What I Learned Today: Or, When Baking from Your Freezer

If you have a hunk of dough that's been in your freezer for a while, and if you decide that you'd better defrost it before it's too late and it goes all freezer-burned, and if, once defrosted, you decide that that dough will roll into the perfect crust for a nice quiche you could tuck into for at least two dinners and possibly a lunch, do just one thing before you bake off that dough: Taste it. Because if you taste it before you bake it, you might realize, before it's too late, that that dough isn't meant for a pie or quiche. No. That dough that's been tossing around the back of the freezer for going on three months? That dough there is butter-cookie dough that might have been made for chocolate hamentaschen. And while it's great filled with chocolate, topping it with eggs, cream and cheese is slightly less successful. I leave it to you to decide just how slight that success might have been.