The Bundt Pan story

For stamp club this month, it was my turn to be hostess.  We have blueberries ripe so I picked a few and baked this Blueberry Lemon Bundt cake from Martha Stewart.  It got rave reviews at club.  Here is the link to the recipe:  Blueberry Lemon Bundt Cake

Also, if you are ever in the market for a Bundt(r) pan, I highly recommend the real Bundt brand pan from Williams Sonoma.   Linked here:  Bundt Pan

When I was a young woman, my mother did the smartest thing she has probably ever done for me (and that is saying a lot!).  She started a 'hope chest' for me.  Now this is sort of an old fashioned idea but it was terrific.  In the late 1970's there seemed to be a lot of discount stores in our area going out of business so there were opportunities to stock me up on a few household items at good prices (I'm still using a lot of those heavy duty wood coat hangers we bought for a nickel apiece!). 

Best of all the 'hope chest' gave my grandparents an easy way to gift shop for a teenage girl.  They had no idea what type of music or clothes I liked but my grandmother and my aunt knew cooking.  They knew what it took to keep house.  Every birthday and Christmas I got a few things for the soon overflowing chest - a wicker trunk in my bedroom.  One year, my Aunt Margie got me a real Bundt brand pan from Smithey's department store.  It cost her over $25 she wasn't embarrassed to tell me.  Meaning - 'you'd better take care of it.'  She knew the value of a good pan and it lasted me for decades until finally a couple years ago the inside coating began to come off.  Until then, it had made countless wonderful cakes.  I experimented with another pan, but never liked my replacement.

Then one day, I saw a promotion for Bundt and a new anniversary pan offered at Williams Sonoma.  They say everthing costs so much more now, but the new version is only $34 even all these years later.  And if possible, it is even better.  The old pan needed a little seasoning before it would turn out a clean cake but the first one I baked in the new pan came out perfect and they have ever since. 

So thanks to Aunt Margie I've always preferred baking pound cakes to anything else.  And thanks to my mother, I moved into my first appartment with everything I needed.  It was a wonderful gift from a practical, enthusiastic, loving woman - who doesn't like to cook but loves to shop!