The euphemistic word for my family is “blended”. This is of course polite code for “assembled from the bleeding wreckage of several other families”, which turns out to be really a wonderful thing — we now stick together so hard that my little sister’s boyfriend is even more intimidated than you would expect, much to her chagrin and our amusement. But if you think it’s hard to schedule events for conventional families, try triple the average number of kids, and that’s just on my mom’s side.

This Thanksgiving, we were juggling schedules in an effort to schedule a birthday dinner for my stepbrother, who’s come back into town from his current home in Washington DC for the holiday. Saturday evening? No, my siblings and I have to go to our other sister’s baby shower. Friday night? Brother and sister both have events with their significant others. Sunday lunchtime? Nephew’s baptism. And so on — every lunch or dinner was scheduled solid from Wednesday to Sunday.

Finally I suggested we give up on lunch and dinner and try breakfast on Saturday instead. The idea met with a statistically improbable consensus, leaving only the question of the cake — a mandatory ritual here. While as a family we routinely consume several pies for breakfast, planning to have cake first thing in the morning (here defined as “11 am”) seemed a step too far even for us. So I made this:

Mmm, coffeecake. Pardon the built-in-webcam-kwality photo -- turns out I didn't bring the camera transfer cord home.

It is a somewhat bastardized version of this Martha Stewart recipe (turns out that post-turkeyfest we are out of many things), it is so tantalizingly crumbly that I can’t actually remove it from the angel food cake pan it was baked in, and it smells so amazing that I’m honestly worried that someone will give in to temptation and it won’t survive to be consumed tomorrow morning instead of tonight. Go improvisation, and happy belated Thanksgiving to all!