1) Yes, I used Softasilk cake flour (phooey!), until 1990, when I entered King Arthur's realm. A catalog came to my house, and I asked myself, "Where have you folks been all my life?" The answer is obvious: In New England, whereas I've spent the first half of my life to date in California, and then in Washington, D.C. After becoming a loyal subject of The King, my baking took a great leap forward, as Chairman Mao might have said, had he been a baker who mixed metaphors. 2) Fortunately, I always double the recipe for my special cake that Queen Guinevere makes even better, so I would have TWO recipients for my first fling with King Arthur Unbleached Cake Flour Blend. To find the Lemon Poppyseed variation of the pound cake in Rose Levy Berenbaum's The Cake Bible, the cracked, vanilla-stained binding of my copy automatically opens to this page. Rose thinks that a full-size Bundt pan is too large for good texture, so she recommends baking her pound cakes in six-cup tube pans. One cake of these cakes would go to my husband and sons, who adore the tart lemon glaze, and the other would be for my dear friend Suzanne, who raves about my baking. I just returned from a week with her at the house that she and her husband own in Costa Rica. How to reciprocate for such hospitality? I plan to stuff her freezer! I'll bring over the lemon poppyseed cake, breads, and her sons' favorite, dubbed Pesto Buns, made with 1/4 cup pesto added to your Soft White Dinner Roll mix instead of the butter called for on the box. If I divide the dough in two and bake each cluster of buns in one of your round bake-and-give cake pans, it's a win-win situation: my own family won't feel left out, and sulk.

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