And yes, I did intentionally call them “baked gods”.

While I did bake a number of different things to offer my colleagues this week, I did not bake a huge abundance of things. Still, there was a lot (compared to what other amateurs bake in their home kitchens) but it was not a lot by my standards. I have never seen the bounty disappear quite as quickly before though.

This time I offered carrot sandwich cookies with cream cheese-honey filling, Nanaimo bars, mini cheesecakes with gingersnap crust, mini cheesecakes with Oreo cookie crust, cranberry-pistachio biscotti and chocolate cookies filled with Smil candy (Smil is the Norwegian equivalent of Rolo candy… chocolate-covered caramel).

As I have said a million and one times, I don’t like any of this stuff, so I can’t really see the appeal of most of it. But particularly in this case… carrots in a cake or cookie form sound disgusting; Nanaimo bars (as “insane” and “excellent” – among other superlatives – as they are, according to some who have eaten them) sound and look hideous and make my teeth hurt just to look at them. In the old days, I used to make mini cheesecakes and people treated them skeptically, thought they did not look good, so my best friend always had them to herself. Now they are the most popular thing (odd … and I rarely make them now since said friend moved abroad). The chocolate, Smil-filled cookies were fine but turned out a bit ugly after transport. They were so soft that many edges broke off and looked like someone had sneakily taken bites out of them. (This did not, I note, stop anyone from eating them.)