January 23, 2024
When someone is hurting, or celebrating, or the source of help or hope in your life, don’t you feel the urge to do something about it? Words like “I’m sorry,” “hooray,” or “thanks a ton” float up naturally like bubbles, but as quickly can burst with hollowness, as you push up against their limits. Don’t you ever just feel the overwhelming urge to do something about it?
Sometimes, especially with others’ sorrows, that urge can be dangerous. What starts as the good desire to care for another can morph into the desire to have been helpful, to make it less about your pain and more about my heroic role in solving or salving it. I have been guilty of this many times, and that’s only the subset I’m actually aware of. Steve Cuss, who wrote Managing Leadership Anxiety and runs the Being Human podcast, describes this as shrinking someone’s problem down to a size we can manage. It might make US feel better in the moment, but it fails to honor the enormity of the other person’s experience, and ultimately asks far too much of us besides.
We may know full well that another person’s experience doesn’t require our direct action, that we cannot and are not called to solve it. And yet, we feel compelled to offer something tangible, something more than words.
In times like this I make extra cake.
At work I was struck by the juxtaposition of a colleague celebrating a meaningful life event, while another was mourning a significant loss. Neither were situations I could or needed to directly impact, whether to reduce the pain or magnify the joy. It wasn’t my role to attend the funeral or throw a party. But I cared for each of the people, and wanted to offer something to honor the occasion.
I had a box of chocolate pudding mix kicking around and wondered what it might contribute to a chocolate cake. Much google searching later, I scanned a few different recipes, zeroed in a promising one, and modified according to ideas gleaned from my research. I poured the batter into four 6 inch pans, one for each of my colleagues, one for the woman who is helping me with social media for these projects (a godsend – thank you S.!) and one for my husband. A cake for all the feels.
A cute and compact little cake, carefully wrapped in parchment paper and tied with twine, delivered with a handwritten card, seems to say “I love you and I’m with you” just a bit better than words alone. You can’t fix their problem, but you can give them company and cake.
Recipe: I can’t remember. A combination.
Modifications
Intentional: It was kind of all a mishmash of a few different recipes. I swapped out some of the liquid in the cake with espresso, which magnifies the chocolate flavor, and whiskey, which just tastes good.
Unintentional: N/A
*Savvy readers will note the Crowded Table Goods sticker on the cakes — that’s the ‘house label” we made for food stuff I make and share with friends. “Too expensive to sell, the only reasonable price is as a gift.” We’ll see how that and Pretty Good bread end up fitting together…
Results: Whiskey was fantastic in the batter but less pronounced in the cake than hoped. However, one of the recipients messaged me the following, saying I should use it in promotional material:
… that CAKE omg I can’t get over how good it is!! That goodie bag really warmed my heart (and soul and tummy).
Another satisfied customer
