Farmers’ market season is in full swing, and while, for many shoppers, that means garden-fresh sweet corn and dewy greens, for other shoppers (cough) it means one thing.
Cookies. Cookies-cookies-cookies everywhere.
Because while farmers’ markets originated as a means for farmers to sell produce directly to buyers, they’ve evolved into great places for small baking operations to get their wings.
And so, at the Worthington Saturday morning market we found Dana Lee’s Bakery. She understands exactly how important sugar and fat are to the diet and market shopper.
The first buy was some sort of muffin thing that resembles Morning Glory Muffins of the 80s. While the offering has the requisite cakey texture, it’s not a full-size muffin: just the top. It’s dense with shreds of sweet carrots and big fat raisins and nuts. And it’s healthy and wholesome tasting, the seller recommended eating no more than two to avoid traumatic “outcomes”. Warning headed.
And while healthy tasting is nice, fat and sugar will always win. For the winners, there is a big case of brownies “for one”. They are huge, think in terms of five-inch squares. One would not normally assume that something as big as an outstretched hand would be designed for one person –but if they say so: all in.
The brownies comes in all sorts of flavors: including things on the lines of peanut-butter-cup-cheesecake. All the same, there can be no compelling reason to buy any flavor other than Seven Layer Bar. It’s always going to be the best, so why mess with the rest? It’s a classic combination of dark chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, coconut and nuts held together on a crust (like a pie crust) with the magic of caramelization. For those who count, that was six elements. We’re not sure what number seven was, but it was delicious.
And it turns out that one person can eat a five-inch brownie square. In fact, possibly two.