There is a particular kind of heartbreak that only a baker knows.

You’ve done everything right. The batter was silky. The oven was hot. Outside, the monsoon is doing its beautiful, dramatic thing — that first proper rain after a long summer, the smell of wet earth drifting through the kitchen window, a cup of chai waiting. You slide the tin in, you wait, the whole house starts to smell like a bakery. And then you open the oven… and there it is. That sad little crater in the middle. A cake that rose like a dream and then sat back down like it changed its mind.