My chiffon cake recipe warned that it’s far better to overbeat the egg whites than underbeat them, lest you end up with a doughy chiffon cake bottom. What the recipe didn’t tell me is that over-overbeating is the worst of all because not only do you end up with a doughy cake bottom, you don’t technically end up with a chiffon cake at all. You end up with an over-sized doughnut.

I should have known something was wrong when the stiff wad of egg white I attempted to fold into the batter wouldn’t break up without heavy stirring, which if you know anything about folding, is the opposite. Unlike folding, stirring is essentially unfolding, and unfold it did. Helpful tip: When you can’t spoon batter into a two-piece angel food cake pan but instead have to hastily wrap the bottom of the pan in foil then pour in the batter, things have already gone very very wrong, so you might as well let the dreading begin.

But you know what? It wasn’t bad. Sort of like a poundcake. I hope the job search goes better.