I am much harder on myself when I bake for someone else.

If I make a cake for myself and the frosting isn't perfectly smooth, I don't lose sleep over it. If the cake is slightly uneven, I'll cut it, eat it and move on.

But put a customer's name on that cake and suddenly every tiny detail matters.

I'll walk around the cake. Look at it from the front. Then the side. Then somehow from an angle nobody else will ever look at it from.

I'll think, Is that frosting smooth enough? Is the colour right? Does that flower look weird? Should I have added something here?

Most customers would never notice half of these things.

I do.

Because when I make something for myself, the standard is simple. Does it taste good? Good enough.

When I make something for someone else, the standard changes.

This isn't just a cake anymore.

It's a birthday. A surprise. A first birthday. An anniversary. Sometimes it's something a husband has ordered for his wife because he wants to do something special. Sometimes it's a mother ordering for her child.

There is a reason someone has trusted me with it.

So I take it seriously.

And no, that doesn't mean every cake comes out perfect. Baking doesn't work that way. Cream behaves differently on different days. Colours don't always turn out exactly as planned. Sometimes I finish a cake and immediately spot three things I would change next time.

That's part of getting better.

In fact, I think that's one of the biggest differences between baking for yourself and baking professionally.

When it's your own cake, you can say, "It's fine."

When it's someone else's cake, you ask yourself, "Would I be happy receiving this?"

That question has saved me from packing more than one cake.

Because I know what happens after that box leaves my kitchen.

Someone opens it.

Someone sees it for the first time.

Someone takes a picture.

And eventually, someone cuts into it.

I want to be okay with every part of that.

So yes, I will probably continue staring at a finished cake for five minutes longer than necessary.

I'll continue fixing tiny things nobody else would notice.

And I'll continue being much more forgiving with my own cake than I am with a customer's.

That's probably not a bad thing.

If I'm going to put my name on it, I want to be proud when it leaves my kitchen.