Growing up, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen with women who all loved to tell stories. I often just sat there, watching and listening (and eating!) as they flitted about stirring pots, kneading dough, shaping candy. The memory of being in the thick of a busy kitchen, the heat from the oven coaxing anything from Gospel truth to gossip from the mouths of those cooks, is one of my most comforting ones.

It was when their hands were busy when my first cooking teachers found time to spin stories about all their greatest culinary exploits. For my grandma, it was when she made mayonnaise from scratch as a new bride. For my grandaunt, it was making seashell shapes from dough with nothing but the back of a fork and an expert flick of the wrist. But in between tales of baking the most tender-crumbed cake and making the best bunuelos were the inevitable kitchen myths. The foreboding ones, told over and over again so that they started taking a life of their own, transforming from fiction into fact.

One of the more ominous ones is from my nanny, who had taken baking courses at a local school in Victorias, the town in the Visayas region of the Philippines where I grew up. Nanay Manet’s favorite cooking story was about the unattainable, lofty ideal that is Angel Food Cake. In the humidity of the province, this cake wasn’t the easiest thing to make. Nanay Manet would recount how she often lost the battle of haranguing meringue into submission, all because of that one teeny tiny speck of egg yolk that found its way into the whites. She’d look at me, narrow her eyes and warn, “One drop. One drop! That’s all it takes to ruin the whoooolllleee thing.” And when you DID get yolk-free whites and WERE successful in whipping them into meringue, you had to fold the flour in quickly, quickly, quickly! But yet gently, gently, gently! All in the upper arm! No wrist, just arm! Or the egg whites may deflate! Nooo! Horrors!

Which is why in my 15+ years of baking, I couldn’t bring myself to make an Angel Food Cake. It seemed larger than life for me to do. It was made of whispery clouds and delicate whorls of sweet stuff—something too divine for even me to cobble together.

I bought a tube pan about five years ago but never used it for its intended purpose. But last weekend, I had to come up with a dessert that would go well with strawberries grown on a local farm. We were celebrating Mother’s Day in Redlands, Calif., at E.’s parents’, and their house is very close to a strawberry farm that sold these huge, sweet berries when they’re in season. Angel Food Cake would be perfect, so it was time to grow up, and grow out, of my eggwhite-ophobia. I HAD to do it.

As I went through the nerve-wracking process of breaking eggs carefully and separating the whites from the yolks, I could hear my heart hammering in my rib cage. I know for some of you this will seem a bit much. But for someone who feels like desserts are an expression of her self, this was a huge, big deal! I wanted everything to be perfect!

I was thinking of Nanay Manet the entire time. Unexpectedly, instead of being hampered by my memories of her cooking myths, I was spurned on by them. Maybe this kind of kitchen confidence comes with age. When I was younger, my movements were more calculated and yet less sure. But that time, with a challenge in front of me, I simply went with my gut, little speck of egg yolk and all.

And this is what happened.

After cooling, I dressed the cake in a fresh strawberry sauce made from equal parts sugar, water and mashed fresh berries cooked until thick. Garnished with some halved white berries that were drizzled with white chocolate, topped off with slivers of fresh lemon rind and little bunches of mint. Happy Mother’s Day, indeed!

I guess I’m waxing poetic about this cake because I’m so proud of myself for making it. More so than usual, since this was a project over 10 years in the making. I had to work up the courage to do it, and finally did. It made me remember what I love most about baking: how it’s part science, part myth and mostly plain old courage.

If there’s that one thing you’ve always wanted to cook or make, grab that wooden spoon, take out those tongs, wield that whisk with confidence and just make it. A little bravery goes a long way!

Here’s the recipe I used, I hope you use it celebrate your mothers and the baker in you.

Mother’s Day Angel Food Cake

1 cup cake flour

1 1/2 cups white sugar

12 egg whites

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1/2 teaspoon salt