We always start the day with fresh fruit for breakfast; cantaloupe or other melons, bananas, oranges, along with cereal or eggs. For our evening meal we generally have fresh fruit; raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, grapes, mangoes, watermelon, or some other fruit that seems appealing, for dessert. One day a week -- Friday -- I bake a dessert. Preferably, a fruit pie, often light cupcakes, cheescake, just whatever I can think of out of my memory repertoire of recipes. Yesterday we both agreed it had been ages since I'd baked a honeycake, so I did just that.

Actually what spurred me to that action was a recipe that appeared in our local newspaper, a Medivynk Ukrainian honey cake. It had all the ingredients I recall, in fact, from my childhood, watching my mother and my favourite aunt going about their baking. So I used that recipe, deciding not to use the recipe for a honey cream cheese glaze, and to leave the cake plain, without frosting.

The recipes I prepare from memory or just common sense rarely give me problems. This one did.
In the baking process, that is. The recipe called for a 325F oven, and a baking time of 55 minutes, give or take a few minutes. But it has been my experience that some batters fail to bake properly in the temperature and time given in recipes, and this was one of those.

For one thing, in my little countertop convection oven, I could see the cake was rising and baking too quickly. The outside of the cake was responding to the heat, the interior failed to, warning me that there would be a baked shell with a runny interior. So I radically reduced the oven temperature and allowed the interior to continue baking until it had set, while the exterior, no longer exposed to the higher temperature, stopped its trajectory toward burning.

Honey Cake:
1/2 cup butter; 1 cup brown sugar; 4 eggs; 1 cup honey; 3 cups all-purpose flour; 3 tbsp.cornstarch; 2 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp.baking soda; 1 tsp. cinnamon; 1/2 tsp. salt; 1/4 tsp.cloves; /2 cup sour cream; 1/2 cup strong black coffee.
I halved the recipe to produce a smaller cake.

Because it was threatening rain for the afternoon we were anxious to get out to the ravine for our daily forest walk with our two little dogs. So when it looked as though the cake interior was just on the cusp of being baked right through, I shut down the oven, left the cake sitting in the oven, and we went off for our walk. On our return I slipped it out of the baking pan and it smelled divine, felt just right, and at dinnertime tasted just as it should, texturally perfect.

In the ravine we ambled leisurely about. Jackie and Jillie, now close to four years of age, are quieter than they used to be, less susceptible to sudden outbreaks of shrill barking and mad dash-abouts every time they sense another dog approaching. Jackie tends to spend at least half his time walking at our heels, while his sister's normal gait is more impatient, and she tends to walk a distance ahead of us. Jackie catches up to her, however, when something perks her interest and he becomes instantly aware of it.

It was overcast, heavily humid, and just cool enough for light jackets thanks to the wind. We were gratified perusing the forest floor, to discover more little Jack-in-the-Pulpits are steadily appearing, those enchanting pitcher-pulpit-shaped flowers whose single petal is striped bright purple in its interior.

We came across a fungus growing on an old decaying tree trunk lying on the forest floor that had the shape of a classical Tiffany or Nancy Dahm vase, both of which stylists borrowed so heavily from nature. Both its shape and its colouration inspired artwork from the ancient world to the present. But no human agency could possibly rival nature herself for the perfection of her creations.

We noted also in a particular spot on the forest floor beside the trail where a tree once stood that the tiny colony of mushrooms that suddenly appear one day, begin to deteriorate the next, and collapse on the third day, was in the second stage of its annual appearance; the day before the mass of mushrooms was perfect, fresh and young, while yesterday, one day on, its decline had begun.

Also in evidence was red baneberry in bloom. It too, we had noted for the first time this spring, was sporting its neat little complex ball of white florets, to turn into poisonous red berries as the season wears on into mid-summer. They've begun to show their presence everywhere on the forest floor.

And finally, little discrete masses of wild ginger are maturing. They're nowhere near as plentiful in appearance as their look-alike woodland violets which themselves have sprouted white, yellow and mauve flowers everywhere. I have only once succeeded in uncovering their strange, dark red little pouches that are the gingers' flowers and which appear at the base of the plant, though not for lack of trying, around mid-June.