i'd rather be baking

So it’s finally summer, right? I realize that for most of you, it may as well have been summer for a month already, but not so here in Utah. In fact, only last couple of weeks have been remotely hot and at this point we’re kind of grateful for it. After all, it’s almost July.

Anyhow, now that summer weather has arrived in full force, all I really want to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dessert is fruit. All I really want to eat for dinner is chips and salsa, but that’s another story.

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My house is a mess, my blog is neglected, and my list of projects seems to be growing by the moment. But I had a beautiful week with my family. And I have this.

My family came to town for a week and I just didn’t want to think of anything else, so I pretty much didn’t. And thanks to many delicious dinners out, we didn’t really eat dessert all week. Can you believe it? Me either.

I was thus left with this angel food cake, which we bought to eat with an abundance of strawberries and never did. The other day after everyone had boarded their flights and the house was quiet, I remembered reading a recipe for strawberry icebox cake on Apartment Therapy. They used graham crackers, but if life gives you angel food cake, why not use it, right?

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Every week, I buy approximately five, often disgustingly green bananas. And nearly every week, come Friday they are gone. This is because I place one lovingly in Ryan’s hand on his way out the door each morning, as though he were six. Hey, at least I don’t put a note in his lunch or pat him on the head. Although I probably would if I could reach it.

Despite my determination to squeeze some fruit into my husband’s breakfast and pass along some of that potassium and calcium stuff, I woke up last Monday morning to find no less than seven rapidly browning bananas. You know the kind I mean. They’re so mushy that they remind me of baby food and make me gag a little on the inside. I’m going to be such a great mom.

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I think that if, by some cruel trick, I had to discard my growing cookbook collection and keep just one, it would be this one. Without much of a contest. America’s Test Kitchen knows their stuff and never ceases to provide inspiration.

Their recipes also provide great hacking potential. Now I know, that sort of defeats their entire purpose – they like to work the kinks out of a recipe so that you can prepare it exactly as written, with great results. That’s all well and good, but sometimes I get bored.

These tiny, flavor-filled strawberry cakes were born of an entirely different recipe, for a moist, coffee cake-like thing filled with blueberries, that I’ve made a zillion times. It’s always delicious, but guess what? It’s not blueberry season.

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This week finds us butting up against the final holiday weekend of the year, fighting our second round of head colds this month, and packing up our house for the impending move. Oh yes, and missing these beauties.

We made these tasty little squares a couple of weeks ago, uploaded the photos, and then somehow forgot about them. But don’t let that fool you — they’re crazy delicious. A buttery cake base provided the perfect home for a bunch of the cherries that I pitted and froze this summer, when they were too cheap to leave at the grocery store.

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