it’s far from perfect. However, I’m already planning on altering my technique next time. I initially tried with a piping bag, and didn’t have the control I wanted. So, I used a bottle, but it was too large and had too much air. So, my takeaway is perhaps a smaller bottle. The point is that you shouldn’t be afraid to mix up what you use. Even with different classes, you might use a different style of outline, or a different way of taking notes. That’s ok, and I encourage you to keep altering things until you find the tools and style that work for you.

If you don’t like my  baking analogy, I could have written the same thing about ballet, running, football, knitting, or any number of skills you need to master. Practice DOES make perfect, so does learning from your mistakes.  And I promise, failure is delicious if you use it as a learning experience.

A far from perfect chocolate collar, but I know it will get better!