Why am I doing it again? We recently unearthed a few notes from those days, and I decided to revisit, and finish the doodling I’d started some twelve years ago. This update is a gift for a friend, someone expecting her first, someone who will also tread floors and will, perhaps, find the need to recite baked goods. I was always amazed how the silly muffin-and-pie mantra soothed us both, rocked her to sleep and kept me awake. It also seems to work on small, sweets-loving kids, goofy adults and a few chatty, sugar-looped bakers.

A is sweet on apples, that fall into the pie

B melts into butter, and makes the muffins sigh

Carrots from the garden, deployed to make the cake

D’s are for the donuts when you don’t know what to bake

Elephant ears are flaky (you can say palmiers, too)

F is for the fritter that has nothing else to do

G is for galettes, swirling summer, dripping fruit

H is for hamantaschen, three-cornered cookie loot

I is pie in the icebox – it’s lemon, sweet and cold

Jam befriends the sponge cake and they build a jelly roll

K is always Key lime – should be yellow, never green!

L is for the lattice that keeps red berries seen

Macarons are le favorite, a Paris souvenir

Napoleon’s gone forever, but his treat still lingers there

O is for Oh So Many, a hundred cookies that we ate

P is for the nice plain pears we’ll eat to clean the slate

Q is for Queen Mother’s Cake, from Maida Heatter’s book

R is for the recipe our dog’s jaws sadly took

Scones are a craggy compass, to point us through the day

Tea is their companion (though not the American way)

U loves umeboshi, Japanese fruit that’s pickled tart

V is for vanilla, pure and closest to the heart

W sings out welcome, which is what cakes tend to say

X is for the extra slice you might get on that day

Y is for golden egg yolks, like whisking in the sun

and Zzz’s are heard at daybreak…

…when the bakery work’s begun.