I like to bake and cook for people. I started doing it when I was eleven, around the time my eating disorder put on spurs and kicked things into high gear.

People without eating disorders like to cook and bake, of course, but people with eating disorders often do it to excess. We watch the shows, and read the books and magazines almost compulsively: if we can’t feed ourselves, we’ll feed the world instead.

Seventeen magazine used to run a recipe every month. Sometimes it was a meal – the stuffed cornish game hens I made were a big hit – and sometimes a dessert. I made my first and last cheesecake following a recipe found therein. It was banana. I don’t recommend banana cheesecake.

I had a recipe folder for magazine recipes and I held onto it for the longest time. I rarely made anything I tried twice, but I kept them anyway. My stuff helped me feel safe. I’ve been able to let some of these artifacts go as my recovery has increased in its stability.

I thought the layered white cake with coffee-mocha whipped icing was going to be my piece de resistance, but it turned into a piece of something else. Part of the problem stemmed from my unwillingness to ask for help or direction. I’d say I’m better with that now but then you’d have to call me a liar.

The first problem was the baking powder. We were out, and without it, you get a flat cake. Luckily, I remembered something. If you don’t have baking powder, you can make a substitute using baking soda and cream of tartar. I suggest looking up the ratio. I did not.

The formula was not half of each to make up the amount of baking powder being left out.

I split the recipe evenly between the two pans. I was proud of myself for remembering to use both grease and flour so it would slide out easily when done.

The cake smelled good as it cooked away. Vanilla is lovely. It was my first scratch cake, and I still don’t make cakes very often. Mostly because I don’t like cake all that much. For me, cake is just a handy way to transport icing.

If I was making it today, I’d stalk the action in the oven. I’d leave the light on and check progress regularly. But this was back when I didn’t realize baking could go horribly wrong.

It smelled done when the timer sounded, and the toothpick I inserted pulled out clean. I grabbed hot pads and removed the two tins. It was as I was placing them on cooling racks that I noticed that the light, fluffy cakes of my dreams didn’t exist. What I had instead were two dense and rubbery flat things.

I remember my mom consoling me. I remember her saying that icing hides a multitude of sins. Whipped coffee mocha icing would certainly do so if one didn’t try and make it with double the amount of liquid.

I’d planned to serve a double-layer cake with luscious icing. I was left with chewy frisbees and coffee mocha soup. I assume I was devastated. I don’t handle failure well now, and back then, with anxiety and a sense of insufficiency dogging my every waking moment, I handled it poorly indeed.

Luckily, as is the case with much, tragedy plus time equals humour.

In twenty years, I’ll share the story of this year’s soup mishap. Who knew you had to cook the barley first? Who knew barley would absorb all the liquid in the world?

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