just a taste

In the kitchen, I am usually very involved with my cooking. I'm the girl with her ladle in the soup and finger in the cookie dough, making sure things are tasting good every step of the way. If I get something really good going, I might end up sating my appetite before the meal is even ready! There is always a danger of this happening in baking. Take chocolate chip banana bread, for instance. First of all, I got an extra scoop of semi-sweet chocolate chips at Henry's for the sole purpose of munching while baking. 1/4 cup of those chips ended up in the batter, on top of the 1 (heaping) cup already folded in. Many finger-licks (and even spoon-dips...let's be honest here) later, I reluctantly folded the batter into the loaf pan. Lo and behold, a hearty nugget of chip-studded dough had evaded the sweep of my spatula, and remained, resolute, on the bottom of the bowl. So I ate it. What's a girl to do, other than put a pot on for peppermint tea to soothe the inevitable tummyache?

While the bread bakes, I'm preparing dough for tomorrow's blueberry mini tarts, a thank-you for the guy at work who's been helping me get my e-mail back up and running. He's the unsung IT hero of our office; always ready to help, and never complains about our endless whinging when the system is down or I can't get the scanner to work. I figure I owe him, and he likes fruit-centric desserts, so clearly tarts are the way to go. I just have to make sure I leave some for baking.

[Side note: I wish recipes would stop being so coy with "4 ounces" of butter - Do not be fooled! It is a WHOLE STICK!! This being my first time baking with real butter in ages and ages, I am especially pained.]

Photos to come EDIT Um, these didn't last long enough to photograph :( which is actually a good thing, because it means people ate them!