A Recipe

Usually, this is a space where I write about books. But, I bake a lot. Like, a lot a lot. There are a few things I can do without a recipe because I've done them often enough that I've essentially memorized the formula. But, yesterday, I wanted cake. Specifically, I wanted snack cake, but not chocolate or yellow or spice or applesauce or any of the usual square pan snack cake varieties. I wanted a citrus cake. But, I didn't want a loaf cake either, because they tend to be heavier than what I was looking for. Ultimately, I had to come up with my own recipe. I borrowed a lot from various snack cake recipes on the internet and in my cookbook stacks, so I'm in no way claiming that this is 100% original. It is, however, delicious and a recipe I will use again, which is the real reason I'm putting it here.

1 cup granulated sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) softened butter

Mush these together with a fork and then whip them up with a wooden spoon because, no, I don't have a stand mixer.

Add:

1 egg
3/4 teaspoon lemon extract
1/2 teaspoon orange extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whip it all together until it's creamy and delicious.

In a separate bowl, stir together:

1 to 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Nutmeg and dried ginger to taste (I used about 1/4 teaspoon of each)

On the stove, heat until just warm:

1 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon dried lemon peel
1/4 teaspoon dried orange peel

Alternate adding the flour mix and the buttermilk to the fluffy butter mixture until you have everything combined. Pour the batter into a greased and floured square or rectangular pan. Bake at 350F until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. (For the rectangular pan I used, this was about 35 minutes. The smaller the pan, the thicker the cake and the longer it may take.) Cool it in the pan for way longer than I did (at least 30 minutes, probably closer to an hour) and sprinkle with powdered sugar before cutting. If you're feeling fancy, you can make a glaze of lemon juice, powdered sugar, and water instead of using the powdered sugar. I'm not going to tell you how many servings this makes because it makes however many or few you feel you can get out of whatever pan you used. You can just eat it straight out of the pan with a fork, if that's what makes you happy. I wouldn't blame you one bit. It's pretty tasty cake.

Impostor Syndrome, Bookseller Edition

I started this once and it wasn't right. I'm not sure that it will be right this time, either. I have things I want to say, but don't know if I have the words to say them the way they feel in my head.

I fell into being a kids book person by accident and, quite frankly, it's often still an uncomfortable fit for me. I love the people and I love a lot of the books, but I still feel like a fraud. I feel the same with adult books, but the ALA Youth Media Awards were announced today and it really brought home how at sea I often feel when it comes to books for younger readers.

I have the bookseller version of Impostor Syndrome. Some days are better than others. Today is a bad day. Today I really, really feel like I am faking my way through the career that I chose. I'm not saying this because I want reassurance—on my good days I know I am damn good at what I do—but because it's cathartic for me to express the feeling. It's important to name it. To acknowledge it. To take away some of its power. (To recognize that part of the cause of this current episode is hormonal.)

I talk a lot about reading what you love and to hell with anyone who judges you for it. But, the truth is that I have a hard time doing this for myself. I judge myself and my reading tastes far more harshly than anyone else ever could, which is what makes me so fiercely defensive when other people judge what I read. Secretly, I think they're right. I think there's something wrong with me. I think that the books I read aren't good and that I am less of a reader for loving them. I think I'm not smart enough or educated enough to understand "good" books or I'd like them more.

My thinking brain knows that most of this is not true, but my feeling brain is a lot fucking louder. So I'm going to wallow for a while. I'm going to try not to engage much with the more judge-y of my peers and customers because I'll be engaging from a position of super-defensiveness. I am going try not to feel guilty that I have a Romance binge planned for the next week or that the books at the top of my next stack of ARCs have magic in them. And I'm also going to force myself to read non-fiction and literary fiction and message books because I feel bad about what I really want to be reading. And I'll nominate things for the IndieNext List that I think I'm supposed to like, rather than the books that actually bring me joy to read because I don't want to be judged by my peers.

My name is Billie. I have Impostor Syndrome. Today it is especially loud.