A writing check-in

Writing is still a very new practice for me, and I’m still trying to get comfy with it. Plus, another recipe!

This post marks my third full month of writing Sunday Stretches. Let’s do a check in. Do we feel good? Do you feel good? Have these newsletters started any sort of emotional renaissance for you, like they have for me? Looking back at my past posts, my thesis at the start, I’m hoping I’m still on track.

All of the parts of me that I saw (maybe continue to see) as undesirable, I’ve shown a spotlight on and have given it some much-deserved love. A few readers have reached out, either in the comments, or have privately messaged me, saying that they’ve resonated with certain posts—that’s so exciting for me and I love being able to facilitate these kinds of conversations.

That being said, writing is not my strong suit. As a chemist by education, the form of writing that I’m used to are lab reports, scientific articles (this one of mine just got published!), or experimental procedures. While I was a grad assistant, I would tell my students to write devoid of emotion. All that matters in a lab report or an article is your hypothesis, method, results, and a practical reflection on how else you can get to proving your hypothesis, based on the results you’ve gathered. There was no “I’m sad that I didn’t get the results I wanted” or “We jumped for joy in our little lab when our reaction went as planned!” If a student wrote that in their submitted report, I would strike it through with a big, red, 0.5mm pen.

The line of work I currently do is very research-heavy, paperwork-heavy, convincing-higher-ups-heavy, and I need a creative outlet to function properly. For three years, my cottage bakery was that for me. Why did I choose to bake? Because I was good at it. I chose to monetize something that I was good at because I knew that the results would be consistent and I knew how to market good product. But I’m sure that you’ve seen some sort of form of “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” floating around on social media. Once I got media attention for baking, people made me out to be a one-trick pony. If I wasn’t always cranking out ube croissants, they were not happy. I already have insane expectations of myself, but piling everyone else’s on top of my own became a monumental task. The weight of it all squashed out any remaining joy, to the point that I no longer wanted to make food for myself. I didn’t want to just be known as a baker, I wanted to be known for more than that.

In contrast, writing is very new to me and I still don’t think I’m any good at it. I’m not a multiple drafts kind of person. I’ll crank out a first draft, a final, and then I’ll send it out to the world. It’s scary leaving a creative practice I had been cultivating and perfecting for a few years, for another creative practice that I haven’t touched since high school. It’s scary going from baked goods to raw, unpredictable emotions in a newsletter.

Feeling out my feelings is something I enjoy, sometimes even masochistically. I treat Sunday Stretch almost like a journaling practice. If I find myself deep in the dark, cavernous trenches of sadness, I want to go spelunking through it. If I find myself at the peak of happiness—hell yeah, let’s climb it together, and then descend to level ground together. The ever-changing altitudes of emotions make the landscape of life so exciting and remind me that I’m alive.

Honestly, even a year ago, I wouldn’t have said that last sentence. I’m shocked I’m going to publish it.

I’ve joked (mostly to myself) about how writing this newsletter is kind of like homework. Sometimes I’ll stay up late, headphones on my head, and immerse myself in wherever my prompt brings me. I’m not graded on it, but engagement on posts is like a self-imposed grade. Do I pay attention to the numbers that Substack compiles for me? You know it. Do these numbers make me all the more terrified that I’ve left a successful baking venture? Oh, hell yeah it does. Sometimes I feel like I’m shouting into a void. But typing and writing will get me carpal tunnel way slower than tediously rolling out dough, and writing a bi-weekly, 1000-ish word essay on exploring emotions gives me infinitely more fulfillment.

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This past, corporately-recognized holiday, I was at home, by myself, and made myself an A+ dinner. I’m a gal who loves steak and will cook any form of red meat for a special occasion. But this recipe isn’t for a steak—that’s really easy to make. This recipe is for a tiny, 4” basque cheesecake for when you want to treat yourself. I’ve only had a basque cheesecake twice before and each time I’ve told my several lactose-intolerant self, “You should take that lactase pill right now. Also, this is so easy, you should make it for yourself.” And so I did.

Note: have everything at room temperature. It’ll make your life so easy.

Ingredients:
4oz. cream cheese (AKA half a Philadelphia cream cheese block)
3 tbsp heavy cream
1 tbsp sour cream
1 egg
A splash of vanilla extract, or vanilla bean paste
2 tbsp sugar, plus some for the top
1 1/2 tbsp flour

1. Move an oven rack the highest tier it can go, and preheat your oven to 500º F. Yes, that’s right. It’ll get hot.

2. Completely line your 4” cake pan with parchment paper. One of the characteristics I love of a basque cheesecake are the uneven, craggy-looking sides. To make it easy for yourself, crumple up the parchment paper into a ball before fitting it to the pan.

3. Hand whisk together the cream cheese, heavy cream and sour cream.

4. Once that’s homogenous, add the egg, then the vanilla and sugar.

5. Add the flour and mix until it’s fully incorporated, but don’t mix too much! We don’t want a bready cheesecake.

6. Pour the mixture into your lined pan, sprinkle the top with sugar. The original recipe doesn’t ask for this, but it’ll give you a crème brulée-ish top, and you’ll thank me later for it.

7. Place your cake pan on that top rack, in the very back of your oven, lower the oven temp to 450º and bake for 20 minutes. I left it in for a little longer until the top got nice and dark brown.

8. This step will test your patience: let cool and then put in the fridge for a couple of hours to let set. Before you want to eat it, let sit a room temperature for 20-30 minutes.

   

9. Enjoy with any topping you want, but enjoy it on its own first. Marvel at and savor the browning effects of the Maillard reaction.