Life-Changing Cookbooks: Fat Witch Brownies

I’ve had depressive episodes, but not like this one. This was the one that knocked the wind from my lungs. I couldn’t get out of bed—but not like how normal people can’t get out of bed. An ooze the color of black holes sucked any energy I collected from my nightly 12 to 15 hours of sleep, and kept me in my mattress prison. It rendered me useless. My speech was molasses-slow, my voice barely audible. The psychiatrist suggested I take time off work to recuperate and go to intensive outpatient therapy.

I have Bipolar I disorder, which means I vacillate between the lowest of lows—underwater under a pile of rocks in the Mariana Trench, unable to swim to freedom—and the highest peaks in outer space, where I am euphoric and have fantastical ideas and talk too quickly. I make plans to do crazy things like go to graduate school in London, or try to become an indie comic artist in a brand new city.

But this wasn’t a high. It was the winter of 2011. And although Los Angelenos are spoiled when it comes to winters, I knew of no other kind back then, and the ocean chill was devastatingly harsh. For months, I lived my life in a fog of therapy sessions and the bed, of picking at Filipino meals my mother made. She chose to put them on tiny plates for me, since I had lost any semblance of an appetite and only took a few painful bites during dinner. I say painful, I mean it literally. When I ate, my jaw felt like it hadn’t moved in 30 years (I was 25). It creaked. My damn teeth hurt. I barely had the wherewithal to masticate. And swallowing? That took other muscles to work. Simply eating was a chore. I was lucky I lived at home with Mom. Otherwise, I’d probably have lost more weight than I could bear.

And then, for Christmas, my boyfriend at the time, Dylan, gave me a present. It was Patricia Helding’s Fat Witch Brownies: Brownies, Blondies, and Bars from New York’s Legendary Fat Witch Bakery. Dylan had been dealing with my relentless need to sleep, to lay prone, with pure aplomb. I can’t figure out why he would buy such a book for me except for his own mischievousness. Upon presenting me with the book, he chirped, “Now you can make treats for me!”

As I looked through that cookbook, I felt tiny sparks of excitement flaring from my chest. It had been a long time since I experienced such an emotion. What? With just three eggs and some flour and magic, I can make Triple Chocolate Brownies?

I was never a cook. Or a baker. Sure, I made Toll House cookies with Mom when I was a kid. And sometimes she’d let me measure water when she was making me Top Ramen. But teaching and learning how to cook was not in our relationship repertoire, and from toddler, to teen, to young adult, I hardly ever set foot in the kitchen except to steal snacks from the fridge.

But as Dylan and I spent our years as a couple, we found it enjoyable to bake together. After six or seven years of being in a relationship that started when you were both seniors in high school, you’re going to want to find other things to do with each other besides go to concerts (expensive), have sex (you aren’t feeling it/parents are home) or go outside and smoke cigarettes (lung cancer). I had two left hands in the kitchen, but with Dylan’s help, I felt my way around and eventually came up with batches of Duncan Hines brownies.

Now, he was giving me license to bake. On my own. With debilitating depression.

As I looked through that cookbook, I felt tiny sparks of excitement flaring from my chest. It had been a long time since I experienced such an emotion. What? With just three eggs and some flour and magic, I can make Triple Chocolate Brownies? And I can make Pecan Bars, too, if I wanted? The delicious possibilities coming from my own hands! And the book made the results look so appetizing. I couldn’t resist. Even the blackness from my bedroom wasn’t strong enough to keep me from wanting to don a cute li’l apron and making a cute li’l batch of Banana Bread Brownies. I slowly slid out of bed and asked Mom if she had a 9 × 9-inch baking pan.

You might see where this goes. Depressed girl is depressed, depressed girl makes things from a cookbook, depressed girl stops being depressed. But it took time, you see. The first time I set out to bake from the book, I made the original Fat Witch Brownie recipe (the cookbook is a spinoff of Helding’s popular New York City’s bakery, which specialized in brownies). I wouldn’t give them to Dylan—I left them on the dining room table for what I saw as a less tough crowd: my forgiving family of four. The next day, all 12 brownies were gone. I was more stunned than happy. It wasn’t long before Mom would eye me coming into the kitchen and ask in her heavily accented English, “Are you going to bake?” I knew I had to take my baked goods elsewhere when, after putting out a batch of Orange Walnut Bars, Mom patted her stomach and said, “Sylvia, I’m going to eat all of that and get fat!”

So I moved on to my next challenge: Dylan.