HAPPY NEW YEAR.
I’m starting this year with a new cake recipe, and there’s a reason for it too.
I’ve seen a lot of people have been listing their 2022 achievements on social media over the last few days. I’ve seen a lot of pictures and reels and highlights and flashbacks and bullet points of milestones reached. They’ve been really beautiful to see, and if you’ve had a good 2022, you should feel very happy and very proud.
Personally, I found 2022 a little bit tough. I don’t really want to see my 2022 in a reel or a flashback post or a list.
Last year, I didn’t feel like myself, and I didn’t act like it either. Yes, I could pull up a few achievements and some good times I’ll remember forever, it wasn’t ALL bad, but I can’t bank on 2023 offering me anything more than 2022 did unless I’m willing to consciously call out my 2022 for what it was.
It was just… tough. That’s all I can describe it as. My body and mind had to process things it hadn’t before. The man I was at the start of 2022 is not the man I was when I ended it, and while I still kind of miss that man sometimes, I can never be him again. And thank god.
So rather than share a list of my achievements from 2022, I’d rather share a list of the mistakes I made.
Sounds miserable, which it nor I am, because it’s also a list of lessons I learned from them. These are my greatest achievements of 2022, and they will serve as a reminder to myself, and maybe, hopefully, anybody else that needs to hear it, that a bad year doesn’t have to be a prequel to a worse one, if you know how to spot where you can be better to yourself.
This year…
- I didn’t take some opportunities that I should have because I thought I didn’t deserve them 👉🏻 I’ve learned that I actually am ready to try any opportunity that comes to me. My value is decided by nobody other than me.
- I fell for someone harder than I intended to, and spent way too long not getting back up 👉🏻 I accept now that I won’t have control over how hard I fall for someone (that’s the fun bit) but I do have control over the boundaries I put in place should I ever need to get back up again.
- I didn’t give myself a healthy balance of eating what my body wants and what my body needs 👉🏻 I will commit to not allow anything other than my body and appetite to tell me what it wants and needs.
- I overcommitted myself to projects that didn’t bring me joy 👉🏻 The only person I owe creative commitment to is myself, and creativity will always be something I protect as a source of joy that I can create and share at my own pace.
- I beat myself up a lot for not breaking down, or building up, the way I thought I would when I was devastated 👉🏻 I won’t pressure myself to behave emotionally in any other way than what comes natural to me. I will react to trauma or grief however my body decides to react, and trust that it will heal itself the same way.
- I overthought, catastrophised, and offered too much occupancy in my mind to things that REALLY do not matter 👉🏻 I will only give excessive thought to the things that are important to me, that bring me fulfilment, and that I can change for the better.
- I didn’t eat enough cake 👉🏻 I will eat more cake.
There’s my list. It’s everything I did, and it’s everything I hope to never do again.
Compiling this list was not about forgetting any good that’s happened to me last year, and it’s not about providing online identity ballast. I will keep the good bits, the fun bits, and the wonderful achievements of 2022 close to my heart, where they belong; it’s just that I didn’t want to pretend the bad didn’t happen. Every year will be a mixture of both good and bad for everybody, but I want to make sure I pay equal attention to both so that I don’t miss any opportunities to be whole. That way, I can offer myself the privilege of growth, and as a result, maintain a healthy and balanced expectation of the dual experience of living.
I say all that to say, I hope 2023 is everything YOU need it to be.
For those of you who had a list of achievements to share, I hope 2023 brings you even more. Keep acknowledging your achievements – you earned them, and you deserve to be proud of them.
To the rest of you, all of you who have been surrounded by the achievements of others, do not let social media be your comparison Petri dish. You’ve got life right if you’ve got it a little bit wrong sometimes. Do not compare the way your insides feel to the way someone else’s outsides look 🤍
A privilege of living is learning, and if you can learn one thing, let it be that a bad year absolutely does not mean a bad life.
And speaking of learning, you could also learn how to bake a new cake. See, I told you there would be cake. Cake will always feel like an achievement, no matter what kind of list you end up writing at the end of 2023. A cake won’t promise you a year full of personal achievements, but I think it’s a good place to start.
Now… about the cake.
I love plain cakes. Their subtle presence on the table offering a gentle welcome as opposed to a parade that their wildly decorated attention-seeking cake cousins offer. There is a time and a place for those towering thickly creamed cakes adorned with toys, trinkets, wrapped chocolate bars and inedible plants and flowers, but when time is of the essence and the place is your own kitchen, a simple cake with deep flavour is more often what the moment demands.
Yes I’ve used tinned mandarins in this recipe and I urge you to banish any prejudice you may hold.
The mandarins themselves give body and fruity sweetness to the cake, countered smokily with the citrus pepperiness of ground cardamom. You will get the odd juicy morsel of mandarin in the sponge, but mainly their presence is gestured to as opposed to dominated by.
And the syrup left in the can once bubbled with sugar offers a fantastic drizzle, providing a tender yet heavenly moist crumb.
Cuts into 8 slices
For the cake
1 x 300g can mandarins in light syrup
175g plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
175ml olive oil
2 eggs
175ml plain yogurt
175g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the drizzle
The syrup from the can of mandarins
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
1 tablespoon caster sugar
- Preheat the oven to 180°C and line/ grease a round 20cm tin with a loose bottom.
- Drain the mandarins over a saucepan, making sure the pan captures the syrup from the can. Put the pan of syrup to one side and fling the mandarin segments in a bowl.
- To this bowl, add the flour, bicarb and cardamom with a pinch of salt and fork together to combine.
- In another large bowl, combine the olive oil, eggs, yogurt, sugar, and vanilla and whisk to combine.
- Add the dry ingredients into the bowl of wet ingredients, stirring gently as you go until the batter has fully combined.
- Empty the batter into the greased tin and place in the oven for 45 minutes.
- In the last 20 minutes of the cooking time, put the pan of mandarin syrup on a high heat with the cardamom and sugar. Once it starts furiously bubbling, turn it down to a low simmer and let it simmer for the cake’s cooking time until it reduces to a thicker syrup, stirring every now and then.
- Remove the cake from the oven and using a skewer, check that the centre comes out clean when pierced. Prick the cake all over with the skewer and carefully but slowly pour the glaze over the surface of the cake while it sits still in the tin. Don’t worry if it goes to run down the side of the cake, it will set before it gets to the bottom.
- Let the cake cool in its syrupy tin until cooled completely. Carefully remove from the tin, slice and serve.
MIKEY BELL 