Last weekend was the giant and truly wonder-full food festival my parish puts on every year. I was on my feet for the better part of 12 hours both days, in church or selling books and T-shirts, or just walking around. I listened to the band and watched the Balkan and Eritrean dancers, but my legs and feet were too tired to dance. I talked to friends I hadn’t seen in 15 or 20 years, trying to stretch out of my introverted self. It all wore me plumb out.

In the week previous I had baked some cakes to sell in the bakery, alongside some of the goodies I told you about last month as we were preparing some of them in advance.

At that time I posted a recipe for Pumpkin Banitsa, which had been stashed in the freezer until the morning of the event, to be baked and served freshly out of the oven and ready to sink teeth into. It’s to the right of the baklava in the photo above.

This is one of the three liqueur cakes I contributed to the bakery. My favorite was the mocha cake that I didn’t take a picture of, and which I have made many times. They were all variations on its recipe, starting with a devil’s food cake mix, adding butter, eggs, cocoa and (in the case of the mocha cake) coffee, and coffee liqueur.

The glaze is made from powdered sugar and whichever liqueur is appropriate. I used coffee, chocolate, or orange liqueur in these recent cakes. In the one pictured, I glazed it before freezing, and again the morning it was to be served, with a little food coloring in the second glaze. Then some coarse “natural” sugar went on last.

Monday morning I felt as though I had been away from home on a long trip. I went to the back yard to visit the garden and pick vegetables. I trimmed some spent flowers on my amazing zinnia, and stretched a measuring tape next to it to see just how tall it is – just an inch short of five feet high. Our summery September is predicted to give more 80° days, so I will keep track of the flower that was certainly a good investment of the $4 I paid for a 4″ pot. It’s been one of the constant joys of this summer.