BACK TO BAKING (AGAIN)!

I love all the photos that accompany a recipe on Smitten Kitchen. She has some of the most visually interesting photography. It just seems to capture the freshness of every fruit and veggie she uses and more often than not, gets me in the mood for cooking--or baking.

This morning was no exception.

I woke up in a state of grumpiness, mainly because I had no intention of waking up before noon, but upon discovering an empty house all to myself, I decided it was a good day for baking. Since I'm going to a BBQ at Sean's tomorrow night I thought I'd bring something along that wasn't raspberry oat bars--though I know how much Sean's parents would love them. Instead, I looked through my bookmarked recipes and came across this one, remembering the couple of pints of fresh blueberries in the fridge.

A little bit more than an hour later, this is what I came up with:Mine's a little more golden brown than SK's but it still looked good. I had a little bit of a taste too. The only thing I'm not pleased with is the lemon content. If you look at the ingredients is says "zest and juice of one lemon." Now, I don't know about you but when I squeeze a lemon, I squeeze it real good and so as a result, I think I had way more lemon juice than the recipe calls for. The blueberry filling is tart. Mega tart, in fact. It's actually almost too tart for my liking, if you also consider the fact that you can hardly taste the blueberries. I'm hoping that the blueberry flavour becomes more concentrated as the bars cool down but for now, I probably would not serve this without a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side.

I don't know if I would consider serving this to Sean's family. I mean, I am going over to meet his uncle and uncle's wife for the first time. I don't want them to think I can't follow a recipe! I think I might actually save this for my family although I know my mom won't touch it, consider the amount of lemon in it. I might actually just have to enjoy this one myself--or force feed it to my dad when he wants a "doux-doux."

I am now debating between two recipes from Smitten Kitchen: blueberry boy bait or dimply plum cake. I'm actually considering baking both and bringing the best one to Sean's tomorrow night.