Game Day Rag Wreath

I know, I know. I've been a terrible blogger. It's been months since I last wrote about something I baked or created or did, and I apologize because I'm sure so many of you have been lost without me (ha. right.). But today is a new day and it's time to get back into the swing of blogging! And first up is a Game Day Wreath!

I really have discovered a slight obsession with wreaths. I don't think my front door can ever be bare again! But hopefully after this wreath, I won't have to make one for awhile (unless someone else wants me to make one for them) because I have one for all seasons...including football!

Yes, I know this is a super old picture of the stadium, but it's one of my faves that I have

I don't think it's any secret that I'm an NC State fan. Born and bred until the day I die. I also am a HUGE football fan. I really wanted to make a wreath to put up on my door on game days, and I've seen a bunch of rag wreaths on Pinterest and I loved the way they looked, so I thought that would be the perfect direction to take, even though I knew it would be quite the time commitment.

Finding the basic fabrics and wreath form were easy. I went with the 16 inch 4 layer-wire wreath form, and I got a yard each of white, red, and red gingham cotton fabrics. I wanted the wreath to have a little bit of a vintage feel (football is well over 150 years old!) which is why I went with the gingham for a pattern break. BUT I wasn't done yet with my fabric selection.

The dream was to have an NC State patterned fabric also in the mix, but unfortunately all the local fabric stores had no NC State fabric. Well, one had a fleece fabric, but that was not going to work for this project. So thus began the online search. There were a lot of terrible NC State fabrics. A lot of them had old logos I wasn't a fan of, and quite a few had a ton of black and I didn't really want a lot of black in my wreath...it's not "we're the RED and WHITE from State and we know we are the BEST!" for nothing! But then on eBay I found the best vintage fabric! It had the seal with the Bell Tower, and most importantly it had Tuffy, the strutting wolf logo that I LOVE.

I got a yard of that fabric, so all-in-all I had four yards of fabric...and just to warn you if you're thinking of making one, yes, I did use just about all of it. 

I sat down and got to work. I cut each fabric into 1 inch by 9 inch strips. And I ended up with hundreds and hundreds of strips!

To resist any temptation to make the wreath uniform, since I really just wanted it to be a mish-mash, I tossed the strips together so I could just pull from the top as I tied them on!

With season one of Arrested Development on (side note: I am SO pumped for the new season next year!) I spent hours and hours tying. Literally. I got through half the first season (that's about 5 hours). I tied them in a square knot, starting on the inner ring and working my way to the outermost ring. There were eight "sections" in the ring so I went by section rather than row. I was kind of concerned the fabric would be too thin to stay up and not be all droopy, but when I tested a couple strips they worked perfectly!

I know this technically isn't the inner ring, but I took the picture before I changed my method!

When I was finally done, I had...THIS!

It's just so fun! And fluffy! And quite huge. I was no expecting it to be that big, but I guess using all that fabric really would have led to it. I also used one of the magnetic wreath holders because a typical wreath holder would 1) ruin the aesthetic and 2) put it at a spot that would cover my apartment number or peep hole...two things that are very important. You don't really see the NC State stuff on the specialty fabric until you're up close, but I think it's pretty obvious it's an NC State wreath! I can't wait to have this on my door on game days!!

New York, New York

So after six months of not taking a single day off (except for paid holidays and the occasional sick day), I headed up to NYC to visit one of my best friends, Laura, for a long weekend! I've been to New York plenty of times, so this trip was more about hanging out and eating a ton of good food.

While I was in the plane looking down into the clouds, I realized the last time I was in a plane, I was jumping out of it. It was kind of one of those "oh, that's right, I did that" moments haha. You wouldn't think you'd forget something like that. Also, SkyMall totally sucked. Normally, I love looking at all the random silly crap you can buy, but there were practical ads, and it was really sparse on hilarity. The best thing was probably the eyelashes you could buy for your car's headlights.

After landing in the city and making my way to Laura's office, we went to dinner at Max Brenner.

This place is amazing and all about the chocolate. We decided to split an entree so we could really indulge in dessert. TOTALLY the best idea ever. We got the pizza with "the works", which is basically a pastry dough crust, with chocolate sauce, bananas, marshmallows, hazelnuts, and peanut butter sauce. Unbelievable. Even though I was full before I was done, I kept wanting to eat it.

Friday, Laura had to work, so I ended up spending the day wandering the city and probably walked a few miles without realizing it, which is incredibly easy to do. I spent a few hours at the Museum of Modern Art, which is one of my favorite museums, and it's been awhile since I'd been there. There was a Cindy Sherman exhibit, which I didn't spend much time in because frankly, as soon as I saw those clown paintings, I bee-lined out of there. I hate clowns. Art or no art.

Anyways, I did see a couple really cool things. Probably one of my favorites was this art instillation, "Untitled" by Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

It was two really large sections of silver-wrapped candy that he put together after his partner died of AIDS in 1991. According to the description of the piece, it "reflects broadly on the incurability of the illness." And it asked for visitors to take a piece, because it would be replenished over time, to activate "a continuous process of depletion and regeneration." I thought the concept was really cool, and of course took a piece of candy to help the artist's vision.

I will say though, with some art, I just don't get it. Take this piece by John McCracken called "The Absolutely Naked Fragrance."

Uh. What? And the description doesn't really help either, because I still don't get it. McCracken said, "I see the plank as existing between two worlds, the floor representing the physical world of standing objects, trees, cars, buildings, human bodies, and everything, and the wall representing the world of the imagination, illusionistic painting space, human mental space, and all that."

HOW do you get that from a pink piece of wood? I clearly don't have a super artistic mind (or I don't get it because I don't do drugs...I'm thinking the latter is probably more accurate).

However, on the 6th floor, I found some of my favorite paintings and artists.

"Starry Night" by Vincent Van Gogh

"Dynamism of a Soccer Player" by Umberto Boccioni (I've always loved this one!)

A couple Kandinskys!!!!

"Water Lilies" by Claude Monet. I want to hang this in my apartment.

I finally got hungry and decided that I wanted to grab some Pret and have lunch in Central Park since it was such a gorgeous day.

Then after more aimless wandering along 5th Avenue (poor person HELL), I headed back over to where Laura works to wait for her to get off. And all that walking made me hungry again, so I decided to get some Mister Softee. Ooooooh Mister Softee.

Can you tell I like taking pictures of food?

With some time to kill before dinner, we ended up going to yoga at the studio Laura goes to, Yoga Vida. The room the class was in was so awesome. Dark hardwood floors, big white columns in the room, tons of windows. It was great. And the class was fairly hardcore, but I was able to keep up which felt good (I've only been doing yoga a few months, so I have zero clue how good or bad I am). I also learned that Bon Iver makes for kickass yoga music. I feel that is very obvious, but I just didn't think about it until then.

We finished up with the right amount of time to go meet my Aunt Mary and Uncle Dennis for dinner at Bar Six. It's like this little French bistro cafe thing, and the food there was sooooo good. I had the wild mushroom risotto, and then Laura and I split some profiteroles for dessert. Oh so heavenly. The conversation was great, and it was so fun to finally meet my uncle! (He and my aunt got married this past November and they are grossly cute together)

We also met up with some of Laura's friends at a bar in Brooklyn which was a good time. Until we were walking home and saw THE BIGGEST RAT EVER. Ew. Not a fan of that at all.

Saturday was more of that whole walking thing. We decided to hit up the Brooklyn Flea to see if maybe I could find some plates for my plate wall that is still just an idea in my head.

There was some really cool stuff there (and some ridiculously random things (no sir, I do not want to buy your obviously old and used lucky rabbit feet...if they're lucky, why are you selling them), typical flea marketness), but out of my price range. And unfortunately no plates. But if Laura and I didn't already have very important lunch plans, I would have stuffed my face there because they had some incredible smelling food. They even had a guy serving shaved ice, THAT HE WAS SHAVING RIGHT OFF THE BLOCK IN FRONT OF YOU. Incredible. No machine. No nothing. Just a man and his ice pick (ha. ha. that's what she said).

So what was so important about lunch? Well, it was pretty much the only thing I wanted to do while I was in New York this time around. A couple years ago, I saw on the Travel Channel about this restaurant. That served fancy mac 'n cheese. And what's my favorite food? Oh, that's right: Mac 'n Cheese. The place is called S'Mac, and oh. my. gosh.

How heavenly does that look? We decided the sampler platter was the way to go, the only downfall being that we couldn't choose what to put in it, but it was the best way to try the most flavors. The sample platter has the All-American, 4 Cheese, Cheeseburger (that really tastes like a cheeseburger, not Hamburger Helper style), La Mancha, Cajun, Napoletana (it tasted like a pizza!), Alpine (with real slab bacon, not that thin crap we normally eat), and Parisienne. SO SO SO GOOD. Totally worth it. I was not disappointed even after building it up so high in my head.

Since the flea market was kind of a dead end on plates, we decided to hit up this place called Fishs Eddy that my aunt recommended. This place might be my absolute new favorite store. If I had a lot of money, I would have spent it all in that store. So many fun dishes and glasses and home things. They have some plates with floor plans on them and other fun patterns. They also had some random vintage plates. Some were $70 (no thank you, even though they're cool!), but then others were more in my price range.

I had decided I really needed to find that "anchor plate" to build my wall around. I needed to just buy that first plate to get me started and it would be easier to find others to go with it. I just hadn't found that perfect plate that I just had to have on my wall. Until I walked into this store. I saw this plate in the back of a shelf, behind a bunch of other random things. I pulled it out and just got so excited because this was it. I couldn't put it down, so I knew I had to get it. Plus, it's green. And we all know how much I love just about anything green. And then I found a plain white plate, but with a really fun border design. So I went from no plates to two!

Not the best picture, but you get the idea

 And what did we do to top off the great Saturday? Dinner at Mesa Grill. MESA EFFING GRILL. When getting beers on Thursday before dinner, Laura was telling me about going there for her graduation dinner, and of course I told her how jealous I was because I love Bobby Flay. Love. And I've always wanted to go to one of his restaurants. Totally touristy and lame, I know, but I've heard his food is amazing. So half an hour later, we had reservations.

Can I just say, this was phenomenal. We started with a basket full of some of the best bread ever, including corn bread, made with half blue corn half yellow corn. I had the New Mexican Spice Rubbed Pork Tenderloin with the Sweet Potato Tamale. I just could not get over that tamale. And I'm really bad with spicy food; I love it, but I'm super sensitive to it and it always sets my mouth on fire. But this was that perfect amount of kick that didn't stick around too long. Laura had the soft shell crabs, and then we shared the roasted corn with chipotle aioli, lime and cotija, and the mashed potatoes that had green chile queso sauce in them. And we topped the meal off with the churros. SO WORTH IT. That meal was incredible.

We finished the night with some beers out with some of Laura's friends and then Sunday was a really relaxing day of brunch with her friends and then flying home. Of course at brunch, I couldn't get through a weekend, even vacation, without some little baking, even though it was real simple. I made Berry Danish Minis, which are basically just crescent rolls, cream cheese, and crushed fresh blueberries.

 Overall, the trip was great. It was very relaxing (which I feel can be hard to achieve in NYC where everything is go.go.go), and it was so wonderful to spend some time with Laura.

Peppermint Patty Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

I'm starting to think I have some sort of affinity for putting candy into already perfectly good desserts, as evidenced by my Cadbury Creme Egg Brownies, Candy Corn Chocolate Chip Cookies, and now...Peppermint Patty Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars!

Sometimes I get hit by this super urge to bake (but if we're being honest here, it's more like always), and that happened this past weekend, so I trolled my Pinterest baking board and picked these! I love chocolate chip cookie bars because they're a little more cakey than a typical cookie, and I love the cool flavors of peppermint patties, so this seemed like an ideal combo! I'm going to take the fact that the ones I brought to the office on Monday disappeared within about 3 hours as a sign that they were a hit! And I may or may not have found myself eating these for breakfast since I've been too lazy to go out and buy more milk after running out...I always like starting my days on a ridiculous sugar high, don't you?

There are a few different sizes you could make with this. You could do 8x8 if you want really thick bars, 9x9   for a tiny bit thicker (I found this fit the peppermint patties best, so it's the size I made), or if you're making them for a large crowd and want a thinner bar, go with 11x9 and double the amount of patties. Either way, you'll want to line the pan with aluminum foil generously sprayed with baking spray (I love Baker's Joy. It's a miracle in a spray can).

In a separate bowl, combine three cups flour with 1 teaspoon baking soda and 3/4 teaspoon salt.

In your mixer, you'll combine 2 sticks (1 cup) of room temperature butter with 3/4 cup granulated sugar and 3/4 cup brown sugar, until light and fluffy. I think my addiction to baking is evidenced by the fact that I love the smell of butter and sugar mixing together (and I would have used a different phrasing, except it sounded super dirty, and I'm trying to not be gross...but $5 if you can guess what I would have said!)

Once the butter and sugar is well combined, beat in 2 eggs and 1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract.

Then you'll veeeeeeeeeerry slowly add in the dry ingredients. The easiest way to do that is probably keeping the mixer on the lowest speed and pouring in the flour mixture a little bit at a time. You definitely don't want to add it in all at once because otherwise it'll be more difficult to get everything well combined and not have huge flour pockets at the bottom of the mixer bowl.

Then you'll add in a 12oz bag of chocolate chunks. I actually used the chunks, but you could also just get regular chocolate chips too if you want.

Once the batter is completed, you'll press half of it into the bottom of the pan, making a solid layer of cookie bar. Then you'll unwrap lots and lots of peppermint patties (I used a 12oz bag which had 24 patties) and place them to get maximum coverage.

Look at all those wrappers!

Then you'll take the rest of the batter and press it down on top of the patties to finish the patty sandwich. I thought this would be more difficult to get the batter to really spread out how I needed it too, but it proved to be very easy!

And then after baking at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes, I had some deeeeelicious bars!!!

There really is something about that shock of peppermint coolness, that even though you know it's there, it still kind of surprises you. And all that melted chocolate and cakey texture of the bars! Definitely another hit in my book. 

What to do, what to do?

There comes a point in your life where you realize you're sort of...floundering. No, not acting like the fish, because that would be...weird (but maybe being able to swim really far in the ocean would be fun...but that's very much beside the point). It's more like you realize that even though just about every part of your life is really good and on track, and you're really happy day in and day out, there is still something missing.

That part that's missing is what keeps you from feeling like your life is moving forward, is what is giving you the feeling that you're just staying in the moment. Not that it's a bad moment to stay in, but one that you know won't provide long-term satisfaction. Even though I still stand by the fact that I think the parts of my life outside of work are what will provide me my happiest moments, and provide me the life I love, I still feel I need to be in a position where in those 8+ hours a day I feel like I'm accomplishing something meaningful.

I've spent a lot of time throwing out a lot of ideas, testing the waters and looking into those possibilities. But so far nothing had felt....right. Nothing really screamed, "this is what you should be doing!" I probably look a little flighty with the fact that I get grand ideas and then I don't follow through with them. In general, it's not a testament to my character because I'm not a flighty person (or at least I don't think so), but I think the reason I hadn't fully followed through with most of these ideas was because they just weren't...right. I would talk about ideas a lot because it was part of the "testing the waters" phase, but then I'd eventually realize that that's just not where I want my life to go at this point. I know life will bring new and unexpected, yet welcome, changes over the years, but right now, I'm just thinking about what I see for myself in the next five years (yup. good ol' 5 year plan). I probably should stop talking about those grand plans so much, because when people start to ask me a lot of questions about whatever plan I had, I start to get frustrated and worry that they're judging me for not continuing with it or thinking I'm "not living up to my potential" or some crap like that, even though I know whatever it was just wasn't fitting me.

Everything I've done so far has always felt very temporary. Partly because those positions were temporary, and partly because I just knew they weren't what I wanted to do forever anyways. It's hard to stay motivated with something if you know you don't want to do it much longer, and I really hate that. It's not that I don't love the opportunities I've been given, especially because of the fantastic people I now have in my life, but I hate not feeling motivated, I hate not feeling like I'm accomplishing anything, I hate feeling like I'm just getting by to get by. I really want to find something where I feel more stable, feel more like this is where I want to be, need to be.

Lately, I've had this nagging feeling of "I just want to help people." I'm the kind of person that loves doing things for people. Whether it's baking, helping with tasks, or just being there for them. When I was in college, I was pretty involved with the non-profit world. I was constantly volunteering with the Alliance of AIDS Services - Carolina, and was leading the Student Global AIDS Campaign on campus. I earned a minor in Non-Profit Studies, and almost enjoyed those classes more than my Communication ones sometimes. Unfortunately when I graduated, my career path kept going in multiple different ways because I couldn't quite get a grasp on what I was interested in, plus the job market has been very tricky. While at this age, I think it's fine to try different things, I do know I needed to be more focused on figuring out that part of my life and get some solid footing.

When my friend Curtis did the Vote Against project, it kind of hit me how much I miss that, miss making a difference in my community, miss connecting with people fighting for and supporting something you believe in. What he did, the difference he made with everyone he came across, really struck a chord with me was kind of the last bit of the puzzle that helped guide me back to the nonprofit world.

In an effort to at least get back into volunteering, I participated in the community service day the church I've been attending held. I really enjoyed it and it reminded me why I like volunteering. I also have become a member of the Activate Good community online to get updates on future volunteer opportunities with non-profits in the area. I haven't been able to participate yet (mostly because of scheduling factors), but I follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and through email, for when I know I can, or see an opportunity I'd enjoy getting involved in.

Part of the problem has been that I don't want to volunteer just to volunteer, but actually do something I have an interest in, and feel that my dedication isn't superficial and self-serving where I can just keep saying "well, I volunteer!" I want to do something where I really feel dedicated to making a difference in someone's life. I have emailed both Planned Parenthood and the Alliance to see about what I can do to help, so we will see what opportunities that leads to because those are both organizations that I really believe in what they are doing for the community. Part of the problem is I also don't want to do just event-based volunteering, because while important and I still enjoy doing it and will do it, I want to contribute in other ways as well. Unfortunately a lot of those opportunities are during business hours, so I haven't been able to much yet.

After a lot of thinking, mostly internally, but also asking advice of one of my favorite past professors (love you Mindy!), I have decided I'm going to get the Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management from NC State through the School of Public and International Affairs. Even if I find some other opportunity in the middle of getting it, non-profit or otherwise, that really screams "this is what you should be doing!" I feel that the knowledge I learn from the certificate program will be beneficial, because either way, I want to at least volunteer. Maybe one day when I'm older and feel I have some expertise, I can be on a board of directors at a non-profit, and this knowledge will be useful. I've constantly thought about going back to school, but nothing I had seen really interested me. I really like learning, but sometimes it's hard to just do it on my own. Having a time set aside where someone teaches me is far easier to make sure I learn rather than me going out and just doing random research on my own. This certificate program I think will be great. I'm interested in learning about the topics either way, but I still hope it'll help me with a career in the non-profit sector.

I am a bit scared though. I've been out of school for four years now, and I'm a little worried I won't remember how to take notes or study or think analytically (plus that cost...ouch. But I think it's worth it). I know I'm not going for a masters, and I'll only be doing it part-time, only one class a semester, but on top of a full-time job, plus, you know, having a life, it'll be a lot added on.

Even though I'm a little scared, I'm also really looking forward to it. I kind of like the idea of having a class to go to, especially on such an interesting topic (I'm starting with the Management on Nonprofit Organizations course). When I did my cake decorating class, my Dreamweaver class, and my pottery class, I just liked having that set time to go and learn something new. While this is obviously waaaaay more intense than those, it's something I think I'll really enjoy having in my life. Also, I kind of love the fact that I still get to keep my old student ID from undergrad.

So here we go! Let's see where this takes me...

Lemon-Blueberry Pound Cake, Blueberry Gelato, and the Force

I was watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother awhile ago (one of my absolute favorite shows), and Ted and Marshall had this brilliant tradition. Every three years they would watch the Star Wars Trilogy all in a row (the classics, not that crappy new stuff). I just thought, that sounds like an amazing idea, especially since they're my favorite movies, yet I have never done that before (plus, Marshall said that if you didn't, the dark side would win....and that. cannot. happen). So me and my friends, Nichole, Katie, and Tyler decided that it needed to happen, it had to happen. 

And can I tell you what? It was amazing. I just sat there the whole time thinking that these movies are waaaaaaay better than just about any of the computer-generated crap they call action sci-fi movies nowadays (I do not include Iron Man, The Avengers, Star Trek(yes, all of them), and X-Men First Class in this because those movies are kick-ass). I love the story, the actors, the graphics, the settings, and we decided that a bartender R2D2 must be in our lives (but not the stuff they thought it would be okay to add in and be totally obvious about...no, I do not need to see the whole empire dancing once the emperor is killed, thank you. I was perfectly fine without it before and I still am). Okay. I'll stop waxing poetically about the amazingness of Star Wars because I'm pretty sure that isn't why you read my blog. 

So of course, since this was going to be an all day event, we were going to need some sustenance. I decided to make a Lemon-Blueberry pound cake (that is also serving as my breakfast this week) and some Blueberry Gelato to go with it! I love those flavors, and I've been itching to make some homemade gelato because it's been awhile since I last had. (Please prepare yourself for a long, picture-heavy blog post. I apologize. Well, no I don't. Because I love blogging, so I like the occasional long post. So read on!)

First up, the gelato! The thing about the recipes I use is that they can take a couple days to really make, so it's definitely not one of those instant gratification desserts, but the wait is always worth it. 

You'll start by putting 3 cups of fresh blueberries in a pot and sprinkle 1/4 cup sugar and 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice over them. You'll mix it up so they're well coated and the sugar has dissolved, and then let it sit for 30 minutes (In the below picture, I have it on the stove, but you won't turn the heat on just yet!)

While the blueberries were marinating, I started the base. You'll pour 2 cups whole milk and 1 cup heavy cream into a saucepan. You'll then put it on medium-low heat

You'll let that sit over the heat until tiny bubbles start to form (can you see those bubbles? It was hard to get a good picture of them). 

Once those bubbles have formed, in a heat proof bowl, you'll combine four egg yolks and 2/3 cup sugar, and whisk hardcore until it's light yellow.

You'll then temper in the cream and milk mixture to the egg and sugar mixture. This means you'll pour in a bit at a time so as not to "scramble" the eggs. Once you have it all combined and whisked well together, you'll pour it back into the pan, over low heat, and let it thicken up and coats the back of the spoon. Then you'll pour the finished custard into a bowl (through a fine mesh strainer), let it cool to room temperature (stirring every few minutes), cover it, and place it in the fridge to chill for at least 4 hours. I usually do this part at night and let it chill over night.

While working on the base, and the blueberries have sat for 30 minutes, you'll turn the eye on to low heat and let the blueberries become a syrup. They'll break down and will deflate some, but won't completely turn to syrup (which is fine because then you'll have fresh blueberry bits to prove that it's real!). And once that is done, and cooled to room temperature, you'll also put that in the fridge.

The next day (or four hours later if you're doing all of this in one day), you'll blend the blueberries with about half of the base.

Once that's well blended, pour it into the rest of the base and whisk your little heart out! I also decided that I wanted to add just about 1/2 tsp of vanilla to give it a little more of a blueberries 'n cream taste. GENIUS move, Carolyn. GENIUS.

I then put the mixture into my ice cream maker, and let it church for about 30 minutes!

When the gelato was done churning, I poured it into my container and then froze it for a couple of hours so it would finish setting. Of course, before washing the dishes, I kept licking the freezer bowl. And licking it, and licking it because oh. em. gee. That stuff is delicious. It was a super refreshing and light flavor, and so creamy. Yum, yum, yum. I took the leftovers to the office today too and it was just about gone when I left at the end of the day.

Okay. Now for the pound cake!!

Remember that last bundt cake I made? Where I used five sticks of butter? Well, I used a little healthier of a recipe this time around, where I used only 1 stick of butter, and fat free cream cheese and fat free lemon yogurt for the rest of the moisture in the cake!

I started by going ahead and squeezing the 1/4 cup of lemon juice I was going to need. 

I also coated the 2 cups of frozen blueberries with 2 tablespoons of flour (that is taken from the 3 cups of flour I put in a separate bowl). Doing this is what prevents all the blueberries from sinking to the bottom of the pan while baking.

Along with the flour, you add in 1 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp of both baking soda and salt.

In your mixer, you'll combine the room temperature 1/2 cup butter (one stick), 1/2 cup room temperature cream cheese (and to be perfectly honest, I totally accidentally used a whole cup of cream cheese, but it turned out awesome, so I guess its a good thing I used fat free), and 1 and 3/4 cup sugar. You'll mix for about 4 minutes on medium speed.

You'll then add three eggs, one at a time, and mix well after each addition.

Then mix in 2 tbsp lemon zest, 2 tsp vanilla, and the 1/4 lemon juice you squeezed earlier.

At this point, you'll alternate adding in the flour mixture with 8 oz of lemon yogurt. You'll want to begin and end with the flour mixture.

Then you veeeeerry carefully fold in the blueberries, and then pour the batter into the greased 10-cup bundt pan. And bake for about an hour and 15 minutes at 350 degrees.

After letting it cool for 20 minutes or so, you'll take it out of the pan and let it finish cooling on the rack.

The glaze on this bundt cake turned out a lot better. I just mixed 1/2 cup of confectioners sugar, and started with 4 tsp lemon juice, but kept adding more lemon juice until it got to a good pouring consistency. Then I just drizzled it over the cake!

Look at how pretty!!! And it was soooooooooooooo tasty. Light, refreshing, the right amount of density. The lemon wasn't overly powerful and you got little juicy bits when you bit into a blueberry. Definitely one of my best to date for sure.

If you stuck out the post this long, give yourself a nice pat on the back!