Brown Sugar and Chocolate Chip Pound Cake with Maple-Espresso Glaze

This was one of those moments when all I had to do was see the photo and I was hooked. Line and sinker. Well, the name didn’t hurt. I love cakes made with brown sugar, what’s NOT to love about chocolate chips in a pound cake and then…the pièce de résistance. Maple Espresso Glaze. Done and done.

I had a conversation this past week with a fellow food blogger and client and it was interesting to hear about blogging from a writer’s perspective. The need to blog but nothing really comes to mind…the hated ‘writers block.’ I honestly never feel that block and wonder if the difference for me is that I blog from a cook’s perspective. I love to cook. I love to share what I make with family and friends and for over fifteen years I’ve been putting my recipes online as the easiest way to do that sharing. For most of those years it was simply a recipe; nothing more; just ingredients and instructions. My website was my own virtual version of a recipe box and it served that purpose well. With friends and family scattered all over the country, no longer did I need to type up something for one person, I simply put it online. Nothing surprised me more than when I started to hear from people I did not know who had found my site and enjoyed a dish!

My foray into blogging really was incidental. I needed to know the ins and outs of this ‘thing’ called WordPress. I’ve mentioned before that I own Kinetic Webs, a web development company. I started my web business 16 years ago after a  short stint in the Internet division of a major cable company where the question du jour was, ‘Think we should consider trying to deliver the Internet via cable?’ and no, I’m not kidding!

Having this business required that I stay on top of technology and despite my years of NT servitude I was ready to make the ‘open source’ plunge. To that end I started this blog almost two years ago, entirely with the notion of transferring a couple of recipes from the ‘old girl’ at www.creative-culinary.com and using the blog primarily as a vehicle to market my Vino Luci gift products (that’s right, three different businesses; I do keep out of trouble, promise). The rest is, as they say, history. The comments starting coming; I started to develop client relationships and my company has helped develop or customize over 50 blogs since then. I find myself thoroughly immersed in the world of food blogging where it is a big part of my professional work and also a big part of my personal experience; cooking, photographs and blogging about it are a regular weekend activity.

Which brings me back to this notion of what it is exactly that I am doing. I get complimented on my writing though I don’t think of myself as a writer…it’s just me putting down the words I’m thinking at the time; my own ‘virtual’ stream of consciousness. In real life I probably talk too fast and too much and I like to think I’m sarcastic funny (as opposed to sarcastic mean!) and I don’t take this effort so seriously that I don’t want to have fun in the process (despite my threats of wrist slashing after ANOTHER Foodgawker rejection!).

While I must admit that I’ve been in creative writing classes since I was in 6th grade, honors English writing classes in high school and college (where I majored in English on the road to becoming a teacher that never happened!), I can’t say I ever really enjoyed it all that much. It’s true! But I’ve had an epiphany…maybe I do enjoy it when it’s on my own terms. When the subject is one that I decide upon. I still remember that first paper in college, ‘Describe the Word Yellow’ when the professor didn’t agree with my take on cowardice. What? Critique my style if you must…but my thoughts??? That was a bitter pill to swallow and put a damper on the whole process for an entire semester!

So, really, this post is just about a cake. A picture I saw that looked yummy (YES, YUMMY) and I wanted to make it. No family tradition, no trip, no snafu to make the story work…nothing really but a  desire to make a dessert to take to a friend’s house for Easter. I hope that’s OK because I will have those days; when against all that is true about me, I will have little to say but still want to share the foods that I make here with you, my virtual friends and at my table with those in real life.

One heads up for those still reading. Hopefully by June 1, this blog will revert back to Creative Culinary. I am considering the sale of Vino Luci in the near term, I never meant for this blog to grow like it has and I just very simply want to reclaim the name I’ve associated with my recipes since 1995. I’m developing an entirely new look and am very excited about this change…and about not having to explain, ever again, that no, I am not a wine blogger (though I do love the grape); I am a food blogger and proud of it!

Recipe slightly revised from Bon Appetit magazine

I’ve included this recipe in the Easter Cake Bake at A Slice of Cherry Pie. While not pastel or just for the kids…it sure was a hit for OUR Easter dinner.