By gosh, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I think Spring is in the air, sort of.

For over a week now in Seattle, it has actually been sunny. Today, on my walk, I actually could see Spring bulbs bursting through the soil, and I could smell the flowers. There were even some buds on the cherry trees, my favorite sign that Spring has sprung.



In my kitchen, I am feeling happy and springlike too, although I still don't have much fruit to work with at this time of year. I am over pears and apples... So, I decided to take a turn with Lemons. Bright. Yellow. Sunny. Lemons.



I have been eyeing a recipe for a Shaker Lemon Tart....

A Shaker Lemon Tart is one in which the whole lemon is used, minus the ends and seeds. I was intrugued by this, since one of my favorite things to make at work in the Winter months is Marmalade. I figured that this tart would end up being like gooey sweet Lemon Marmalade, nestled in a flaky pastry. A little sunshine. and it was.

Update:

I baked off the cookie dough from my previous post and the result wasn't half bad. Not my favorite cookies in the world, but, still tasty enough for a pregnant lady to consume one or two or three... and, to my delight, the banana flavor was a little less pronouned. (I, of course, have nothing against bananas, but there is a time and place for them, and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies ain't one of them...)

Give the lady her dough.

I love chocolate chip cookies. And, what I almost love more is chocolate chip cookie dough. So, it pained me greatly last week when I whipped up a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip raisin cookies, and I couldn’t even take a bite of the sweet buttery, vanilla and cinnamon scented batter. It was a little bit of torture, since I am the type who usually sets out to make cookies and am already sick from dough-overdose by the time they come hot out of the oven.

Tonight, I really wanted some cookie dough so I decided to make a one that even I could enjoy.
In the past, I have played around with Vegan recipes, so I decided to come up with a cookie dough recipe in which I use a banana to substitute for the eggs. This works pretty well in cookies, the only downfall being that your chocolate chip dough is now heavily perfumed with banana…making it not quite the same…but, still edible by my standards.

Here is what I came up with:

Chocolate Chunk and Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

4 oz butter
¾ cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 small banana
¾ cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
¾ cup oats
4 oz dark chocolate, in chunks
2 oz raisins

Cream the butter and sugar, add the banana and vanilla and cream till fluffy. Add the flour, salt, cinnamon and baking powder(just in case you decide to bake them after all) and mix to combine. Add the raisins and chocolate and mix. Devour.

* note: I have yet to bake these so, no promises there. Maybe tomorrow.

**** Update! I have been a chocolate chip cookie fiend lately and so I made some cookie dough at work to turn into Cookie Dough Gelato. This time, I just took out the eggs from a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe, and added just a touch of milk instead. the dough was pretty much identical in taste to a normal batch with eggs, and better yet, I was able to indulge :) I didnt attempt to bake these, but instead, I just folded chunks of the dough into my finished gelato. yum.