"Good moms let you lick the beaters.
Great moms turn them off first."
-- Unknown
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| Mixing beaters with brownie batter 3-19-14 |
"I love that when I breathe you in you smell like cake batter."
-- "Johnny," Because I Said So
I don't care what your mother said about the raw eggs giving you salmonella, or worms, or that a whole cake would grow in your stomach. Licking the beaters (and the spoons, and the bowl) is one of the simplest, purest pleasures in life.
And if your mother did recite these warnings, I'll bet you dollars to donuts she was just trying to get you the fuck out of her kitchen so she could lick 'em herself.
In my ongoing quest to bake gluten free brownies that are as good as the regular kind, I mixed up a new recipe.
On my personal raw dough/batter spectrum, brownie is a biggie. In fact, if I get really honest, I'd have to admit that the impetus for yesterday's baking wasn't so much my craving for brownies as it was my craving for brownie batter. The actual baking part was just a cover and a strategy to keep me from slurping up the whole recipe raw with a spoon.
Brownie batter is also the safest, in my opinion. Not from a food-borne illness standpoint, but because it carries the least risk for overdoing it.
Here's my theory:
Because brownie batter is thin, more of it actually gets into the baking pan, leaving less of the dangerous residue clinging to the bowl and the beaters. Also, since all of the brownie batter goes into the oven at once, when it's gone, it's gone. Out of sight, out of mind. That's why cookie dough is the most dangerous. Because cookies bake in individual batches, you use the dough a little at a time, so there are repeated opportunities to go back in. It's a continuing binge-threat, which I personally think is the greater danger compared to food-borne illness. I've never rolled around on the couch gripping my gut and moaning because I'm bloated and in pain due to salmonella poisoning. I have, however, made myself all kinds of miserable from eating way too much cookie dough. But brownie batter? Never once.
So yes, I licked the beaters, and it was good, and I didn't eat too much and I didn't die. The brownies were pretty good too.
I did a little digging, and it turns out that eating raw batter is unlikely to cause salmonella and your mother's raw-dough preaching was probably overblown.
So go ahead. Lick 'em. You probably already do it anyway. But now you can do it without your mother's nagging warnings ringing in your head and without her greedy hidden motives shunting you away from her kitchen.
And if she tries her old tricks, don't back down.
Stand up to her.
Tell that bitch swerve.
Tell her you know what she's up to.
Tell her she's wrong and that you've got proof and that you won't be bullied anymore.
Take that, beyotch.
