When you:

• Feel a little ground down from life
• Are questioning whether you are a big hypocrite
• Just want to curl up in your bed, under the covers, and never leave
• Count down the days until the weekend, starting Monday morning
• Are frustrated with some of your co-workers and wonder if the workplace isn’t actually just the setting of a passive aggressive war in which there are many weapons and tactics at your disposal
• Hate the slavish bi-partisanship of your Supreme Court and the batshit, corrupt, the malevolent insanity of your Congress, and the crushing disappointment of your president
• Have a sore tastebud on the tip of your tongue, making everything you eat torturous
• Are totally running out of healthy meal-like food but don’t have time or the energy to make a grocery store run (so you totally just eat peanut butter frosting instead)
• Find the charm of cakes to lie in their presentation, not their taste
• (Okay, maybe you also like their taste too)

This is your power song:

Listen to this song on repeat, and, with a fatalistic sort of determination, make exactly half of this recipe: cake, frosting, and ganache. Discover that, in some cosmic twist of fate, there are just enough ingredients in your pantry to do this.

Ditch the standing mixer and beat everything with a bowl, wooden spoon, and all your anger.

(Maybe pour yourself a couple fingers of bourbon on the rocks because you really deserve it right now.)

Pour out the cake batter into a 9×13″ rimmed quarter sheet pan that has been buttered, lined with parchment, and buttered again. Bake for 30 minutes, cool completely.

Go Momofuku Milk Bar style: use a 6″ cake ring to stamp out two circles, and — waste not, want not — squish the remaining scraps together inside the cake ring to create a third. It doesn’t need to be pretty. It just needs to provide a strong foundation.

Realize that was the dumbest metaphor for your life.

Wrap each disc in plastic wrap and put them in the freezer overnight, or for a good couple of hours. They will thaw quickly, and will be much easier to work with.

Line your trusty cake ring with 6″-wide acetate and assemble your cake. Put the disc you made from cake scraps on the bottom, inside the collar. Spoon on and thickly (but evenly) spread peanut butter frosting. Repeat with the remaining two discs. Finish with a layer of peanut butter frosting.

Pour the peanut butter ganache on top. This is your final layer. Refrigerate overnight.

The next morning, remove the cake ring and carefully peel away the acetate.

Remember to always smile, even when you want to punch some people in the face. Don’t give those people any cake.