Jarred Lavender Custard with Blackberry Gin Glaze

When I'm feeling fancy, I tend to reach for champagne. That champagne is then usually promptly deposited into a mason jar for sipping.

Sometimes I like my fancy dressed down a touch, i.e., champagne in a mason jar, Keds with a date-night dress. You know, that sort of thing.

It's sort of like this. This silky, flowery custard with satiny gin berry glaze is super duper fancy. You totally deserve fancy. And since everything tastes better in a mason jar (and since 4 oz. mason jars are some of the cutest containers around), this custard deserves to be housed in one. This is fancy-dressed-down dessert. Which works out well with all the post-custard-consumption jar-licking I see in my future. So fancy.

Lemony Almond Cake with Blackberry Cream

A few months ago while taking a children's rights class, I realized that I was twenty-five years old and had never seen my birth certificate. I decided that it probably wasn't good that my parents didn't have a copy and I didn't have a copy and that no one seemed to have a copy. So I ordered one online. As I waited for it to arrive, I considered the possibility that I wasn't blood related to my parents, mainly because I look nothing like either of them. But alas, my birth certificate arrived, and there in typewriter black letters was the proof that my parents are, in fact, my parents. Damn. ...just kidding! Love you, mom and dad.

Anyway, I went home to hang with my parents this past weekend. Maybe it's the sentimentality present in everything there. Or maybe it's the large patio, the multitude of trees, and the vaulted ceiling of my bedroom. Or maybe it's just being near my parents again. But as much as I absolutely love my new home in Atlanta, being back at home felt rather calming, despite everything that was going on.

My dad is one of those awesome people who stores half eaten fruit pies with untidy fork edges in the oven with a quick-bite utensil. I'm not saying I take after my dad, but I'm sort of saying that. Pie is just freakin' good. Cake, also good. I'm not typically a huuuge cake person. But this cake. This cake is for real, good stuff. Crispy top. Moist almond cake. Soft lemon curd sporadically throughout. This cake is forkfuls of divine.