The first baker had the finest ingredients delivered to the doorstep of her well equipped kitchen, including freshly churned butter, the softest flour, farm fresh eggs, pure vanilla extract, and rich chocolate chips. She carefully followed the contest recipe and mixed together her ingredients in her KitchenAid stand mixer, then scooped out uniform bits and lined them neatly on cookie sheets and baked them in the oven. She watched carefully to make sure they were perfectly golden brown and not too crisp or too doughy, but just right. She made two dozen yummy cookies and took them to be judged.
The second baker had to go out and try to find ingredients, but all that was available in her neighborhood was margarine, hard stale flour, lumpy sugar, imitation vanilla and a tiny bag of store brand chocolate chips. She pulled out the same recipe (it was required by the contest that they use the same one), a bowl and a hand mixer and got to work. Every few minutes someone would switch out a random ingredient for something unlabeled, the power kept going out on the mixer, and someone stood in the kitchen occasionally yelling at her and throwing wooden spoons around. She managed to make a passable version of the recipe and started to scoop out the dough, but the person in the kitchen began eating bits and pieces of the dough she put on the pan and scattering the bits of dough about. She finally popped the pans in the oven, but the thermostat on her oven would rapidly shoot the temperature up and then drop it down so the heat was very inconsistent. She tried to keep an eye on the cookies, but also had to complete an extra baking class and 14 pages of paperwork because of her zip code. Since the dough was all different sizes some of the cookies got overdone and some were underdone when she finally took the pans out. She turned out 2 yummy cookies and about 20 more that didn't turn out so great, and took them to be judged.
The contest judges gave the first baker a perfect score and exclaimed that she must be the best baker in the land and all bakers should get such fine results.
They told the other baker that she just didn't measure up, her cookies were a failure, she obviously had put no real effort into making her cookie, and she should consider having a commercial enterprise take over her future baking for the good of cookies everywhere.
The first baker left feeling greatly accomplished, not realizing that the ingredients provided and her circumstances played an equal part in her success.
The second baker ignored the advice of the judges and continued pouring herself into making the best cookies she could, realizing that judges were idiots.
The judges ran for public office and won, and continued to expect uniform results from all the bakers.
THE END
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