Baking My Feelings

October 27, 2018 is a date I will always remember. It was a cold, rainy Saturday morning and I'd gone to the grocery early. My husband and I were sitting at the dining room table playing cards and finishing a late breakfast when the phone rang. It was my sister in Texas calling to see if I was alright. Apparently, there'd been a shooting in Pittsburgh. I grabbed my cell phone off the charger and saw a number of notifications for missed calls, text messages and news updates. At 10:30 that morning, a man walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill, the heart of the Jewish community, just three miles from my home, and opened fire with an automatic weapon slaughtering 11 people and wounding 6 more. Over the next few hours as details of this stunning tragedy emerged, fear rocked through me and my heart broke into pieces. My heart broke for the people in that congregation, for the families of those who died and for the community now faced with the aftermath. That was not my synagogue, I didn't know anyone involved, but this was my tribe, these were my people and my heart broke for all of us.

The next couple days were surreal as my phone, email and social media were flooded with messages of concern, love and support. A bad head and chest cold had settled into my body like an unwanted house guest, so I made an enormous pot of chicken noodle soup on Sunday afternoon. The following Monday, two days after the shooting, I choked back tears on my way to work, struggling to understand my ragged and chaotic emotions. By about 1:00 pm, I realized that I was not doing any good at work and I made an exit and wept the whole way home. After a few hours on the couch, I splashed my face with cold water and cleaned the kitchen. It felt good to let go of the thoughts that were tormenting me and focus on mundane tasks like scrubbing the sink and and the stove top. As I cleaned, my head began to clear a little bit and when I was done, I baked an apple crisp. With a small and simple list of ingredients, fruit crisps, crumbles and cobblers are things I no longer need recipes for. Peeling and slicing the apples, mixing in the sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon and making the crumb topping felt therapeutic and by the time I put the apple crisp in the oven, it felt like I was starting to get some mental control over the emotional chaos I'd been battling for the past couple of days. It just felt right. And as usual, the apple crisp was delicious.

The following night, I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies and for a little extra twist, I added some finely chopped candied ginger. Again, it was a simple recipe, but the act of creaming the butter and brown sugar together until it was fluffy and sifting together the dry ingredients felt so grounding. And what could be more satisfying than biting into a warm, slightly chewy cookie fresh from the oven? It dawned on me that I was putting something delicious and beautiful out into the world to compensate for the bitterness and devastation I felt in my heart. I realized that I was baking my feelings.

In order to keep baking, I had to distribute the fruits of my labor, so the next day I brought both the cookies and what was left of the apple crisp, which was most of it, to work. It was Halloween and there was candy everywhere but my colleagues thoroughly enjoyed the homemade baked goods and I felt extremely gratified to present them. At the end of the day I brought home the empty containers and contemplated what I wanted to bake next. When they were at the peak of their season, my husband purchased a flat of blueberries and I had three huge bags of them in the freezer. Blueberry muffins seemed like an excellent choice. Muffins are not difficult to make and I found a suitable recipe that made a dozen muffins. However, for some unknown reason, I convinced myself that I needed to make more than a dozen. Looking back on it, I have no idea why I didn't just follow the recipe. In the end, I tried to make a recipe and a half of the batter, hoping for 18 muffins, but I miscalculated the measurements and the batter was extremely thick. I added an extra egg and an additional half cup of milk, but it didn't really help.

Rather than using muffin tins, I decided that batter would perform better in a bundt pan. The cake looked beautiful and I drizzled the top with a little lemon glaze, but it was dense and slightly gummy and the blueberries made big, wet pockets in the middle. It was tasty, but the texture was off-putting and almost rubbery. I talked it over with some of my co-workers the next day and someone suggested that it might make a good bread pudding. So the following weekend I cut it into cubes, discarding some of the larger blueberry pockets, put the cubes on a baking sheet and let them dry out in a 170 degree oven for a couple hours. Then I mixed up half a dozen eggs and two cups of whole milk, added some vanilla and cinnamon and soaked the cubed cake for a good 30 minutes, breaking it up with a potato masher as it softened. I poured it all into a baking dish, sprinkled the top with demarara sugar and gave it about an hour at 350 degrees. To test for doneness, I slipped a knife into the thick part of the center. When it came out clean, the pudding was baked.

It had a lovely bronze crust on top and a pleasant kind of bouncy texture without being gummy or sticky. I made a little blueberry sauce to go on top, but it would have been much better swimming in a pool of butter rum or thin caramel sauce. I cut the bread pudding into cubes and brought them to work the following Monday.

More than a week had passed since the shooting and I was finding a bit of peace in baking my feelings. The 2018 midterm elections were taking place the next day and half the country was holding its breath while the other half was blowing hot air in the build up to election day. I contemplated my baking options the night before. So far, I'd baked a crisp, a batch of cookies, a failed bundt cake and a bread pudding but what did I want to do next? Pie? Cupcakes? I needed something a little more challenging and settled on a two layer marble cake with chocolate frosting. I found a recipe and blog post that sounded perfect, which you can find HERE if you're curious. Instead of the whipped buttercream frosting called for in this recipe, I opted for my favorite frosting made with cream cheese, which I've made many times before. The tangy edge of the cream cheese keeps any cake from tasting too sweet and its my go-to frosting - you can find the recipe HERE. I had everything I needed for the cake in the fridge and pantry, but when I started pulling out ingredients, I realized that I had just enough baking powder to make this recipe. I don't think I've ever finished a container of baking powder. I use it so infrequently that I typically have to buy a fresh tub of it and throw the old one out every few years. But here I was, at the bottom of the container. A sense of great accomplishment washed over me. The moment the polls closed at 8:00 pm, I retired to the kitchen to make magic happen.

While the cake was baking, I joined my husband in front of the TV to watch election results, but in the end I found peace of mind in the kitchen, beating eggs and sugar together, measuring flour and cocoa and greasing and lining cake pans. It was 10:00 pm by the time I'd gotten the cake frosted and it looked quite impressive, but it definitely needed some time to chill in the fridge before I could cut this beauty. The thing about marble cake is you never know exactly how its going to look inside until you cut it. Not only was this cake gorgeous, but there was a surprise inside just waiting to be revealed. As much as I wanted to jam a fork into it and shove it in my greedy face, I put the cake in the fridge and went to bed. The next day, I brought it to work and sliced it with my co-workers looking on. It was absolutely beautiful inside and it tasted like heaven. We all enjoyed a slice of cake together and it filled my heart with indescribable joy.

Two days later I baked an apple pie. My brother and sister-in-law were coming to visit and she loves apple pie, so I figured I could brighten both of our lives a little by baking for her. It had been a busy week and I stopped at the store that day and bought a pre-made pie crust, which was a sign that I'm starting to come to terms with my feelings. The pie is yummy served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Half of it is sitting in the fridge right now and I have vowed not to bake again until we finish what I've already baked. While my heart still hurts, so do the hearts of my friends, neighbors and community and we are getting through this together. I don't think I'm the only Pittsburgher who is baking or cooking their feelings right now and I'm sure there will be more baking in the weeks and months ahead. In the end, there is great hope in the knowledge that we can sweeten our own small corners of the world when things seem hopeless. Let me know if you need a little lovin' from the oven. I'm more than happy to oblige.