When Darin came home I said, “I have to stop cooking on Mondays. Or at least cooking anything complicated. Or anything new. I have the kids all day. I’m a wreck by dinner time.”

“What happened?”

“I made a chicken pot pie. And it’s all going wrong! Look at it!”

He looked in the oven. “It looks fine.”

“But it’s not browning! It says it’s supposed to be golden brown! Something probably went wrong with the dough.”

“Okay, you’re having free-floating anxiety. Just calm down.”

“I forgot the mushrooms! Chicken pot pie is all about the mushrooms and I forgot them.”

“It’ll be okay.”

Later, after eating:

Darin: “You know, with mushrooms this would have been perfect, but this was pretty good. In fact, this is the best thing you’ve made recently.”

Diane began to hit her head against the table. “You can’t say that to someone with free-floating anxiety!”

“Because now you’re wondering what was wrong with all the other meals you’ve made? Everything is fine, hon.”

“I’m only making pasta on Mondays.”

“If that’s what you want to do, that would be fine. But this was great.”

§

I used the chicken pot pie recipe from The Best Recipe. And I have to tell you: I am a die-hard follow-the-recipe-exactly kind of girl, and something always goes wrong with these recipes. This time it was the pastry topping. Add the flour and salt to the food processor, it said. Okay.

Add the butter, cover them in flour, pulse so many times, and it should look like such-and-so.

Huh. Mine still looks kinda just like flour.

Add the shortening. Pulse in. You should get something that looks like yellow cornmeal.

Hmmm. Mine kinda looks like flour with a few lumps here and there. Food processor works okay, I’m pretty sure of that.

Add 3 tablespoons of water to the dough. Add one more tablespoon if and only if the dough isn’t hanging together.

Is adding 2 to 3 more tablespoons okay? Because that’s what it’s taking me to get mine to hang tough.

In the end it turned out okay—tasty, but the kids wouldn’t eat it (of course). Darin was quite pleased. The pastry topping was tasty. But man…The Best Recipe never runs smoothly for me.

Errrr, I accidentally bought some self-rising flour instead of standard, run of the mill flour.

1. What in the heck is “self-rising flour”?
2. Does anyone have any recipes that call for self-rising flour, so I can see if I can rid of this stuff?

Update: Aha. Well, with more judicious Googling than I had been doing, I found the following: “1 cup of self-rising flour contains 1 teaspoon of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. It can be used instead of all-purpose flour in a recipe by reducing the salt and baking powder according to these proportions.”

So to use self-rising flour in recipes asking for flour, baking powder, and salt will require math. Well, okay.

Earlier this week I had open the Complete Cooking Light Cookbook and Simon said, “I wanna make that.” He was pointing to the blueberry pound cake on the cover.

“Sure!” I said. “We’ll make it on the weekend, for breakfast.”

This morning Sophia shook me awake and said, “It’s time to make the cake, Mom.” (I can see what the rest of my life is going to be like. Mistake #1: teaching her what “the weekend” is.)

So we mixed and shook and folded and baked, and after baking we had this:

My intrepid assistant attempts to steal the cake

The cake, unfrosted

The cake, frosted

The inside of said cake

This is, in fact, the first time I have ever made a cake from scratch. Darin made his own birthday cake from scratch, and my contribution to that effort was to clean up, both work area and plate. I have made cakes from boxes. I have never made a cake from scratch before. I didn’t even know you could while growing up.

Blueberry Pound Cake

From: The Complete Cooking Light Cookbook

2 cups granulated sugar
1/3 cup butter or stick margarine, softened
1/2 cup (4 ounces) 1/3-less-fat cream cheese, softened
3 large eggs
1 large egg white
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour, divided
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 oz. lemon low-fat yogurt (1 carton)
Cooking spray
1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar
4 teaspoons lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 350F.

2. Beat granulated sugar, butter, and cream cheese at medium speed of a mixer until well-blended (about 5 minutes). Add eggs and egg white, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla.

3. Light spoon flour into dry measuring cups and level with a knife. Combine 2 tablespoons flour and blueberries in a small bowl; toss to coat. Combine remaining flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add flour mixture to sugar mixture alternately with yogurt, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Fold in blueberry mixture.

4. Pour batter into a 10-inch tube pan (angel food cake pan) coated with cooking spray. Sharply tap pan once on counter to remove air bubbles. Bake at 350F for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.

5. Cook cake in pan 10 minutes on a wire rack; remove cake from sides of pan. Cool 15 additional minutes on wire rack; remove cake from bottom of pan. Combine powdered sugar and lemon juice in a small bowl; drizzle over warm cake. Cut into slices using a serrated knife. Yield: 16 servings.

Calories 288 (22% from fat); Fat 6.9g (sat 3.9g, mono 2g, poly 0.4g); Protein 5 g; Carb 52.2g; Fiber 1 g; Chol 56mg; Iron 1.2mg; Sodium 212mg; Calc 45mg

Everyone pronounced themselves quite happy with the cake and all pieces were eaten. (Well, all the pieces that were served, of course. And 16 slices? Hahahahaha. I don’t think so.)

Problems I had with this cake: As you can tell, the crust of the cake is quite a bit darker and harder than the crust of the cake in the book. Overcooked? Too near the heating element? Bundt pan instead of angel food pan? It was still tasty. I just wanna know why mine wasn’t golden brown.

I also made a)too much icing with b)the wrong type of sugar. I used the extrafine granulated instead of powdered, which made the icing grainy instead of smooth.