Chocolate or Bust?

Chocolate undoubtedly makes the best dessert--the more the better. But is it alright to try something new? Let's find out.

Originally Published April 11, 2021

Imagine you have spent four years developing your baking skills, so that you can be prepared to bake the most amazing dessert you have ever tasted. You have been searching for the recipe to create your masterpiece, and even though you don’t know exactly what this treat is, you know it has to be chocolate. If not, what’s the point of even baking?

Right as you're preparing to get a cookbook full of delicious recipes, the pandemic hits. This is the perfect opportunity, more time for baking!

Then you see it, the most perfect, most moist chocolate zucchini cake, more incredible than anything in your wildest dreams. Right away, you rush to the store to buy all the ingredients, before heading back home to prep for baking.

When you walk through the door, however, you see your amazing recipe lying on the floor in pieces next to your very guilty looking dog. No longer can you feel the joy of mixing the ingredients, placing the pans into the oven, or taking the legendary first bite you’ve been waiting to experience for the last four years.

At first you are furious and heartbroken as you angrily stash your ingredients away in the cupboard. Eventually though, you realize that you and your recipe might still have a chance.

Left: The day I decided to go to UCLA!

Bottom: Sara and I with our supportive brother Jack after choosing UCLA.

You tape the recipe back together and pull all the ingredients back out, ready to get this cake back on track. As you go to get your apron, someone mistakes your tattered recipe for a piece of trash, and drops it in the shredder.

All the blood, sweat, and tears that went into finding this recipe were for naught, your hope of ever tasting a chocolate zucchini cake are shredded (and not the good kind of shredded like coconut or cheese).

After a lot of yelling, crying, hopelessly laying on the floor, and overall feeling sorry for yourself, you manage to pull yourself together and ask “where do I go from here?” Do you dare to throw all the ingredients together and try to replicate the recipe? Or do you not even try to bake, biding your time, until you can find the recipe next year?

By now, you have probably realized I’m not actually talking like baking. Making a cake really isn’t a ‘life or death’ dramatic situation, despite what the baking contest shows might lead you to think. I’m actually talking about my college journey over the last year.

My quest to find the “perfect recipe” was actually a search for the best college for me, which amazingly turned out to be UCLA, the chocolate zucchini cake. Why this specific cake? This was the dessert I first made after choosing to go to UCLA.

Here are some of the dorm room accessories I built. Right: a quilt made out of childhood t-shirts and a UCLA banner. Left: A smaller patch made out of leftover fabric from the quilt.

Once I got accepted, I started to buy all the normal college gear, and began imagining how I could make my dorm room feel more homey. The initial damage to the recipe? That occurred when I was first denied a shot of living on campus (my dog never ate a recipe, so don’t give him a bad rep). As a Bay Area resident, on-campus housing was my key to living in LA, so it was looking like I would have to either stay at home for at least fall quarter, or go live on my own in Westwood, the COVID hotspot.

The beginning stages of two side tables I built last summer out of old wood and reclaimed glass.

Just as things looked bleakest, I was miraculously given another housing offer and began building dorm room accessories. I spent hours outside each day, building side tables out of reclaimed glass, making some innovative hanging storage, and putting my parent’s stockpile of wine corks to good use. I even did not mind attending a virtual orientation since I would be living the college life on campus in the fall. Or so I thought.

I finally got the email I had been dreading that actually led to all the aforementioned self pity, which was a second rejection of my dream to spend my first year of college on campus. I was neither brave enough to live on my own nor willing to risk getting exposed to COVID by living in LA, so I decided to spend my first year at home with fleeting hopes I might be on campus in the spring (Since it’s April and I’m writing to you in my bedroom in the Bay Area, the whole move-to-LA-in-spring thing didn’t work out).

Left: the zucchini from my grandma's garden that we used in the zucchini cake.

Right: My sister Sara and I decorating the zucchini cake to celebrate our decisions to attend UCLA.

So there I was, stuck at home while I watched all my other friends head off to college, twiddling my thumbs for the month-and-a-half until my own remote learning started. I was getting really tired of feeling sorry for myself that I missed out on the end of my senior year and then my whole first year college experience, so I tried to take inventory of what I did actually have:

• I was lucky enough to be spending time with my family (especially my brother who was supposed to graduate from Washington State University and work at Seattle’s Boeing in the summer) and we were all healthy

• I have a lot outdoor spaces and hiking trails around me I have never utilized

• I get to wake up every morning to my dog Buster licking my face, and fall asleep next to my cat Bob every night

• Even though I lost my job at the beginning of the Pandemic, I did not have to work to support myself, so I could focus on revamping my resume and finally trying to tackle my cover letter

• I could redecorate my room at home with the cool dorm decor I had already made

• UCLA offered a ton of virtual events for me to go and get involved before school started

• I get to continue to bake throughout the school year (let's be real, I’ve been baking pretty much once a week--or more--since school started)

Left: The final products from my summer dorm decor. Right: repurposing dorm decorations in my room at home. Bottom: a peanut butter bundt cake for our first day of school.

So I stopped making myself miserable over all the adventures I had lost, and began appreciating what I had. I tried to find opportunities that the virtual nature of my education afforded me and set up a lot of informational interviews to answer the whole “what are you going to be when you grow up” question. Though two quarters in, I haven’t made a lot of progress on that particular question, I have made the best of a really disappointing situation.

My county was one of the first in NorCal to open vaccine appointments to everyone 16 and above at the beginning of April and I was able to get my vaccine two day after my birthday (my COVID-nineteenth birthday and second Pandemic celebration) on April 3rd. My future is starting to look bright again.

While I am not guaranteed housing for next year (but the incoming class is, which logically makes not much sense) my life is starting to look up. I have learned a lot about myself and the people I love in the past year, and even though this year was not ideal, I don’t take the lessons I’ve learned for granted.

I used to think that chocolate was the only way to make a superb dessert. And while I still largely agree with this fact, I understand that it's also alright to try something new, even something without chocolate. After all, you can always add more!

Yours Truly,

Mason