Some things I know to be true things for me:

True:  Gin martinis are best, most immediately and with olives.  True:  sometimes painful sacrifices are made for fashion… especially when it comes to wedges.  True:  In my life, Hemingway and Julia Child are devoured in equal amounts.  True:  I will always eat a doughnut.  It always seems like the right, and totally wrong thing to do.

True:  Things in life can be simultaneously exciting and terrifying.  Exciting progress.  Exciting growth.  Exciting opportunities… and at the same time totally bonkers nerve-wracking.  When the road ahead is steep, and full of the promise of adventure…. and you totally want to be on that crazy road… but you also appreciate the smooth and steady road you once knew.  That road was safer.  There were more cookies and less adventure.

Here’s another important truth for me:  Always sign up for adventure.  Always say yes.  Even if it’s terrifying to the core of your soul.  That means you’re doing the right thing.  You’re learning and growing and shoving yourself right out of your comfort zone.    Unless… well, unless there are guns and heists.  In that case… stay in your comfort zone and away from guns.

Also… before you forge forward.  Have breakfast (preferably with chocolate) and pack cookies.

These pancakes fit into a very specific category of breakfast:  breakfast dessert.

They’re what you eat after you share runny eggs and buttered toast with your breakfast mate.

Breakfast dessert is what comes after breakfast breakfast.  It’s a sweetly defined ‘second breakfast’.  Proudly, sweetly, specific.

These pancakes are an absolute treat.  Late morning.  Weekend.  Oops I’m taking a nap at noon.  Treat.

They’re a simple combination of buttermilk, melted butter, chocolate chunks, and fresh raspberries.

Oh!  If fresh raspberries are going to break the bank (I totally get it), thawed frozen berries, drained of some of their juices work wonderfully well.

Treat yourself… that’s what Tracy would say.  Treat yourself to sweet pancakes and an adventurous (although excitingly terrifying) life.

The dream house that I hold in my head is sunny and smells like banana bread.  It has a real-life adult couch and big, fluffy, matching, totally not hand-me-down bathroom towels.  The bookshelves aren’t dusty and my desk is huge and spotless.  There’s also a lovely woman that comes over everyday to help me clean my kitchen.  She’s wise and knows everything about life.  She’s my secret, dream house guru… and she does dishes.

My dream house has hints of food everywhere.  Raspberry colored lamps in the living room.  Black coffee colored walls in the bedroom.  A French vanilla bathroom.  Avocado rugs.  Pink Himalayan sea salt for a little girl’s room.  Fig colored guest room.  Cauliflower whites through the office.

This is what my brain does.  It makes a dream house and fills it with beautiful food smells, food colors, love, cat hair (why!?), and kid laughs.

I’m going to try hard not to call these cinnamon rolls.  These are not cinnamon rolls.  They’re something better and messier… that starts out just like cinnamon rolls.

We’re making a soft yeasted dough, with lemon zest.

This dough gets kneaded with a dough hook in an stand mixer for about 10 minutes.

It’s a soft dough… that means you really need a stand mixer to make this dough.  Otherwise, the dough will stick to your hands like mad.

After kneading in the mixer, I quickly knead it in a bit more flour and get it ready for its first rise.

Can you see the sheen in the dough?  That means the dough is a bit sticky.  That’s what we want!

After an hour of warm resting, the dough is ready for action.  Time for rolling and filling.

Dough is doused in browned butter and topped with a crushed raspberry, lemon zest, sugar, and cornstarch mixture.

And then it gets messy.

Yes… there is a raspberry juice mess going on here.  After rolling and slicing, and carefully lifting these rolls into the buttered pan you’ll totally have sticky hands.  Don’t freak out.  Sometimes food gets messy.

Let the rolls rise in a warm zone and bake up to perfection.

All love.

Believe it or not, these rolls aren’t overly sweet.  The dough is soft and tender.  The filling is bright and fruit studded.  I topped the cooled rolls with a quick lemon glaze.  Doughy and fruit sweet.  These rolls TOTALLY belong in my dream house.  What more do you want from life?

The smell of peaches reminds me of:

dusty, dirty sneakers.  light coming through peach tree leaves.  shade.  drinking from the hose.  wet jean shorts.  caked mud.  my yellow Sony sport walkman.  that Counting Crows cassette tape i loved.  my sister’s freckled nose.  my dad’s hands.  my mom’s laugh.  sleeping in the sun in the car, half hearing adults talk.  pie.  pie pie pie pie pie.  pie.

My family and I used to go pick peaches during summer months.

We never had fancy fruit during the year.  We didn’t buy containers of raspberries.  There were no pints of blueberries in my fridge.  Those were too much of a luxury.  We had bananas… endless amounts of boring bananas.

But!  In the summer!  We went peach picking.  I remember it like a slow motion, montage movie scene in my head.

I like the keep the peach smell memories tucked away in my crazybrain… you know, to think about awesome things when not so awesome things are happening.  Life tricks.  I got em. I’m so good at life is downright amazing.  Not true.  At all… but I’ve got the peach smell memory situation tucked away in my brain just perfectly… for emergencies.

Fresh fruit crumbles are absolutely the most delicious summer dessert, considering the minimal amount of manpower that goes into their creation.

The better the fruit, the better the dessert.  It’s as simple as that.

Oh!  And don’t try to line up the square colored dots in this photo collage.  Don’t do it.  It’s just not worth it.

There are some rules to enjoying this dessert:

You’re not allowed to eat all the of crunchy, crumble topping off the top.  Unless you live by yourself.. then you totally can.

You must eat this dessert with ice cream.  Vanilla, preferred.

You must take a moment to appreciate the beautiful mauve color that this crisp bakes up into.  It’s really quite lovely.

Lastly, this dish must be considered a breakfast, lunch, and dinner item… good for all occasions.

Fruit sweet.  Oat-y crisp.  Comforting summer.  Ice cream required.  Good(ness).

Oh!  I should also tell you that I’m pretty much obsessed with crumbles.  Here’s proof.

Peach Berry Vegan Crumbles.  Pineapple Strawberry Crisp.  Apple Crisp.

For your summer eatings.

I woke up to an utterly dreamy California morning on Tuesday.  The soft morning sun was just streaming through my bedroom window, the birds were singing good morning, and I knew that I had a whole basket of clean laundry for the week ahead.  Pretty sweet morning, right?

Sure… the only problem was that my brain was entirely unwilling to join  the sunny spirit.  Nope.  I felt like on  big stale loaf of bread.  After an extended love affair with my snooze button, I determined, behind closed eyelids, that the only thing that would change my circumstance was streusel topping.  On the shuffle from my warm bed to the kitchen counter I decided that blueberry muffins with streusel topping would flip the light switch in my brain.

There was only one problem with my blueberry muffin plan.  I had not a blueberry in sight.  No fresh.  No frozen… just a whole lotta outta luck.  After rifling through my freezer and fridge I emerged with the tail end of a bag of frozen raspberries, and half a jar of strawberry jam.  I figured that, brought together under the welcoming umbrella of streusel topping, these two would simply have to work.  Not but thirty minutes later, puffy streusel topped muffins found their way out of the oven and into my face.  While they didn’t pay that pesky credit card bill, or make that much needed dentist appointment, they at least kept me from crawling back in bed for a handful of hours.  Sometimes, that kind of help is just enough.

It’s not every morning that you jump out of bed ready for the world, fully equipped to make blueberry muffins.  When those morning escape you, I promise that with a little jam, the remains of your frozen fruit collection, and loads of streusel topping, you just might be able to set things right.

I’d like to think of these muffins as Anything Muffins.  Really, whatever kind of berry and whatever kind of jam will do you just fine in this recipe.  If it sounds good to you, it’ll most likely taste good coming from your oven.  Don’t deny yourself a warm fruity muffin just because the blueberry escapes you.

When it comes time for a little human to call me Mom, there are several things I hope for.  Here are a few of those hopes:

I hope that I’ll no longer run screaming from the room at the sight of a spider.  Mom has to take care of the spider… that’s sort of part of the deal as Mom, right?  Maybe can I always get away with saying, “Let’s go get Daddy to take care of that spider.”  I hope that works.

I hope that a deep affection for pickles and pancakes, though not necessarily on the same plate, is hereditary.

I hope that I have as good a pair of Mom Hands as my mom.

Most importantly, I hope that I create as patient and loving, supportive and hilarious a family as was provided for me.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you who have the patience and care to raise new, happy, and lovely people in the world.

Here’s some dreamy Raspberry Lemonade, and all sort sof recipes that you might consider making for your mom and family this weekend.

This gorgeous Raspberry Lemonade is absolutely the perfect drink to have chilled in the refrigerator all summer long.  Consider it The Real Deal Pink Lemonade.  An absolute dream, and worth the two easy steps it takes to make.  You’ll have enough raspberry sauce to add to the lemonade, swirl into ice cream, and  drizzle on top of Milk Chocolate Pudding.  Super yum!

Cinnamon Raisin Pull Apart Muffins

Pink Grapefruit Yogurt Cake

Lemon Souffle Pudding

Amazing Apple Crisp

Mocha Rum Cake

I was notorious in my family for being the child that could only be comforted by my mother.

Most playful family weekends, the scene went something like this:  I’d be in the backyard playing with my little sister, my dad and Scamper, the family dog on our creaky, rusted and awesomely fun swing set.  My favorite move was to swing as high as I could, count to three with my sister and jump out of the swings onto the grass.  Sounds innocent enough, but I was always getting my little girl fingers stuck in the chains of the swing as I dismounted.

I’d hit the ground and look at my dad with the silent cry face… the face kids give their parents before the completely lose it and burst into tears.  My dad would invariable come over and try to talk me out of losing it, but I was already halfway into the ugly cry by then.  It was then that no one but my mom could handle the cajoling and kissing of my finger.  I’d run into the house, screaming like a maniac and clutching my (not even bleeding) finger, looking for my mother who had found just a few moments peace to take a shower or a short nap.  I’d force myself into her lap, lift the offending, pained finger, and wait for the mom comfort to blanket me.  So good.

Come to think of it, that swing set caused as many injuries as it did smiles.

Come to think of it, jumping off the swing set is always worth the hurt finger.

Come to think of it, this pudding has much the same healing qualities as my mom’s lap.

Milk Chocolate Pudding … holy wow!  It’s super simple, brilliantly satisfying, and you can have it as is, or doll it up with lightly sweetened cream and easy homemade raspberry sauce.  Are you thinking what I’m thinking?  Mother’s Day treats?  Yea… I thought so.

How are you going to share the love the Valentine’s Day?  How do you share the love every other day of the year?

At the restaurant, this Saturday night’s reservations are already fully booked.  We’re going to be packed to the gills with love birds.  We’ve got people calling trying to pull the VIP card.  What’s that?  Oh.. you happen to think you and the chef are bffs this week and you’d like a table for two at 8?  Tough luck.  Really…

But Friday night…?  Not a soul.

What a day Valentine’s Day is… so ripe with expectations, how can you satisfy?

I remove myself from the whole game.  There are so many other gorgeous days of my life that I prefer to share love with the world around me.  How do I do it?  It usually involves butter, brown sugar and cocoa powder, but that’s just my style.

Sometimes love is as simple as sending someone a goofy postcard.  As deliberate as looking someone in the eye and smiling as you pass on the street.  As tiring as staying up extra late to make your Mom a birthday cake.  We share more love than we might realize.  Everyday, in the little things.  Let’s remember that this week.  Let’s remember that always.  It’s those little touches that make this life seem loads brighter.

I made this triple layer Devil’s Food Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting for my Mom’s birthday.  My Dad aptly dubbed it “The Wall”.  I baked the smooth batter up in a single 9×13-inch pan, wrapped and froze the sucker, and the next day sliced it (still frozen) into thirds.  The layers measures 4×9-inches, producing a rather brick shaped cake.  Feel free to bake this cake in three 8-inch rounds or two 9-inch rounds.

What else do you need to know about this cake?

It’s moist, and beautifully flavored.  The coffee and dark brown sugars work wonders with the cocoa powder.  The chocolate frosting is an absolute dream, and fresh raspberries send the whole cake over the top.  Thin slices of “The Wall” will serve about 10 to 12 chocolate loving people.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting and cake frosting tips after the recipe!

I went into this post practically kicking and screaming today.  Let’s be honest-  sometimes the words flow, other times it’s a task just to get myself to sit in the chair long enough to post a few words and photos.

This whiny, kicking and screaming, can’t-even-stand-myself feeling seems to be a Labor Day holiday signature of mine.  See, the holiday represents the end of summer.  I’ve always had enormous jubilation for Memorial Day, the unofficial kick off of summer, and great disdain for it’s holiday evil doppelganger- Labor Day.  When I was a kid, we would always have to return to school the Tuesday after Labor Day.  The end of summer and the return to school always seemed like a great tragedy to me.  I’m talking Hamlet level tragedy.

It would seem that the feelings of that 9 year old, who can’t come to terms with her new backpack and Trapper Keeper have followed me to adulthood.  I still don’t like Labor Day.  I still have a hard time coming to terms with the end of summer.  But now I get to add alcohol to the mix.

My Oh My.  Cucumber Raspberry Vodka Sparklers.

I hope you all have a lovely Labor Day weekend.  Be safe.  Be sound.  Don’t kick or scream.  That doesn’t help anything.  Trust me, I’ve tried that approach for the last 27 years.

I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but- enough with the chocolate chip cookies!

I will admit that for one brief moment, I thought about throwing a handful of chocolate chips into this darling quick bread. I slowly released my death grip from the chip bag, and thought better of it.

This quick bread is fuss-free and it has almonds two ways: almond extract and toasted slivered almonds. The almond flavor is actually really subtle, and the gooey raspberry flavor really comes to the front.

This post is also my submission into 28 Cooks’ Behind the Apron- a look into the hearts and minds of elusive food bloggers. I haven’t been so elusive, have I? I kinda let you all up in my business.

Here we are. Behind the apron. No! Not under the apron! Please get out from under there…

That’s me. I look like a hungry maniac. I sometimes eat off the stirring spoons. I started this food blog after seeing a recipe for slice and bake cookies on Smitten Kitchen. I thought- I want to do that! Now!- and Joy the Baker was born. Now I get paid to bake and write about food, and it feels like a good life. Not only that, I’ve met a whole community of people as nutty about food and photography as me.

I feel like I’m just where I’m supposed to be. Thanks for being here with me.

Now, about that bread.

This quick bread recipe originally called for a cup of crushed fresh strawberries. Feel free to throw in some strawberries or blueberries if you’re feeling frisky.

Kids between the ages of 3 and 7 are pretty amazing.  They’re little screaming, snotting, jumping, and crashing balls of honesty.  If they don’t like you, you know it.  If they recognize you for the poopoo head that you are, they’re not afraid to tell you- to your face, in ear piercing tones.  They haven’t yet developed the ability to filter their opinion of you.  It’s simultaneously refreshing and completely unsettling.

That’s why, whenever I meet new kids, I come with cupcakes.  Not just cupcakes, but cupcakes with sprinkles.  It works every time.  It’s irresistible.  It’s my dirty little trick.  Walk into their house with cupcakes and a smile on your face, and you’ve got an instant friend.  And when they come and thank you for the cupcake with chocolate all over their face- well, there’s nothing better.

These cupcakes are dinner party perfect.  They’re light and delicate with the flavors of almond and fresh raspberry.  Great for adults and not too overpowering and strange for kids.  The chocolate ganache is not too sweet or heavy and spreads on the cupcake with a beautiful sheen.  Kids absolutely love them, but they’re sophisticated enough to enjoy with coffee long after the kiddies have gone to bed.  Thank you Courtney, Bill and cutie Macallan for a beautiful dinner.