
Doing my usual internet rounds a little two weeks ago, I spotted a photo of sumptuous looking cake doughnuts on www.tastespotting.com— I unabashedly visit Tastespotting along with Tom and Lorenzo everyday.

I clicked on the link with the plan to quickly feast my eyes and move on but the story I found on Sweetsugarbean, the blog to which the link led, excavated feelings buried not quite so far below my uneven-keeled surface. The food blogger, Renée, is in the throes of post-breakup agony, according to her post on the blog. So, because I have been that woman– blindsided, broken and beyond despair– because I am still, sometimes, that woman, I knew I had to take to my kitchen and try my hands at the recipe she shared as a sort of pseudo-symbolic (tautology intended) means of showing solidarity. Heartbreak is a lugubriously beautiful existence. Its occurrence is so quotidien, that we often forget how profound it’s impact is. I once opined in the unintelligable language of my delirious pain:
Have You Ever?
Have you ever seen a heartbreaking? Have you ever heard a heart breaking? Have you ever felt a heart,
breaking? Have you ever tasted your heart breaking? Have you ever smelt heartbreak?
They say it is the most quotidian of things…like birth and death it happens everyday. Well, I have
seensmeltheardfelttastedheardbreathed it and it is more wondrous than a winged-boy, drenched in
molten wax, enshrouded by a floating airy globe of plumage, falling out of the sky.
He saw my heartbreaking, my heartbreak and my heart break and he told me I looked open,sad, but as he
said this his heart did not break and so mine broke all over again.
Just some nights back, I woke from a dream through which the former being of my affections trampled and I decided it was time to share some of the beauty of heartbreak here, in the incarnation of these very simple and tasty cake doughnuts. The point here is not the food (though, I suppose it is), or the eating (I served and gave away all but one to my darling friends) but the need to create and to share, and the desire to be shared that bubbles –or did for me at least– from the hot oil of a breakup, in order to climb out of the pot of boiling anguish, cooked into a more well-done version of our self. My dream last night was emblamatic, for me, that the spoils of love (lost) may never dissolve into nothingness, but that I am no longer shaken by dreams such as these, an indeed am able to observe them with equanimity, shows how far I have traveled,
not just from the darkness, but in the darkness. And yet, there is so much growing left to do and though:
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
…I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
– Robert Frost
Renée, I made these in your honour. Thank you for sharing you pain candidly. And for the lovely recipe: the doughnuts delicious by all accounts. I wish for you better and brighter days ahead.
And if you came for the food porn, I’ll stop rambling now. Doughnuts take centre stage:
*Get the recipe from Renée’s blog here*
I dusted some of my doughnuts in organic cane sugar and the rest in cinnamon sugar and served with a frothy almond milk latte to friends who were present for the greasefest.
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Tags: Auden,
Breakup,
Cinnamon,
Coffee,
cooking,
Donut,
Doughnut,
Food,
Frost,
Heartbreak,
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About Natasha
Word- and dough-smith. Girl in search of "the illumination, that ecstatic flash, from which truth emerges".
great post-i love your writing-and the way you weave things together. -corina
Corina,
Thank you for these very kind words, and for reading the post. I have always found writing quite cathartic.
x
Natasha
Thanks for this Natasha. Your donuts look great! I hope you are doing well. Me? Good days are more frequently mixed in with the bad, which is all I can ask for now. But better things are coming 🙂
Hi Renee,
I am glad to hear that there is light that occasionally pierces through your darkness. And it will only get brighter and brigher. Indeed, better things are ahead. Do keep inspiring us by sharing your culinary prowess..we will continue to devour it all 🙂
x
Natasha
brighter and brighter*