Well, we’re less than a month from Christmas now, so that means… holiday baking! Not only for Christmas, but also for my Jewish and Muslim friends, and for some who celebrate other holidays. For friends who don’t celebrate anything over the holiday season (except for having time off from school or work!), I bake New Year’s goodies ‘-)
Can you tell that I love to bake? This year and last, though, I’ve had quite a challenge for my baking. It’s called CRPS, but often referred to by its old name; RSD. Complex Regional Pain Syndrome or Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy.
Under either name it’s a rare and very painful neuro-inflammatory disease; it generally affects the limbs, and in my case it’s my (dominant) right hand and arm. It started back in March 2016, triggered by a broken arm (a Colles’ fracture, or snapped radius, near the wrist joint).
This nasty disease has caused joint issues in each joint of every finger, as well as in my wrist. It’s usually fine for me to use a keyboard & mouse, which is great as I work at a computer all day! What’s really difficult are the fine motor skills and coordination needed for baking, craft work, sewing, and a lot of other activities I’ve always loved.
For baking, the CRPS makes it very challenging to fold egg whites into a melted chocolate mixture, to decorate fancy cupcakes, to stir melting sugar into butter while simultaneously scraping the pan… all those things that are such an integral – and for me, instinctual- part of baking.
Last year I wasn’t able to bake very much; I was accepted as a patient at a large university medical centre in late November 2016, so was in the midst of starting an entirely new treatment regimen during the holiday period. So the only recipes I baked for the holidays last year were:
- Almond-orange cookies, with chopped candied fruit
- Apple-cinnamon buttermilk muffins
- Chocolate cupcakes, topped with dark chocolate ganache
- Chocolate torte
- Cranberry-apple muffins
- Crustless mini-quiches
- Irish soda bread
- Vanilla cupcakes, with lemon frosting
So this year, despite still not having (for baking purposes!) a fully functional right hand, I wanted to bake something special. So I decided to try to make a Yule log, for the first time ever!
This type of rolled cake is called a called a “bûche de Noël” in French, and is very popular in the Montréal area. And with my husband and his father ‘-)
As an admitted chocoholic, I found a fantastic-looking recipe in one of my many baking books for this type of cake. Before planning to serve it for our New Year’s Day family dinner, though, I wanted to test the recipe. To be sure that I could make it, using only one hand.
It came out really well, and these photos just don’t do it justice! But my CRPS caused 2 problems. First off, the cake wasn’t evenly rolled. I couldn’t use my right hand properly to roll the cake; I had to use only my right thumb.
Because the right side of the cake wasn’t rolled as tightly as the left side, the entire cake rose a bit towards the right. The other problem was more serious. By the time I finished icing & rolling the cake, and then adding the chocolate bark, my hand and wrist were in agony. I was throwing up, from the neuropathic – or nerve – pain.
Despite all this, my husband declared my chocolate log cake to be excellent. I figured he might be just a bit biased, so wanted some other opinions. I brought the leftovers to my physiotherapy clinic, where I seem to spend most of my free time these days, and everyone there loved it.
The cake was both delicious and very pretty, so I was disappointed that it didn’t seem that I’d be able to make it again… I’m just not willing to cause myself that level of pain for the sake of baking a cake.
But when I re-read the notes for the recipe, I realized that this cake can be made in 4 separate stages – some of them up to 48 hours in advance. So my new plan for our family New Year’s Day supper is to bake the bûche de Noël in 4 stages:
- Make the chocolate bark (48 hours early)
- Bake the cake, which has to be rolled into a tea towel while it’s still warm (up to 24 hours in advance)
- Make the icing, v-e-r-y carefully unroll the cake, ice it, and re-roll it (then store for up to 24 hours)
- Decorate the log cake with the chilled chocolate bark pieces (up to 8 hours ahead)
Why am I posting about baking with CRPS? Because I learned an important lesson about this rare neuro-inflammatory disease today. Or at least about something that I can do to try to limit pain flares from over-using my right hand and arm.
The lesson? To try to find ways to do things in stages; whether making a recipe or doing another activity with my right hand and arm. Wish me luck on December 29th, when I make this bûche de Noël again – in stages this time – for New Year’s Day!
For more on the holidays, read about my favourite Christmas story, a post I wrote way back in 2007. In the meantime, I’m going to help my husband with the left-overs of that chocolate Yule log cake ‘-)
