Joy the Baker

Let’s play a game called Usta Wanna or… I Used to Want To.  

I usta wanna be brave enough to go down the free fall water slide at the water park. 

I usta wanna be a traffic cop… the kind that would dance in the street on occasion… the kind that I saw at the end of a slow evening news show sometime when I was about six.  I actually still want to be one of those traffic cops.  No joke.

I usta wanna take the swim test at overnight summer camp privately.  Something about doing my life saving dog paddle in front of the entire girls camp made me nauseous.  

I usta wanna design a postage stamp.  This is the precious dream of a young girl whose parents both work at the post office.

Between the ages of 13 and 15, I usta wanna eat nothing but popcorn and orange juice.  I dunno…. I never claimed to be reasonable. 

I usta wanna completely negate whole wheat from my life.  If I could have eaten Wonder Bread and ignored the whole wheat millet bread my parents bought as I was growing up… ooooh, how dreams would have come true.  Because whole wheat seemed to be impossible to escape, it would seem that somewhere along the way I grew fond of it.  For this reason, I bring you…  Honey Whole Wheat Pound Cake.  

Let’s talk about it. 

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Lemon-Drenched Lemon Cake.

For this cake, simple loaf pans just don’t measure up. After one slice of the perfect, absolutely perfect cake, it became clear that when I next bake this cake (tomorrow morning), I’ll need to devise some sort of pillow shaped cake pan.

This cake is going to be my new pillow. Forget goose feathers, cotton fluff, memory foam… I want, I need, I’m not sure how I’m going to live without a Lemon-Drenched Lemon Cake Pillow.

For serious.

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Lemon and blueberry are my go-to ( by ‘go-to’ I actually mean lazy) combination.  I’ve never had a bad day if lemon and blueberry joined forces at breakfast.  It’s true, they never fail me.

Too bad I can’t say the same thing for the fail dogs.   Have you seen the creatures?   They are dogs (that have little to do with baking, blueberries or lemon) who have tried and failed in one way or another.  They make me laugh.  They make me cry.  I was a cat person until the fail dogs changed my life.

Now back to the Lemon Poppyseed Bread with wild blueberries…

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I come from a family of proud home bakers.  I developed my love for baking helping my father put together delicious desserts in our tiny, pea green family kitchen.  This recipe for pound cake came from my father’s sister.  My Aunt DeeDee loved two things in this life: Jesus and baking.  Even after being blinded by a brain tumor in her mid thirties, she would still insist on baking every family members’ birthday cakes.  Even without her sight, she still had the touch for the perfect cake.  This pound cake recipe came from her very old Kraft cookbook.  I’ve doctored it up with a bit of lemon and blueberry, but at its heart, it’s still my favorite of Aunt DeeDee’s masterpieces.

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