I made a delicious braided bread braid filled with sweetened cream cheese and homemade lemon curd a few weeks back. I shared some with Paige because it was too pretty to keep to myself. The recipe is from Smitten Kitchen, one of my favorite websites for great food.

Here are the spotty orchids currently in bloom by my front door.

I took the kid and dog to the playground 3 or 4 nights ago and stood on a fire ant hill. Fire ant bites form pustules that sting and itch like mad; if you scratch them, they pop open and spread sticky gold fluid all over and they just itch more. Look how far the redness extends…you should see the toe with FOUR bites on it!! Fire ant stings peak at 48 hours for me, so 6 hours after this photo was taken, I was begging Zach to PLEASE find the anti-itch spray so I could get some sleep!

This is my Sunday view. Looking at the washing machines, and eating bread and butter from Sandy’s Cafe.

This rainy day photo was taken back at the beginning of the rainstorm that caused the flooding. We were tired of being cooped up inside, so we took our umbrellas for a walk to the pier.

Despite the rain, the water was crystal clear, and we could see Parrotfish down amongst the rocks! Hmm, he is hard to see in this picture. Click here for someone else’s better photo.

I pulled over on my bike to take a photo of this glorious passionflower vine in a pot.

The Boogedy went to the new office with dad to help run network cables after Goombay Festival. This activity was deemed more fun than the festival itself, so much so that he forgot his tummy ache, which he’d had for days, and which the funnel cake and hot dog did nothing to stop.

 

 

Honey Lemon Cake!

This cake is SO delicious and light and fluffy, not like many of the other things I’ve made using honey instead of sugar. Zach has been telling me that the reason I haven’t been successful is that I’m trying to do the substitution myself, rather than just looking for recipes that call for honey from the get-go. But for me, baking comes on a whim, and I’m not always up for recipe hunting the moment before I bake.  I’m also not a big experimenter: if the recipe fails the first time, I’m unlikely to modify it to try a second time.

We have two kinds of local raw honey on hand at home in bulk (and I mean A LOT of honey). One is a golden liquid honey that tastes like commercial clover honey. It is good for using in recipes that have another overpowering flavor, like homemade hot chocolate with cinnamon and cayenne pepper, or my deep dark honey molasses ginger unsnaps, but it is too cloying to use in something like chocolate chip cookies, which was a big failure last week.

We purchased the other honey in a 5-gallon bucket last fall at the Downtown Salt Lake Farmer’s Market and it’s solid and creamy tan. It is AMAZING in tea or on hot toast with butter, but it is not easily spreadable and sticks like glue to every measuring cup. This is the honey I used this time, and I will be baking with it in the future (Oiling every spoon or licking my fingers where that fails!).

Here is the recipe for this delicious cake. The Jugalbandi blog was recommended by the computer as something I would like to read. It’s the best recommendation I’ve gotten so far! Jai and Bee have a beautiful site with gorgeous photos and an exotic feel.

Because I have a well stocked pantry, I didn’t have to shop for anything except a single lemon!

Lemon Heart Tart

Here’s a photo of the lemon tart I made using this great-sounding recipe from Smitten Kitchen. I’m sure the recipe is wonderful…but since I used a mixture of powdered sugar and honey on hand (no regular sugar), I’m equally certain that whatever went wrong was my fault. Plus, I don’t like it when people complain about recipes when they made all sorts of modifications.

I used meyer lemons. Turns out I am of the camp that should have used a regular lemon, I would have preferred more tartness.

The crust I did exactly as instructed and it was ok, a bit stiff, so I think if I do this crust again, I will press it in, rather than roll it out.

It was pretty though! I’ll say that. And actually, improved with age. Two days later the leftovers are Yummy.