Brief 2 Mary aan Rini

Hi Rini!

Long time no see (or written to). As you might know you letter got lost and I received it later than expected. I was very happy I got it though. I was starting to worry something had happened.

The lady from the association called me telling it was on it's way. I received it a while ago and promised myself to write as soon as possible. However, I let too much time pass and the lady contacted me again Ha ha. I apologise for the delay. There isn't any major reason why I didn't write earlier. Just that I tend to push things till the last minute.

Hope you are okay :) I loved the small graffiti you drew on your previous letter. I am fine. Did you enjoy the good weather? I sure did. I notice that everyone gets a little bit happier when the sun comes out.

Anyways I wanted to tell you about what happend to me a couple of weeks ago. So, it all started when my little sister decided to throw a last-minute birthday dinner/low key party. She was stressing about what to cook and decorations etc. She was still on a budget so she had to make things work. I offered to bake her a birthday cake. And we brainstormed on the type of cake. I should've stopped myself right there. I always forget how much I hate baking. I love to cook. Hate to bake.

We decided on a chocolate cake with fruit decoration. I don't know if you have seen the movie Matilda but there is a famous chocolate cake from that film I wanted to recreate. The movie is about a very smart girl who can move things with her mind. It's great. Anyways, I looked online for the recipe, but I was too lazy to do "good" research so I said "Fuck it" and asked ChatGPT. Which is an artificial intelligence whom you can have a conversation with. It stores almost all the info of the internet and is constantly learning with every user's interaction. It's basically a very smart Robot. But on your phone/computer.

(AGAIN, should have stopped there)

So I asked ChatGPT for the recipe of the chocolate cake from the movie Matilda. And he gave me an "inspired recipe" which is comprehensible since it's a movie and the cake is fictional. I noticed, however, that the recipe didn't include hot coffee nor mayonaise. I knew that those two ingredients (specially the mayonaise), would make the cake extra moist. I asked ChatGPT to include those into the recipe. I also aked him to give me the amounts of measurments for a doubled layered cake. (AGAIN, should have stopped there). So I blindly trusted what this app told me and bought all the ingredients. Friday at 20:00 I started to bake.

Before continuing with my story you need to know a little bit of my background to truly understand why it affected me so much.

For the last year or so I've been unable to work due to some mental health issues. I am alright now. But things were pretty bad last year when fear creaped up and I had full on panic attacks every day. Needless to say I was tired all the time. Since my panic attacks were mainly before sleeping, after sleeping and every meal. The sleeping part got a bit better after I stopped working. But the one's after every meal stuck for a long time. Eventually when fear was at it highest it triggered OCD behavior. Which is when you are stuck on a scary thought and start to think it will be real.

But the fear was stronger

My relation with food is very complicated. After some time I discovered that it had to do more with ingesting things than actually food itself. For example if I was to be very stressed/worried about something and would reheat a dinner from two days earlier. Since my brain would be already stressed and in flight or fight mode, I would be more alert for danger. Therefore I would have thoughts of: you're gonna get intoxicated with this reheated meal, or: there is bacteria on it, you haven't washed your hands well enough, etc. One time I was eating pistacchios on my own and a thought came up. What if I would suffocate on one? What if I am allergic to them? I had to throw them away. I have no allergies. I know this. But the fear was stronger.

Again, I am in a much better place now. Back to the story.

I started to panic because the cake mix was too runny

So I started baking Friday at 20:00. The party was the next day. At the beginning everything was fine. I was a bit thrown of by the amount of sugar the recipe required. 600 gr! It was for two cakes, but it still seemed a lot. So here is when the small voice was like "Imagine you give every one diabetes". Which now, if I think about it, is ridiculous and impossible. But back then it stuck like a small splinter on my skin. Then I added the mayonaise and vegetable oil. All I could think of was all the fat I was adding. Then I read 1.5 tsp of salt. And I have these measuring spoons that I use for measuring. So I add the 1.5 tsp. I also needed to add 3 tsp baking soda, 2.5 tsp baking powder and 2.5 tsp vanilla extract. When I got to the vanilla extract I was surprised how much I had to put into the mix. It seemed too much... So instinctively I added less. when all the ingredients were mixed I was still surprised about how much a tsp (tea spoon) is. It seemed like a lot. And then I started to panic because the cake mix was too runny and didn't look like cake batter. It looked like a thick hot chocolate. And all I could think is: why did I trust a stupid internet robot and how much sugar, salt and fat there is in this cake. By then it was 21.00. No time to start again. So I freaked out, but reminded myself that I can do this.

Since the batter was too runny I added more flour. But I didn't want to add too much. I still had some hope the original robot recipe was good. So I placed the cake in the oven and started to wash the decoration fruits. The fruits we were going to use were strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. I had read somewhere that it was better to wash strawberries with a bit of vinegar + water to kill everything off. I washed them and then dried them. I tried one after washing them and it tasted like vinegar. I got sad. I looked at cake #1 in the oven and it had not risen. As a matter of fact it looked like it would never turn into a solid cake. At this moment I almost cried. It was 22:00.

So here I am 2 hours in. Worried about all my ingredients, berries tasting like vinegar and cake #1 half solid in the oven. I kept it together and took #1 out. It had to chill in the mold for 30 minutes. I started to chop the strawberries. Then I got cake #1 out of the mold. It looked horrible, not only it had not risen, but it also sank in the middle.

See the pictures of how the cake should have come out and how it actually come out (dip in the middle).

So what did I do for cake #2? I added more flour and put it in the oven. PRAYING it would do something. While cake #2 was in the oven I started to make the filling. By this time it’s almost 23:00. For the filling I had to melt chocolate with ‘slagroom’, which is like heavy cream. So I heated the heavy cream and added the chocolate. Since I was still worried about the amount of sugar I had put into the batter, I didn't add all the chocolate the recipe required. I melted it together and then let it chill for a couple of minutes. After this I had to use a mixer to make it airy. But it didn't air up! Again I was in front of a batter that was too liquid. And because it was so watery, when I started to mix it, the chocolate went everywhere. On the counter, my face, my cabins, the floor. Everything was a mess.
I decided to put the filling in the fridge, thinking this would help. Taking it out every now and then. Just to find out it was not cold enough to air and shooting chocolate all over the kitchen. I just let it in the fridge. I kinda was done with it.

Then the timer went off. The second cake was ready. OH MY GOD. What a relief when I saw cake #2: it was perfect. It had to chill in the mold for 30 min. And after it had to chill some more before adding the filling I let it chill and tried to air up the filling again. Thank god, it was cold enough. I added some chopped strawberries and blueberries to some of the filling. And then finally I was ready to assemble.

Let me illustrate this for you so that you have a better understanding:
CAKE #1 / filling + fruit / Decoration fruit - blueberries
CAKE #2 / just filling, sliced strawberry, raspberries

It was 00:00 AM when I started assemble this cake. And the problem was cake #1 because it had a hole. So what I did was put cake #1 at the bottom and put whole strawberries in the hole like pillars so it would hold cake #2. Because cake #2 had more flour it was sturdier and would potentially hold the birthday candles better. Luckily the vinegar from the fruit faded and I assembled the cake. For the decoration I had to place the fruit one by one on the covering chocolate, pausing here and there to put the cake in the fridge so that the chocolate would be cold enough to glue the fruit. It was hell!!

INSIDE: filling, cake #2, filling + fruits, cake #1, pillar strawberries
OUTSIDE: mint, strawberry, blueberry

So no cake for me but it was okay.

I finished at 01:30. While cleaning up I discovered that I had messed up tsp with tbsp (tablespoon) on my measurements. And it was then when I lost it and almost had a panic attack triggered by the thought of maybe having made something that would make the guests sick.
Thankfully it did not happen. The cake actually came out really nice. I could not take more than a bit of it because everything triggered me. So no cake for me but it was okay.

I have since then promised myself I will not put myself in such situations no more. Baking is my nightmare. I can laugh at it now ha ha.

So that was my story. I hope it wasn't too long or boring. This week I am pet sitting a cat. And she is pregnant and needy. But that is a story for another time.
How about you? Do you have any anecdotes you'd like to share? What have you been up to?

Till next time :)
Mary