Pistachio pound cake

What happened to the pistachio when he walked down the dark alley?

He was a-salted.

He would have preferred being baked into a delicious, dense, crumby pound cake.

Molly Wizenberg shared a recipe a couple months ago starring the pistachio, with supporting roles from the orange, lemon, and lime. A pistachio pound cake with bright citrus notes, rich dense crumby cake topped with crunchy nuts.


I made it for a friend's birthday in April and recently repeated it to bring home to my parents on the weekend of my brother's wedding.

The recipe calls for zest from orange and lime, and juice from orange and lemon. I think that's a little silly. I just went with whatever citrus fruit I had, and used the zest and juice from the same fruit. The first time I only used lemon, the second time I used lime and orange. Both were fantastic.


When I showed up in Ottawa and presented my mother with the pound cake, she immediately told me that she was not going to share it at the post-wedding brunch on Sunday. She put it in the freezer and planned to save it for her and my dad to savour and enjoy after all the hoopla of the wedding was over. She hadn't even tasted it and knew it was good. It's rare that a pound cake isn't fantastic, what with all the butter, sugar, and eggs.

I'm not sure if they've cracked into it yet, but the one that I ate was divine. Since pound cakes take so long to bake, I like to make two smaller loaves and cut the bake time slightly; it makes it easier to share when you get one to yourself as well!

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Wedding wheel quilt

I just don't know how they do it. "They" meaning all those blogging mothers out there. They are super-moms. I love reading Made (www.danamadeit.com) where there are such great sewing ideas and inspirations by mother-of-three, Dana. And oddly enough, Dana's most recent addition to the family, Clara, was born on the same day as Lily! And it hasn't slowed her down one bit! Definitely a super-mom.

Maybe my blog has suffered a little, but I'm still so impressed by the little bit of sewing, crafting, and baking I get done these days. A different level of super-mom, but super nonetheless.

My most recent project was a quilt for my brother and my new sister-in-law (congrats Karl and Joelle!). I had been following the 100 days of Modern Quilting hosted by themodernquiltguild.com/ and came across a fabulous "Ring Quilt" by Isobel Piper. It was the perfect design for a wedding quilt that was a billion times easier than the double wedding ring quilt I made my parents, but still had the "infinite circle" motif to represent their eternal marriage.

The wedding colours were teal, silver, and lime green, with an emphasis on the teal. It was great fun going through my fabric scraps to pull out colours for the wheel segments of the quilt. I used a Kona solid in "natural" as the background and then echoed the colour wheel with an ornate circle fabric from the Karavan collection by Valori Wells (the same collection as the pink elephants from Lily's houndstooth quilt) for the back of the quilt.

The pattern originally comes from the book Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts which I borrowed from the library. I remembered to trace the wheel segment template but neglected to copy anything else, so there was a lot of guess-work that went into this quilt. I had to do lots of trimming so that everything fit together in the end and created a circle rather than an oval.


I loved how Isobel Piper used concentric circles for her quilt, so I decided to do the same, although I used an entirely different technique. She took the time to draw the circles on the quilt -- I am far too lazy for that. Instead, I taped a quilting pin (since it is longer than the average pin) to my walking foot and using the head of the pin as a guide so my circles were the same distance apart. Genius, I know.


The quilting got progressively more difficult as I got closer to the center, so for the very middle of the quilt, I personalized a K and J with the wedding date.


My brother's wedding was simply gorgeous. Everyone (except maybe Lily...) had a wonderful time: an incredible venue (with a fantastic view of the Ottawa canal and the Parliament building), delicious food, breathtaking flower arrangements, and of course, a room full of wonderful friends and family.

[Photo by Kevin Fong]

[Photo by Elizabeth Pagnotta]

It was my absolute pleasure to spend Lily's nap times quilting this wedding wheel quilt for my brother and sister-in-law. May they continue to cuddle for afternoon naps until they are old and grey.

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