In the U.K., if you so much as bring a beat-up homemade carrot cake into the office, you can count on somebody telling you to apply for “The Great British Bake Off.” I was twenty and already had a signature apricot-tart recipe, so I was bound to get the call eventually. My mom would, I’m sure, argue that she meant only for me to watch “Bake Off.” But you can’t watch people doing the thing you love, only worse, and just sit by. Or, at least, I couldn’t.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter