The patience between two layers.

Recipes are full of instructions that sound like pauses: rest, chill, cool, leave overnight. They can feel like interruptions when all you want is the finished thing.

But waiting is part of the making. A warm cake asks frosting to do a job it cannot do. A rushed layer slides. The impatient shortcut often leaves more work than the pause would have.

There is pleasure in finding something else to do for a little while. Wash a bowl. Open a book. Put the kettle on. The kitchen can carry on without being hurried.

Then come back. Build the next layer. There is time.