Dessert diaries

Apparently I didn't get the memo. My own memo. The one about laying off the muffins. Or else I did, but perhaps I'm working to rule, since while I haven't baked any muffins recently, the house is certainly suffering from a surfeit of baked goods. I didn't mean to, honest guv, but somehow it was incumbent upon me and here they all are.

First there was a brownish banana that had to be used up, just when a friend had serendipitously posted a recipe for banana cookies. (They turned out very cakey, which made them oddly like individual blobs of banana bread, but today I put them in a warm oven for a while and they've crisped up quite nicely. Mabel likes them, anyway. Dash is anti-banana, even in cookies.)

Then on Friday Dash was off school so I took him to IKEA where he had chocolate milk and I bought things, enjoying the ability to look at stuff without fearing Mabel would be sending a display crashing to the ground. As we left, though, he was lobbying for a cinnamon bun, and I rashly said, "Let's go home and bake cookies instead." So then he got to choose what sort, and - a boy of excellent discernment - he picked chocolate chocolate chip.

It's nice to bake with just one, because if they're both home everyone fights over who got how many turns stirring and then one grabs a pen and scribbles on my shopping list and the other wants to spill sugar so he can "clean it up" and in no time at all I'm yelling at them both to just go away and watch tv and leave me alone. This was better, and we even did some math when scooping the cookie dough, to find that four rows of four make sixteen. Plus another four meant that he knew exactly how many cookies had been made, minus one each when they'd cooled down, and by the time Daddy came home the number was carefully recorded and yet mysteriously the next day there were fewer than 16 left in the tin, so SOMEBODY must have had more than one that evening.

Yesterday was Sunday, and since I was making a nice dinner (or at least, a dinner) I got carried away and bought some rhubarb, took some strawberries out of the freezer, and put together a crumble. We didn't have any cream, or ice cream, which would have been ideal with it, but we managed somehow. Half of it is still in the fridge.

And then today I had promised to bring a baked good of some kind to the "Meet your committee" night at the nursery school, so I made blueberry boy-bait. Except all my blueberries turned out to be blackberries. Nobody seemed to mind, and they all made appreciative noises, through the crumbs.

Of course, the mere fact that I baked these things doesn't mean I had to eat copious quantities of any or all of them.  On the other hand, I'm not made of stone, people. And quality control is important. And I did go for a run on Sunday morning, where I probably ran as much as an entire mile. And fruit is good for you.

Today I picked up some vanilla ice cream. The kids are in bed and I just folded a huge pile of laundry.

Draw your own conclusions.