Baking and living with a memory impairment

Dec. 5, 2020

Baking and living with a memory impairment

Today I decided to make one dozen cupcakes from a box mix. Then I made some homemade buttercream icing. I used the same recipe that I had used before. I had written some notes on the recipe about how many cupcakes it would frost. I knew that the recipe would have made too much icing so I decided to reduce the ingredients. I took a piece of scrap paper and I figured out what half the recipe would be. Then I cut it in half again. While I was figuring this out, I stared at the fraction ½ and I wondered what it meant. I don't remember this happening before. I tried to figure it out but I was very confused. The fraction ½ looked very weird to me. For a short time, I had no clue! I thought "one over two". I kept saying that in my head. Then I thought that it meant one half, but then that didn't seem right to me. I went online and I found out that 1/2 does mean one half. I knew that I should have known this but I tried not to stress out about it. I was able to figure out how to reduce the recipe. I just figured that later, my head would be clear and 1/2 would look normal to me. A few hours later and things seem to be back to normal. I am so thankful that it didn't last that long. The recipe came out fine. I don't remember this being a problem before when I was following a recipe. I think that this should have been in my long-term memory but today one-half didn't look right to me.

This also happens if I want to double the recipe. I can’t just tell myself to double the ingredients because that doesn’t work anymore. Instead, I need to get a piece of scrap paper and write the name of the recipe. Then I have to figure out what double each ingredient is. Then I write the new measurement and the ingredient on the piece of paper. Once I do that for all of the ingredients, I need to check it a second time to make sure that I figured it out correctly. If I need to make any changes, I just cross it off and write the correct amount. Then I am ready to bake. I need to make sure that I look at this new paper and not the original recipe or else I will make mistakes.

I’m pretty sure that before the memory impairment symptoms took over my life, that I was just able to figure this out and not have to write it down. If the recipe said one cup of something, I would just add two cups. Now I am unable to do that. I have tried to do this without writing it down and I end up doing it all wrong. Just one more change that I have to make.

Although that I know that this is not a big change, I know that with my memory problems it is going to take a while for me to remember to do this. In the meantime, I will probably mess up a few more recipes.