Swedish Visiting Cake

Oh, man. Last week, you guys.

Forgive our extended absence. It was hard to muster much of a positive attitude with all the crazy happening in the world. Joking about our complete inability to act like adults felt a bit inappropriate.

But! The week ended with a little bit of closure and with some good old fashioned heroics (of the law enforcement as well as normal people type). And now we’ve found some extra brain space to bring you some goodness!

By that I mean, this is Kate. Putting off studying for finals.

Grapefruit Yogurt Cake

A few days ago we had the first Perfect Spring Day of the year in Austin.

The sun was out, but it wasn’t too hot. The wind was blowing, but not too hard. Just the Perfect Spring Day.

Perfect Springs Days fill me with a rush of gratitude. So here are some things I am just super thankful for lately:

New York Style Crumb Cake

This past weekend, our school trusted that we med students could handle a very rare, treasured 3-day weekend.

Instead of my usual pinterest-filled, sleep-until-you-drag-me-out-of-bed, clean-all-the-things post-test weekend…I hopped on a sunrise plane to New Orleans to visit my dad.

New Orleans is up there.  Paris, Switz, the Florida gulf coast, and New Orleans top the favorite places and home-away-from-home lists.

Out of proximity, I find myself in New Orleans more often than any of the other places, and every trip manages to fit in the perfect balance of old favorites and new finds.

Oatmeal Crumb Banana Cake

This post was thiiiiis close to being another edition of “let me tell you all the crazy things that can happen to the brain.”

I have decided not to subject you to this, and for that, you’re welcome.

Instead, let’s talk about the great and honorable intentions I have for spring break.

I always approach breaks from school with faaaar too much ambition.  There is usually a huge gap between what I dream I will accomplish, and what I actually end up doing.  My rough goals for spring break look like this:

Black Pearl Layer Cake

When you’re a baker, you want to make birthday cakes for everyone.

Seriously. If I could live my life in layer cakes, I would.

Apparently, when you’re a baker, you also assume everyone else has basic baking essentials to make this happen.

As I learned this weekend, they don’t. Seriously.

Payday Cake

Recently I learned 2 important things about myself.

1) I will put on pink lipstick before any task I think may be stressful or that may make me feel like I’m not in control. Like while I’m waiting for my ride to the airport, which happened to be quite late, and it happened to end up not mattering at all. (Is mattering even a word? I don’t think this thing has very good spell check.) Or like when I hear that our flight to Denver is going to be delayed due to blizzard conditions.

Nothing I can do about it, so I might as well put on some lipstick.

Baked Pumpkin Cake Donuts

I took my first final of the semester yesterday.

Whew.

Especially whew because, um, I thought my exam was three hours and found out as the proctor was telling us the exam instructions that, no, it was in fact a four hour test. That’s a nice(?) surprise. Thanks to the parking gods for not giving me a ticket even though I only paid for three hours of parking, not four.

Since my first final was yesterday, my first test ritual of the semester also occurred yesterday. Test rituals are weird. But everyone totally has one. And they’re all totally psycho (in the best way promise).