I made a cake with stevia and I feel like I betrayed my entire being.

 

It was a rainy weekend and I was doing some soul searching. It was a busy week beforehand and I needed to take time to reconnect with my spirit. I needed to reset my mindset and tune into me. I needed to peel back the layers of the great croissant that is my soul. I needed to take a step back and remember what was important to me and what I wanted out of life.

 

It took hours of laying down, but eventually the skies in my clouded mind dispersed and I could see clearly. I knew what I needed to do. I had plenty of oranges and a plastic bag for full of dreams. I had goals. I had ambitions. I aspired eat the entirety of something with a mini fork.

 

But there were competing forces at play. The eternal tussle between wanting to eat so much crap you practically sweat gravy and wanting to have the kind of rig that gives other people self-esteem issues is ever present in my mind. It’s a hell of a fight. Sometimes the ravenous wreck comes out on top, and sometimes I’m able to stay on the path of smug nutrition, because nothing motivates you to keep fit quite like the possibility of completely unhinging the mental stability of people you don’t know with your pert arse.

 

Of course, there are also times when you try to compromise. You can see the value in treating yourself to something tasty but also have the foresight to know you don’t ever want a weedy intern nurse to struggle under the weight of your fat apron should your crippling obesity hospitalise you.

 

This citrusy circle of shame was one of those compromises. I decided to make an orange and almond cake, and bought the necessary almond meal (which may as well be the ground bones of Jesus Christ himself it was that expensive, by the way) while on a long walk. Sure, the walk was just something for me to do to justify bathing for the second time that day but I still didn’t want to undo my activity. So as I trudged home with the dust of the rich in the plastic shopping bag I made a promise to myself.

 

I promised myself I could eat an entire family-sized dessert as long as I could pretend it was healthy. I’ve made this promise before. Mostly it’s pie or crumble related. I use ground oats instead of flour in my bases and olive oil spread instead of butter and I tell myself it’s an acceptable move to gorge myself on an entire industrial-sized pie in the space of 48 hours. So I was feeling pretty confident about my plan to replace the sugar content in the cake with stevia.

 

I’d heard nothing but praise for this plant-based sweetener. Everything from “just as sweet as a sugar” and “probably not as poisonous as most sweeteners” filled me with an unshakeable confidence. Not only was this cake going to taste fantastic, but because this powder of dreams was plant-based and the other ingredients were two whole oranges (yep, you used the whole fruity sphere), almonds, eggs and good intentions, it was going to be a health extravaganza.

 

Oh, how wrong I was. Once the hours-long process of preparing and cooking the cake was completed, I raised the confection to my mouth and had to swallow my pride. The stevia was far from the powdery dream I had expected.

 

Instead it tasted like I had replaced the sugar with the salt gathered from evaporated urine left out in the sun. It tasted like someone was angry with me. It tasted like citrusy hate. And it had done this all to myself.

 

All I wanted to do was to simply consume more the recommended daily intake of sugar and happiness. Instead, I had spent two hours crafting physical misery, and it wasn’t even moist! I just wanted a treat that wouldn’t make my hate myself completely but in doing so I had created tea anti-cake.

 

The only thing left to do was to hide my sins in a layer of unplanned icing. I combined the three superfoods of butter, icing sugar and cream cheese to create a delicious sludge of sinnery. I was sure it would cover the aftertaste of the stevia, which I read is a problem the world over. Apparently it is a great sweetener, but it leaves a dreadful taste WHICH IS COMPLETELY SENSELESS. What is the point of using a sweetener to replace sugar if it has an awful taste?! WHO ARE YOU MONSTERS?!

 

Unfortunately the great icing distraction didn’t work, and I was now with a horrible tasting cake that was drowning in calories. It was a disaster. No person should be subjected to that kind of shit. No one deserves it. So I did the only decent thing I could do.

 

I took it to work the next day.