Glazed Blueberry Lemon Pan Cake: More than the loser mom in the snapshot

For all the moms who try to do it all and more...without cracking. For KY and her encouraging words.

The pressure for moms to be great reaches a feverish pitch at the end of the school year. With the "wrap up" activities surrounding graduations, promotions, yearbooks, end-of-year parties, boat cruises, end-of-year teacher's presents and juggling full time work, husbands, family, and other commitments, the chance to do it all dramatically reduces to a statistical impossibility.

My solution during this time is to hide in a hole. That's actually what I'd like to do, but I don't do that. I did, however, in the midst of a crazy teaching day, have to schedule 3 dental appointments, 3 doctor's appointments, and 3 allergist appointments, and I chose to do that by turning on the TV for Children and shutting the door to my office so I could speak, uninterrupted, and try to put 9 different appointments in a two week period into a calendar that threatens to blow up every time I open it up. Son came in to ask me if he could watch one more show, and I thundered at him, "DO NOT INTERRUPT ME WHEN I'M ON THE PHONE" to which he looked abashed and began to cry. It was not a good moment.

And over the weekend, I heard another story from my friend who sheepishly told a group of moms her loser mom moment, when she ignored a series of blaring reminders on email to order yearbooks for the end of the year. She ignored the emails, forgot to order a yearbook, and on the second to last day of school, her daughter walked in, with a seriously dismayed look on her face, and says, "Mom! How could you not order me a yearbook? The teacher gave us 10 minutes in class today to sign other people's yearbooks and I was the ONLY ONE WITHOUT A YEARBOOK!" Bear in mind that her daughter is the sweetest, most undemanding child I've ever met. (When she was 2.5 years old, if she was tired, she just put on her pjs, walked into her own bedroom, crawled into her own crib, and would go to sleep. On. Her. Own. ) Her daughter finished with, "I never ask you for anything, and there is only one thing I asked for all year long, and that is a YEARBOOK." My friend called it her loser mom moment.

Just the other day, I had our pastor come to our house, and somehow, in the flurry of emails that were sent between us all, I somehow missed that the Pastor and his family would be eating dinner at our home. I had a particularly grueling teaching day going on 5 hours, and I managed to get a cake together for the pastor's visit, and a simple dinner for the kids of fish sticks and roasted potatoes. I didn't even really prepare dinner for myself. What ended up happening will go down as a mildly mortifying moment of my life. The pastor's family hadn't eaten, I dug in my fridge and came up with kale soybean stew, and I offered what I had, a very very simple rice and soup dinner with kimchi. It was graciously accepted, but inside I was very red in the face. How did I miss this key fact that I was cooking dinner?

But it was today, as I berated myself for losing my temper during my marathon doctor's appointment scheduling fest, my friend gave me some lovely words. "You are not a snapshot. You are a sum total of all your actions." And I realize that oftentimes, moms are judged and judge themselves most harshly for their snapshots rather than the sum total of their actions. I yelled at my son, but the entire day we had a wonderful time together. I apologized for yelling at him and he understood. My friend forgot to buy her daughter's yearbook, but has never forgotten to feed her, clothe her, or pick her up from school. She is more than the mom who forgot the yearbook. I forgot to feed my pastor. I'm mortified. But I've also baked for my church almost every single weekend for the past three months. I am more than the woman who forgot to feed my pastor.

So I leave you, my fellow overworked, underpaid, over-stressed, under-relaxed, over-committed, under-leisured moms with encouraging words as we finish out a hectic month of the end of the school year.

We are the sum of our actions, not the snapshot. And the sum of the actions of the women and mothers I know is pretty phenomenal.

As a side note, this is the cake that I made on the day I forgot to feed my pastor. And I think that THIS cake combined with the missing dinner makes me a pretty decent person. (This is how I justify my actions to myself at night.) It's light, lemony, simple to make (in a pan) and the light glaze on top is the final simple touch.

Glazed Lemon Blueberry Pan Cake
Makes a 9x13 pan, serving about 12 people

Cake
Ingredients
2 cups regular sugar
2 tablespoon lemon zest
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
4 large eggs (taken out of the fridge the same time as the butter)
1 cup buttermilk
3 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups washed fresh blueberries, picked over
1 tablespoon flour (to sprinkle over blueberries before adding blueberries to batter)

Method
Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9x13 pan.

In a food processor, pulverize together lemon zest and sugar. (Doing so releases the lemon oils.) In a mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, blend softened butter and lemon sugar until thoroughly combined. Add eggs, one at a time and beat until well mixed, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl to ensure that everything is well blended.

Add half of flour mixture and mix until just combined. and add half of buttermilk and mix until just combined. Scrape down sides of the bowl. Add remaining half of flour mixture, mix until just combined and then add remaining buttermilk. Mix until just combined.again. At this stage, the less you mix the better for your cake. (too much mixing makes for a tough cake.)

In a small bowl, toss blueberries with flour. Once the blueberries are lightly, gently fold them into the cake batter.

Pour batter into greased 9x13 pan. Bake cake for 45 to 50 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Once cake is cool, then make glaze. (Do not glaze cake until completely cool.)

Lemon Glaze
Ingredients
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice

ONLY make glaze once cake is completely cooled. Mix together powdered sugar and lemon juice. After mixture fully comes together, pour over cake top and spread with a knife. Allow sugar coating to settle onto cake, with a bit of a shell.

Printable recipe