A Sourdough Chocolate Cake

on matrescence, mental health, and missing someone you've never met

I have officially been a mother for eight years today. This period of matrescence began when I first tried to become pregnant, and has only come to its full conclusion in the last year or so. Matrescence is a word I use often, encompassing all the various far-reaching changes we go through during the long process of becoming a mother. For some people, perhaps that period is much shorter.

For me, the road has been long and beautiful, bumpy and heartbreaking. In these eight years, I have birthed two children, given up all alcohol, and spent a small fortune on therapy. I have worked for a long list of various clients, sometimes bringing a baby strapped to my chest to meetings. I have nursed in a hot car, away from a room full of child-free wine executives. I have cooked, cleaned, cared for, comforted, cuddled, cried, corrected, and calmed. I have mended. I have accepted. I have shifted and ended relationships with family members (including my own mother) in an effort to protect my mental health.

If there’s one thing having children will do, it is bring all of those long-buried fears and childhood traumas to the surface. In order to be the best possible mother I could be, I knew I would have to address my collection of coping mechanisms, seemingly held together with fraying duct tape and many protestations. I had to find healthier ways of processing my emotions.

My period of matrescence taught me the importance of self-understanding. It also taught me the value of seeking community. I’ve found some of my nearest and dearest friends online. I have connected with mothers from around the world, sharing my stories and bearing witness to theirs. And I have found a handful of wiser women who have walked this path for longer. Women whose children are perhaps older and have been doing this life business a bit longer. Women like Chapin Smith, who wrote a Substack featured publication called A Sourdough Story.

Chapin is a great writer, a talented photographer, and a brilliant baker. She shared recipes from A Sourdough Story until about two months ago. After becoming a paid subscriber, I was allowed access to her vault of incredible sourdough recipes and thoughtful musings on her slow, connected life in the Pacific Northwest. Her children are older than mine, and I was continually encouraged by her stories about her life with them, and her warm humor. I baked her Toasted Pecan Brown Sugar Sourdough Cookies for Christmas last year, and they were the fastest to disappear from the cookie platter. Her Sourdough Chocolate Cake has become my family’s most-requested — it is this cake, and only this cake, that my son wanted to celebrate his birthday. Her recipes are bang-on.

And then two months ago, she disappeared. She popped up on Substack Notes one day, saying she was exhausted and going to take a break from publishing for two weeks. By the next day, she had disappeared. A Sourdough Story, that incredible treasure trove of wisdom and recipes, was just gone. Deleted. Her Instagram and other social media handles were gone too. Deleted. All evidence of her work just went poof and disappeared.

Every few days, I would check again just to see if she had made it back. I checked on the accounts of other women who knew her,

Claire Venus

and

Sarah Fay Writers at Work

, to see if they had noticed Chapin’s disappearance. The consensus seemed to be that everyone else was feeling her absence, and no one knew where she had gone.

I cannot purport to understand the reasons why Chapin would pull down her Substack, and her entire social media footprint. I do know that two things are true: one; every person has the right to do whatever it takes to protect their mental health (if this is even a situation relating to her mental health! We truly don’t know!), as long as it doesn’t harm others, and two; our presence on this internet can be deeply felt and missed when it is gone. The internet can be a terrible place, but it is also a place of genuine connection and community.

I greatly value the relationships I have that have developed over the internet. I treasure the help and wisdom I have been able to access as I have processed my childhood traumas and made sense of my life as a mother, all thanks to the internet. And yet.

I did not have a friend-level relationship with Chapin. I didn’t actually know her, the way I might know my next-door neighbor who once let me pick all the tiny peaches from his tree to make a pie for my children. I don’t know her like I know some of the other parents in my children’s outdoor school program, who enjoy the same forested playground we do. Chapin is a woman I admired, not a woman I knew.

And so, I cannot just walk over to her cottage in the woods to see if she is okay. I cannot bring her a posy of wildflowers and sit at her kitchen table and see if she needs anything. I cannot offer to do her dishes or bring in the laundry. (As a complete introvert, the idea of an internet stranger showing up at my door like this sounds positively horrifying.)

We can, and should, continue to seek out voices that resonate with us on the internet. We can, and should, form communities online that are built upon mutual support and witnessing.

We can, and must, remember to nurture our communities in real life. We should be able to show up for each other in person. We desperately need to share and communicate with others face-to-face, to help shoulder the burdens we all carry.

I was not able to fully transition into an integrated adult self — mother, writer, woman— until I began to find my community. A mix of long-distance and local friendships, made up entirely of other mothers who could completely understand the challenges unique to this period of matrescence. Today, I celebrate several things: my son’s birthday, the emergence of my integrated motherhood, and the community that contributed in various ways to us reaching this day.

And of course, we celebrate with Chapin’s Sourdough Chocolate Cake.
(Recipe shared below.)

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Chapin Smith’s Sourdough Chocolate Cake

This recipe was shared by Chapin Smith, of the much-missed A Sourdough Story on Substack. I have made my own changes, reordering the ingredients, adding notes, and making substitutions so that it works best for my family. I do not claim it is her exact recipe (nor would I feel comfortable sharing someone else’s work verbatim)! And I absolutely cannot claim it wholly as my own. So please use this as a snapshot, a little legacy of a beloved recipe passed down from one baker to the world, then through me, and off to you. As with all recipes, follow your own judgement if something feels off to you. Please note all recipe quantities are in grams, as it is so much easier and more accurate than cup measures. If you bake more than once a year, a kitchen scale is a worthwhile $20 investment.

Ingredients

250 grams AP flour

60 grams cocoa powder (I use a mix of Dutch-processsed and natural, but either will work fine)

7 grams sea salt

12 grams baking soda

165 grams brown sugar

165 grams white sugar

150 grams sour cream / yogurt

2 eggs, 1 egg yolk

100 grams sourdough discard

300 grams dark beer / root beer / coffee (I typically use a combination of non-alcoholic dark beer and decaf coffee)

250 grams unsalted butter

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Butter and line with parchment paper a 13x9 inch pan.

In a pot, over the stovetop warm the beer/coffee and butter until butter is fully melted. Remove from stovetop to cool completely.

In a medium bowl combine all dry ingredients together. Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine sourdough discard, sour cream/yogurt and eggs. Add the beer/coffee/butter mixture and stir to combine. Add the dry ingredients slowly. Stir until fully combined. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake at 350 F for 40 minutes or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean.

Once cake has cooled, frost cake, if you like. This cake is also excellent as a plain snacking cake, or dusted lightly with powdered sugar just before serving. Cake lasts up to 5 days covered and refrigerated, though I just leave it on the counter, as it usually is gone well before the end of the second day!