Regardless of whether or not you’ve made any New Years Resolutions, resolve today to be a kinder person in 2011. We think about ourselves and our own desires to a fault. Try to change that this year. I’m definitely going to. Time to share your light, and I know my readers are “those” kind of people. Do it.

That, and eat more chocolate.

…dumb things happen.

So, Mavis and I are in the test-kitchen phase of our new business, as many of you know. We got together last night to bake three different recipes in an effort to arrive at *just* the right taste for our Chocodoodle base. (We’re almost there.)

I have a small Sunbeam stand mixer — certainly not industrial grade, but strong enough to get the job done. And boy did I do a job on it — and it on me. Behold the result of my trying to scrape the bowl with a spatula, and getting the spatula — and my hand — caught in the beaters:

Natch, it was my right hand, too. The one I’m having x-rayed on the 7th after my little fall in the school parking lot three weeks ago. HA. Rat Fink, Rat Fink. What a donkey.

The upside? Our first major business purchase:

And I do mean *major*. Ouch. 200+ beans. If I get a paw caught in that bad boy, I won’t be talking to you for awhile. But it works like magic, and we’re glad to have it.

Me, I’m just glad to still have my hand. What a dope. The real downside is every muscle in my right arm feels like it’s been pulled out, swung around, stomped on, set on fire, and put back on sideways. Other than that, I feel great.

But hey, the Js are coming to visit Grammie today. Is that an upside or what? Yippy for me! And I’m on vacation. What’s to complain about? (You know me; I’ll find something.)

Right. So we baked our first experimental cake last night. The flavor was good, the texture was fine, and our “secret ingredient” made it really different from normal sponge cakes…but something was missing. We weren’t flipping out over it; neither were our husbands. Tasty, good appearance, workable…but not drop-dead fantastic. And it has to be drop-dead fantastic.

Then we thought: What do we want here? Do we want our own luscious creation, or do we want a Chocodile knock-off? It didn’t take us long to decide for “A.” So, it’s Cake, Part Deux.

Instead of a sponge cake (Twinkie), we’re going to try several different types of standard cake. Our goal is a moist, tasty creation that will hold both the filling on the inside and the chocolate on the outside. The Test Kitchen remains open for business. This is going to be a long process. And a fattening one. HA

Three more days of school, three more days of school, three more days of school…

When the Thriller and I were out west on our Route 66 Odyssey last summer, I tasted a Hostess Chocodile for the first time. It was delicious, but I remember thinking, “Mavis and I could probably come up with something tastier than this.” As a result, the Chocodoodle was born. Some of you may already know that Mavis and I are starting a side-business, to hopefully sustain us in our dotage (and to accompany our Social Security benefits, if in fact there are any to be had 10 years hence). We are in the very beginning stages. We’ve yet to write a business plan, but that’s on the calendar. So is contacting health department officials and getting all the preliminary paperwork underway.

Right now, our little two-person company, Mavis and the Bird, is experimenting with recipes. Our Chocodoodles (we are in the process of trademarking the name — surprisingly, no one’s licensed it yet) are the first order of business. [We also know that “chocodoodles” are a rather obscure variation on the snickerdoodle cookie, but we feel there won’t be that much confusion. I mean, I just bought chocodoodles.com, and every variation — .net, .biz, .org, etc. — was available as well.] At present, we’re using Hostess Twinkies as our sponge cake base, but we won’t be doing that for long. We’ve happened on some good cake recipes, to which we will add our own special touches. When that’s done, we will switch over to the homemade cakes.

We’ve always loved to play around in the kitchen, Mavis and I. Over the years, our family have said on numerous occasions, “You should sell this stuff!” We’d always agree and say, “Yeah, we really should,” but then time would march and we’d forget. Well, this time, we decided to remember.

In all my research, there hasn’t yet appeared a bakery or confectionery that uses chocolate covered sponge cakes with cream filling as their specialty. We plan to make it ours. All the major holidays, office parties, birthday parties (why not serve individual Chocodoodles instead of baking a cake?), craft shows, baby showers, mail-orders all over the country…it’ll hopefully keep two old ladies busy. Mavis and the Bird have high hopes of being the next Harry & David.

Well maybe not. But we’ll at least be available for anything local.

And we know that Chocodoodles are not health food. They’re an occasional indulgence for a special day or event, and that will be the crux of our marketing strategy. Still, we will use only the best ingredients available. Our cake will have about eleven ingredients — less than half that of a Twinkie.

There’s a lot to think about. But if you don’t think big, you’ll never climb out of the foxhole, right?

Happy Sumday. Time for some coffee and thinking about chocolate things.

Heh.