The Week of Cake

When I was a child, the week in May which held both of my brothers’ birthdays was always a week of excitement.  I was the middle child, stuck between two boys who had their birthdays within 5 days of each other, but I never had a problem relinquishing the spotlight to them since two birthdays meant double the birthday parties, double the cake and double the candy-filled grab bags.

Once I was diagnosed with diabetes, this week in May became a bittersweet time because eating cake was no longer a carefree experience.  Diabetes had transformed it into a carefully calculated procedure of matching cake piece size and sweetness with insulin dosage.  When I was on needles I struggled the hardest with this balance because extra carbs for dessert meant I needed to cut carbs in my meal, which was often difficult when special birthday dinners included my favourite homemade fries.  Once I began using an insulin pump I gained more flexibility in being able to have more or less carbs as I chose, but even still, I find that having over 60g of carbs in one sitting is too many carbs to deal with and giving the proper insulin to carb ratio won't necessarily stop me from flying high.   

Mmmm....Chocolate Chip Banana Cake

This year, there were actually three cakes featured as we had one cake for each brother’s birthday as per usual but the day after my older brother’s birthday, his girlfriend brought over another home baked cake.  Monday I baked a New York style cheesecake that we topped with whipped cream and strawberries, Thursday involved a cookie dough explosion ice cream cake and Friday was a delicious banana chocolate chip ganache covered cake (definitely my favourite of the 3, and the one pictured here).  Since I wasn’t home Friday, I had my piece of delicious banana cake Saturday morning (dessert for breakfast...it’s a thing), which caused some elevated blood sugar levels in the morning, but everything was under control by noon.

The week of cake will always be a great week in May, and my diabetes will definitely never stand in the way of great celebrations with friends and family.  Despite my diabetes, I can still have my cake, and eat it too.