I know what I think, but I honestly don't know what anybody else will think

[conuly]

DEAR ABBY: My 40-year-old daughter is on weight-loss injections and a no-sugar diet. I offered to bake her a sugar-free cheesecake, and she agreed, but she asked me to make a "tester" cake three days before. I explained that the cake has a lengthy preparation process, involving a very slow bake in a water bath and 12 hours chill time. I suggested she wait, but she insisted, so I made it early. She cut a slice of it and exclaimed how great it tasted.

Three days later, I baked and decorated a carrot cake to use as her "official" birthday cake, since the sugar-free cake had been cut and wouldn't look nice in photos. (Carrot is her children's favorite.) I hosted everyone at an expensive restaurant, gave her French perfume and a weekend getaway.

When we returned from the dinner, my daughter angrily said, "Get in here so we can cut this stupid cake, which I can't eat!" I was shocked and confused. She said I shouldn't have made a cake of a flavor she dislikes, but I pointed out that she had the sugar-free cake, too. Apparently, she had expected me to bake a second sugar-free cheesecake. I chewed her out for being ungrateful. Was I wrong? -- UNAPPRECIATED IN CALIFORNIA

DEAR UNAPPRECIATED: I was under the impression that shots for weight loss curbed one's appetite for sweets (and alcoholic beverages as well). Your daughter appears to have an insatiable sweet tooth, sugar-free or not. What she was angling for was two cheesecakes rather than one. Her attitude is entitled and ungrateful, and she should be ashamed of herself. I wish her luck keeping off the weight she loses, because her chances aren't great with that attitude.

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Comments

[conuly]

1. If LW somehow didn't know and couldn't guess what a "tester" is, LW should have asked before agreeing to make one, because it sounds to me that Daughter was pretty clear that she wanted a cheesecake for her birthday, but that she agreed that LW probably should do a trial run before the big event.

2. If LW did not intend to bake a cheesecake for Daughter's birthday then LW should have just said so. Baking a cake that you must know your daughter doesn't like for her own birthday is just petty.

3. With that said, if this letter is accurate as written, Daughter's response was absolutely beyond the pale. Just like LW clearly knows that Daughter doesn't like carrot cake (and certainly knew that Daughter wanted cheesecake), Daughter must be wise to LW's passive-aggressive tricks by now. Why even ask her to do anything when you know what she's like? Do you particularly enjoy throwing tantrums in front of all your guests? (And if Daughter really "insisted" on getting the cake and a trial run, then that goes double. Don't boss around your parents, even if they *are* terrible.)

In conclusion, they both suck.

I'm inclined to dislike LW a bit more, but that's because LW really goes out of the way to express how put-upon they are, and the more people do that, the more annoyed I get. This may be unfair to LW.

[matsushima]

RE: #1: I agree. A "tester" cake is obviously not the cake intended for the event. I think LW knew she was expected to bake a second cake for the actual party or LW wouldn't've gone to great pains to explain what a pain in the ass it is to make this cheesecake, implicitly justifying why she didn't bother making a new one.

[syderia]

My understanding is that there were two cakes for the birthday: the carrot cake (for the kids and to look nice in pictures), and the cheesecake baked three days before, missing a slice.
The mother probably should have warned the daughter that she wouldn't make two cheesecakes (instead of hinting at it by talking about the long prep time), but I do find the daughter more in the wrong.

[cimorene]

If that's uncomplicatedly what was going on, "tester" would not have been used to discuss it. That firmly means that the two cakes would have the same composition, or at least the same basic underlying one.

[melannen]

It kind of feels like Daughter was treating LW like a professional baker - I've never heard of anyone expecting a "tester" cake with friends-and-family baking - and LW was passive-aggressively pretending not to understand what she meant. Yeah, they both suck.

But if what LW actually means is they brought the cheesecake to the party too, just with a slice missing, and made a second cake for display purposes, I think Daughter might suck just a *tiny* bit more.

[watersword]

I mean, I made at least one if not multiple test cakes before baking the real one for a friend when he defended his dissertation, but (a) I was doing the tests for my sake, not his, the cake was a surprise on the day, and (b) I was thrilled to make more cake and share it with friends and get feedback, I did not begrudge the effort! (And chilling a cheesecake overnight is ...not effortful?)

[melannen]

Cooling overnight can be difficult? Obviously you don't have to be with it the entire twelve hours, but I have a very small refrigerator, executive function issues, and an unusual out-of-house work schedule; anything where I have to do a thing, wait a certain number of hours, and then do another thing gets complicated fast. Especially if you expected me to figure out a way to wedge it into my schedule twice in three days. I've spent almost a month trying to fit a project where I have to soak something for six hours in advance into my schedule and haven't found a place yet. If I'd offered to do a time-consuming baking project, knowing I could make room to devote a day to it right before the event, it would be really annoying to be asked to move it by three days, much less do it twice!

[watersword]

Yeah, that's fair, I'm sorry, I should have been more thoughtful about that.

[conuly]

If that’s what LW means then they must have said it and the editor also sucks.

[melannen]

She said "I baked and decorated a carrot cake to use as her "official" birthday cake, since the sugar-free cake had been cut and wouldn't look nice in photos," and "She said I shouldn't have made a cake of a flavor she dislikes, but I pointed out that she had the sugar-free cake, too." which she may think is saying that she brought the cheesecake along to the party too, she just wanted the photos and singing with the carrot cake? People are really bad at actually telling you what they think they are telling you sometimes.

Anyway she still sucks even so, but she sucks considerably less if the cheesecake was also at the party, and I really can't tell from this letter.

[conuly]

Agreed, I also don’t know if the cheesecake made it to the party or if Daughter had one slice and, idk, LW ate the rest.

[edenfalling]

My reading was that the cheesecake did come to the party along with the carrot cake, but the carrot cake was used for photos because to photograph a cake with a missing slice is apparently beyond the pale. *sigh*

Honestly both LW and daughter sound exhausting and I'm sure this is not their first ride on the willful misunderstanding and overreaction merry-go-round.

[green_grrl]

Yeah, I’m with you on all these points, but I definitely dislike LW more. Why on earth could there not have been a carrot cake for everyone else and a slice of the “tester” saved for daughter on her actual birthday? So glad I’m not in this family.

[minoanmiss]

I'm glad I'm not remotely related to these two (I'm pretty sure, anyway).

[dissectionist]

If I was Mom in this case, I would have made two half-size cheesecakes and frozen one. That way you get to test your thing, there’s still a beautiful mini-cheesecake to go to the party in a few days, and I only have to do the work once. (Though to be fair, I have long experience in making double cheesecakes for holidays and freezing one for later use; cheesecake freezes beautifully, and this way we get to enjoy seasonal favorites like eggnog cheesecake and pumpkin cheesecake again months later.)

[petrea_mitchell]

Since no one has addressed the advice itself: "curbed" is not the same as "removed". People can still enjoy food while on the GLP inhibitors (and in fact there are a lot of articles out there explaining how for people who feel they're totally losing their ability to enjoy food).

Also, wow, I thought we were beyond blaming people for their own weight problems, especially after it's turned out that the miracle weight-loss drugs are basically broad-spectrum anti-addiction drugs.

[ethelmay]

Yes, that last sentence is NASTY.

It does not strike me as strange to make two cakes. I would personally rather do without cake entirely than eat something with certain sugar substitutes (several of which cause me gastric pain and none of which I like). Serving a sugar-free cake to random guests as the only option is kind of fraught. And if the daughter is 40 her kids could easily be under ten.

[conuly]

Well, we blame people for every other sort of addiction, so that’s no shock.

[firecat]

The fact that daughter is on glp1’s and is trying to lose weight is completely irrelevant to the issue — part of the issue is that she doesn’t eat sugar, but some people avoid sugar who aren’t on glp1’s or aren’t trying to lose weight.

That makes the attack on the daughter’s weight particularly egregious. If you’re convinced the daughter’s the one solely in the wrong, then call her out for her behavior, but it’s just childish to add on Fatty-McFat to your criticism.

[movingfinger]

I'm struck by the LW's need for a cake that looks good in photos above all else.

[petrea_mitchell]

LW and Daughter, since Daughter wanted a "tester" and, not given one, was discounting the existence of the previously made cake at the party. This family tradition of perfectionism might need some reexamination.

[shreena]

There is a trend now for children's parties to have a nice cake for photos that your child's guests gather round for singing etc and then it is taken home for family and a cheaper cake is sliced up for the party guests. I find this horrifying!

[conuly]

That is so tacky.

[jack]

I'm still confused what happened.

It could have been so lovely, making the fancy no-sugar cheesecake was a really nice thing to be able to do.

It sounds like daughter didn't want to have a completely untested cake for her birthday. I sort of suspected that was because LW had a habit of saying "oh I didn't think you were serious about no sugar, I made something else, I thought that would be ok". But it could be that daughter (correctly) thought that this could be hard and (maybe incorrectly) didn't trust LW to get it right. I still don't know if this was a new recipe or one LW was familiar with.

I think that was a reasonable concern, even if it wasn't reasonable to fulfil. LW said it wasn't really reasonable to fulfil, and daughter insisted. I don't know if that was more "insisting you make me two cakes" or "insisting you don't make an untested cake for the first time for my birthday". Based on "I made it early," I think LW never accepted she was making a test cake and a real cake. She might have been reasonable not to do that, but I don't think she was reasonable to change the plan without telling her daughter. No-one really considered if the cheesecake would be just as nice after three days (I don't know?) or if there was anything prettier than cutting one slice from it.

Daughter saw the "real" cake was one she didn't like and couldn't eat. I don't know if the cheesecake was there as well, probably. I don't know if seeing the carrot cake as the "real" cake was because daughter was precious, or because LW made a big deal out of it. Daughter blew up, not ok, but potentially reasonable depending on how much she experienced "hey, surprise, no birthday cake for you this year, again".

Daughter could be completely unreasonable, or could be completely reasonable and just goaded beyond tolerance, I can't really tell.

Fortunately, then LW wrote in to an advice columnist who cleverly fat-shamed them both for a while, which will hopefully make them understand and love each other better in an unfortunately tense situation <-- sarcasm

[conuly]

No-one really considered if the cheesecake would be just as nice after three days (I don't know?)

NY style cheesecake keeps surprisingly well. Other styles of cheesecake may not. I don't know how making it sugar-free will affect this.

[sushiflop]

The advice is so, so meanspirited and unnecessary, but I actually have some sympathy for LW because it sucks to feel like you're merely a dispenser of whatever favor the asker needs.

[sushiflop]

Also I think if it were gonna be so emotionally loaded on her side, daughter should have just purchased a cake or gone without. As the wise Captain Awkward says, sometimes the cheapest way to pay for things is with money.

[shreena]

I think the other thing I would punt into this is that food and sharing food is clearly very deeply emotionally loaded.

I have a son with an egg allergy and hands down the worst bit of it is that he can almost never have a slice of birthday cake at a party.

Even when (rarely) a host gets him a separate egg free cupcake (usually we take something for him), while a kind thing to do, it isn't the same thing at all as partaking in the shared experience.

When it's his birthday, it would never occur to us to get a cake with eggs for photos and everyone else and him a separate thing. It's his birthday and he deserves to be able to share a cake he can eat with everyone.

I am vegetarian and similarly if someone made me a special birthday meal, I would feel like it was weird if say it was hog roast for everyone else and a separate veggie option for me.