Blueberry Cake and Failure (which precedes success)

My now-4yo daughter had a birthday this weekend and requested a blueberry cake. Part of me went "ew." There's family folklore around here about the Christmas morning that I labored to create homemade blueberry muffins using a dubious recipe and came up with mounds of bready, fruit-studded, gag-inducing sand that not only the kids hated but that our chickens would not eat.

So, the request of the blueberry cake caught me off guard.

Have you ever noticed that modern blueberries just aren't quite as good as the candy blueberries that come in little powdery purple clumps in Jiffy Muffin Mixes? I love those candy blueberries. My husband, whose mind gravitates toward all things agricultural and genetically altered, complains that modern blueberries have been so bred for size that the sweetness has gone out of them and their texture is (his words) "nasty."

I still like them fine in a McDonald's Fruit & Yogurt Parfait, as I've mentioned before.

Anyhow, it became a challenge, and at the advice of my baking-queen sister-in-law Julie, I bought two(more expensive because it contains a can of REAL wild blueberries) Betty Crocker blueberry muffin mixes and baked them in 9" rounds and then drizzled them with a lemon glaze made out of 1/2 cup lemon juice and 2/3 cup sugar and some water, cooked on the stove until the sugar dissolved. I used a chopstick to poke dozens of holes in the cake for the lemony sweetness to seep down through both layers.

Can I just say? I think I redeemed myself on the blueberry front.

This isn't my cake but it's the internet image that matches it best. I did two layers...Mmm. I love this cake plate.

Right now I'm getting details together to run a new round of queries on my novel. The topic is out there, I'm aware. It's not something most of us will have read a dozen times in the past. I'm hoping some brilliant agent will see it for the cash cow it is and snap it up.

And like the gaggy blueberry muffins that preceded the triumphant blueberry cake, here's believing the non-triumphant queries I've launched will be followed by a bidding war among publishers for some lucky agent out there!