Recently, I was at my son’s pediatrician, George H. W. Bush came up. I was trying to distract my son from the immunizations he was getting, so I started spouting off presidential trivia. As a part of this, I told him that George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush were our nation’s second father and son pair to have both held the office of the presidency.

We do what we need to do to take care of our families.

It seems fitting that George H. W. Bush was one of the presidents who was helpful in this tense moment. When I think of him, the first thing that I think is almost always “family man.” Not one, but two of his children penned biographies of him. George H. W. Bush has also become family another former president, Bill Clinton, who sees him as a father figure. In fact, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush affectionately refer to each other as brothers from another mother. When Bush was vice president, Bill Clinton introduced his daughter to Bush. Chelsea Clinton, a youngster at the time looked at him and asked where the bathroom was. Bush, took her by the hand to the bathroom. If that’s not a dad move, I don’t know what is.

This family man was the dad to six children. He also followed in the footsteps of his own father, Prescott Bush, and entered politics.

Even the way that he talked about his job could sometimes be fatherly. His inaugural address illustrates this, “We cannot hope only to leave our children a bigger car, a bigger bank account. We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his neighborhood and town better than he found it.”

George H. W. Bush’s cupcake celebrates him as a dad and family man. In his family, George H. W. Bush is referred to as Poppy, making it clear that his cupcake needed to feature poppy seeds. 

  

The cake:

This cupcake is grapefruit flavored and studded with poppy seeds. The grapefruit flavor comes from grapefruit zest. The cupcake’s sugar is blended with a few bandage-sized pieces of grapefruit peel. The oils from the grapefruit peel provide a good amount of grapefruit flavor.  The cupcake is filled with spiced grapefruit gelatin, and is topped with spicy cream cheese frosting and garnished with more poppy seeds.