Sometimes being chronically and mentally ill is like having a newborn baby that can’t tell you what’s wrong, you know you feel horrible and you can’t lie down and you can’t sit up but you don’t know why. You go down the list- are you hungry? thirsty? sleepy? too hot? depressed? just lazy? a terrible person? And then it dawns on you- you’re in horrible pain, all over. And it’s always been there in the background, it’s just worse right now than usual, for no apparent reason. And there’s nothing you can do about it.
“You may think that an autistic child won’t notice they are different than their non-autistic peers… I have not met one autistic person (myself included) who hasn’t noticed their difference early in life. For me, noticing came through being bullied at school and at home. And since I didn’t know I was autistic, I just assumed there was something wrong with me and that I deserved what I got. I learned that intrinsically, I was less than a person…
When you learn that you are less than a person, being abused becomes normalized and expected. When I was six years old, I had a meltdown in a music class due to sensory overload. The teacher’s response was to lock me in a closet for the duration of the class. It was dark. I was terrified. It was normal. I deserved it. I can only hope those aren’t the type of thoughts you want your child to have.”
Image description: [pale purple and yellow background with dark text] This April, don’t support an organization that harms autistic people. [crossed out logo for Autism Speaks] Support one built by autistic people, for autistic people. [logos for the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and the Autism Women’s Network]
Australians do this too? I think it’s because we don’t generally cover our cake in so much frosting as Americans, so it’s more like eating a muffin or a doughnut and less like eating something with the consistency of melting ice cream with a small amount of baked good inside with our fingers.
I actually wasn’t even thinking about the frosting, more that cake is soft and moist and crumbly and what kind of dense monstrosity are y’all eating that you can just pick up a slice like it’s a muffin?????
Well, I can’t speak for your cake, but ours is pretty nice, so, nice cake? that we can pick up? I mean, obviously something like mudcake is dense and holds together really well, but a victoria sponge sandwich is like the opposite of that, and you can still hold that if you want to. I will also say that it’s kind of rare for a cake to have more than two layers, often it only has one (with no filling), and so it’s more structurally sound than something that is super tall and has three or four or more layers stacked with thick layers of buttercream or ganache or something. I’m not saying eating a cake off a plate with a fork or a spoon is unheard of, but often, at a birthday party, someone will just cut you a slice and you’ll eat it with your hands from a paper napkin, and somehow we survive with only about as much dessert carnage as any other nationality.
I mean most cakes here don’t have multiple layers of buttercream and shit unless you’re super fancy, but i cannot think of a cake that would hold together nicely.
Like. I think victoria sponge and I think “the sort of thing twinkies are made of, only not gross” and that is… nothing at ALL like actual cake.
I take it back, angel food cake holds together like that, but it’s also gross if it’s not drenched in strawberries and whipped cream.
This is super hard! Like, I know in theory what a Twinkie is, from American media, but they’re not a thing here. And I wouldn’t have a clue what angel food cake is.
Butter cake/pound cake/madeira cake (all different names for the same thing) is a pretty solid ‘base’ cake here, or at least it was for my mother’s generation. It’s a medium density medium moistness cake that my mum often cooks in a square or round cake tin and covers in water icing. Cut into squares or small wedges, it’s perfectly possible to eat with your hands with a few stray crumbs and a bit of icing to lick off your fingers. You can make it plain with just a teaspoon of vanilla, you can make it chocolate by adding cocoa powder to the mix, you can make it any other flavour by adding essences or lemon zest or whatever. You can make it in to cupcakes by putting the batter in patty pans (with a drizzle of water icing and edible ball bearings for decoration). It’s popular because before box cakes were a thing (they didn’t really appear in the supermarkets here until the late eighties) it was a cake basically any home cook could make because the method was simple, used stock staple ingredients, and the cake wasn’t fussy about a rise like sponges could be.
Australians do this too? I think it’s because we don’t generally cover our cake in so much frosting as Americans, so it’s more like eating a muffin or a doughnut and less like eating something with the consistency of melting ice cream with a small amount of baked good inside with our fingers.
I actually wasn’t even thinking about the frosting, more that cake is soft and moist and crumbly and what kind of dense monstrosity are y’all eating that you can just pick up a slice like it’s a muffin?????
Well, I can’t speak for your cake, but ours is pretty nice, so, nice cake? that we can pick up? I mean, obviously something like mudcake is dense and holds together really well, but a victoria sponge sandwich is like the opposite of that, and you can still hold that if you want to. I will also say that it’s kind of rare for a cake to have more than two layers, often it only has one (with no filling), and so it’s more structurally sound than something that is super tall and has three or four or more layers stacked with thick layers of buttercream or ganache or something. I’m not saying eating a cake off a plate with a fork or a spoon is unheard of, but often, at a birthday party, someone will just cut you a slice and you’ll eat it with your hands from a paper napkin, and somehow we survive with only about as much dessert carnage as any other nationality.
knitting in the dark 