Because I Love You All...

There's some serious yumminess going on in my oven at the moment, and it's just too good to keep to myself.

My grandmother - a lovely, sweet woman with a mean talent in the kitchen - shared a recipe for blueberry bread with me many, many years ago. I've discovered, though, that this recipe is good for any number of applications if blueberries aren't readily available - it's really a "little black dress" sort of recipe. Anyway, today's incarnation is lemon-poppy seed and here, for your pleasure, is how to get one for yourself:

Cream together one stick of room temperature butter, one cup of white sugar and two eggs. In a separate bowl, combine two cups of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder and a teaspoon or so of salt (I never bother with the measuring of salt - a good pinch will do). Measure out a cup of milk (to which you can add a tablespoon or so of vanilla, if you like) and begin adding the flour mixture and the milk to the butter in alternating stages until you've got a nice, smooth batter.

Once you've finished this, you can add whatever you like - blueberries, strawberries, peaches and pecans, chocolate chips and walnuts, rhubarb and raspberries, or, as I've done today, the zest and juice of one lemon and enough poppy seeds so that the whole thing looks right (today's loaf is a little heavy on the poppy seeds - Beanie was helping me and got a little over-enthusiastic with them. Here's hoping my job doesn't issue a random drug test in the next day or so...).

You can then decide on your baking vessel of choice. Usually, I make muffins, but today we've employed a loaf pan (well greased and floured - it's no good if you can't get it out of the pan). Bake your yummies at 350 for about a half hour or so - use the toothpick method to check to see if you're done. You can then glaze or not - the lemon poppy gets glazed with 10X sugar mixed with lemon juice and the strawberry variety gets a hit of melted jam, but I leave every other choice naked. Though, come to think of it, a bit of rum over the peach-and-pecan might not be such a bad thing....