There are two kinds of people (well, maybe more but please bear with me. After all, this is a baking, not a psychology, blog).
One type of person thinks that lightening will strike them, that they will be a passenger on the one airplane that crashes this year, etc. The other type assumes that everything will be fine.
I tend to fall into the latter group, but sometimes am persuaded otherwise. That's what happened a few weeks ago when I awoke with a painful cramp in my calf. The pain got worse over the next few days, but I assumed it was a muscle pull that would get better eventually. However, several people whose opinions I normally trust (including DH who "diagnosed" me from the Bahamas) convinced me that I might have deep vein thrombosis. "At your age, I'd be worried about a blood clot," said Josh, DD's charming (really!) boyfriend.
So off I went to the emergency room, but not before enlisting the assistance of a doctor friend whose efforts both reassured me and made my ER experience easy --- a piece of cake, if you will. (Of course, I didn't have a blood clot.)
This is a long way to get to the lemon cake pictured above, but I wanted to thank the doctor and what better way than with a cake?
I didn't have a lot of time, or room for failure, so I decided to go with a more modern recipe. At first, I planned to make the Persian Love Cake (below) but I knew that the high humidity on cake-baking day would torpedo any chance of success.
I settled on the Glazed Lemon Cake from the first Silver Palate Cookbook, c. 1978, which I thought would guarantee a delicious result. But, it was just ok (though the doctor declared it a "masterpiece") and I felt obligated to embellish it with a lemon curd (basically lemons, sugar and egg yolks cooked to make a custard) and some fresh berries.
From now on, I'm sticking to pre-1960 recipes and ignoring the advice of well-meaning friends.
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