Comment by esperent

The "trick" to baking all kinds of things well for the first time is to follow the recipe fanatically. It says high protein flour? Use that, not all purpose flour. It says 500g caster sugar? Don't think that's going to be too sweet and add 400g, the sugar is where the texture comes from (and there's plenty of less sweet recipes to choose instead). It says make sure the dough is chilled? Chill the damn dough!

Once you've baked it perfectly to the exact recipe a few times, then you can start adapting.

Of course, there will come a point in your skill level where you will have the intuition to adapt recipes that you've never cooked before. But many people assume they can do that immediately, fail, then assume they can't cook and give up.

I will say though that the other biggest area where people fail is having a janky oven that can't maintain a stable temperature, or where you set it to 200C but it only reaches 160C. So an oven thermometer is a useful tool to buy.