It’s all about not giving up, being flexible, and staying calm – and, you bet, that’s sometimes a lot easier said than done. And while some cooking mistakes are better to walk away from; burned chocolate is a great example – here’s an example of a cooking mistake that turned out tasting great.

I’d recently intended to make a mixed berry fruit pancake that was supposed to look like this…

…using an improvised dough I thought I’d try made of eggs, milk, ground flaxseed, ground nuts, and some cooked quinoa. Ground nuts and cooked quinoa don’t have anything in them to bind together, but I thought ground flaxseed, which gets pretty sticky when mixed with any liquid, would do the trick. I was wrong. That meant that instead of properly sliding the pancake out of a pan onto a plate to flip it fruit side down like this,…

…what I got was this.

No problem – and I remember, very oddly for me, not swearing at all. I just kept turning the crumbled pancake pieces until everything was cooked through and looked like this.

I then scooped a portion of that crumbled pancake into a bowl, topped it with nut butter and yogurt,…

…fresh berries and dried fruit,…

…and, of course, a good spoonful of whipped cream.

Bottom line: be flexible, don’t give up, and cooking mistakes can sometimes taste great!