arsenal of cakes

Here I am, dreaming about cake all week, baking up a storm, and I slip on by Molly's page only to find she, too, has been thinking about cake! It must be in the air.
Here are the cakes of my week - number one, a classic, easy chocolate cake, just one layer. It has coffee in it so it went perfectly with coffee ice cream. Best eaten in the afternoon, with a friend.
Number two - a heavenly fragrant, moist Fig Cake, made with homemade jam from dried figs. This one takes an extra hour to make the jam, but my friends who tried it all said it was one of the best cakes I have ever made. Naturally, this cake is going in my repertoire, rather, my arsenal of cakes.

Number three (shown above) - Molly's French Yogurt Cake, made with tangelo instead of lemon. I soaked the cake with both the syrup and the glaze, as suggested by Molly. I wanted to use lemon, believe me, but all I had was one lonely beautiful tangelo. Yesterday it was raining and Finn was napping and I had just enough time, maybe 10 minutes, and all the right ingredients to throw together this lovely cake.

Allergies have been terrible, but it hasn't stopped the loveliness of life from proceeding. The bearded irises are blooming.

The sun tea is steeping.

And the cakes are cooling.

I wonder what cakes this coming week will bring!
What is your favorite cake?

watchfully and tenderly

Happy Earth Day!
As you can see out my window, the trees are donning their green and the air is fresh and warm.

I updated the mantle as part of my spring cleaning. That painting with mixed media was made by a good friend of mine, actually one of the dearest friends to my heart. It says "My Life Is Changing", which is a mantra I began long ago and which she and I chant to one another as the years go by.
It is never not true.

And here is the sweet little lace trim peeking out of the pocket of my apron. Now that it is done I am anxious to bake a cake while wearing it.
I do have my eye on a recipe for a Fig Cake. I imagine I might make it tomorrow, to welcome home Mimi and Gen, who have been away for nearly a week.

Because the weather was finally warm and not windy today Natalie and Luke came over and we worked in the garden. I battled some spearmint but they are really the ones that did the work. They brought over the seedlings they watchfully and tenderly grew at home, and they transplanted the tomatoes and onions into the garden.

Like I mentioned, we battled the spearmint. Here's Natalie, showing the remains of our plunders.

I'm reading "Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You," a collection of short stories by Alice Munro, whom I love. Her work is the best example of ideal fiction I could imagine. She writes with such simplicity, but the reader can plainly see how carefully her words have been chosen. Sometimes I pause at a short paragraph, wondering exactly why she found it necessary to add those sentences. What do they mean in relation to the rest of the story? What weight could a cherry pound cake wrapped doubly in wax paper and newspaper carry in a story about romance or the lack of?
When I read her words I feel that I need not ever try to write my own fiction, because she has already written exactly what I would hope to convey. It's a feeling both comforting and disconcerting.

welcome

Hello! Glad you made it. I love beginning again.
Goodbye to the old, hello to the new!