You tend to let cooking fall by the wayside as soon as stress gets the better of you. Baking in particular. Yet you know that the careful measuring of flour, sugar, butter and all the other ingredients interrupt the dark rumblings of your mind. Strange how sometimes you avoid the very things that will make you feel better.

The solution (‘simple, why is it always so simple’): do it anyway. The seemingly irksome task of gathering the ingredients and then measuring them out makes you feel a bit lighter, in spite of your inner protestations (‘you could just buy a cake and save yourself the trouble’). Even preparing the pan seems to ward of a negative thought that was just starting to unpack itself (‘why do you always…wait, you could use the melted coconut oil to oil the pan’).

When the batter comes together (‘does it seem to too dry?’) you suddenly dare to hope that this just might work out. And when the cake emerges from the oven, even though it’s a bit sunken in the middle, your heart flickers, if only for a moment. And you realize: ‘it’s time to get on with it’.