Raspberry jam for me last week.

When I make fudge, there's a little bit left in the cup after I do the cold water test..... that's mine!

Also...I get the beaters and the bowl after making cookies and cakes.

But...the best is the jam leftovers...can't be beat!

Linda, I'll be making peach jam in about a week...I always make sure I have some good vanilla ice cream to pour some warm fresh jam over.

Nancy

"I am remembering those little bits of leftover pie crust, spread with cinnamon sugar and rolled up..."

My husband thinks that is the whole point of making a pie!

Cook's Privilege!

A little taste of the raw cake batter, the scrapings of the bowls, the last biscuit (cookie) that isn't quite as perfect-looking as the rest, the first slice of the freshly-made bread (I LOVE the crust!), the nibble of assorted fruit when making fruit salad, the little bits left in the saucepan after making lemon butter (curd) or jam, the little bits of marrow you get in a lamb chop, The Taste Test.....

Pie roll-ups ARE the whole point of making pie! The first cookie out of the oven, the scrapings of cake left in the pan or on the parchment paper. All licks and tastes along the way to the finished product are the rewards of the cook.

Chocolate pudding!

My father told me about watching workers tossing watermelons down the line to load them on a truck. Every now and then, oops, one would "accidentally" slip and bust open.

If you have those littles bits of pie crust and that smidgen of jam that didn't make it into a jar, together, you have a treasure!

I always have leftover ingredients when making lasagna. Calling it a dividend sounds much more graceful.

The last bit of mashed potatoes that didn't fit into the storage container - of course dipped into the gravy before that gets put away ... and the last coating of ice cream that was too hard to get out of the freezer bowl .... and always the jam left in the pot!

My "dividend" last night was about a dozen bread and butter pickle slices that just WOULD NOT fit into one of the jars. I put them into a bowl and ate them this morning before I came to work!

Annie

My mom always made extra pie dough just for us kids (we called them turtles) with the cinnamon and sugar rolled and baked with the pies Yummy...
Love the leftover jam and fudge in pan & licking the bowl for cookies and cakes too!
I do like the name "dividend"

Linda

My favourite dividend is the pork cracklings off a small roast of pork. Since it is usually just a small piece, I claim it for the cook. Sometimes I share.

Ann

The 1/2 pint of Annie's salsa Sunday night. We had to go out and buy tortilla chips just so I could eat it!

Those crunchy bits left in the pan after oven frying chicken - man I love those!

Growing up, the chicken heart that had been fried with the rest of the chicken was always my dividend. Now the thought of eating that is rather....ick.

That's funny, Teresa, my girls used to argue over who was going to get the heart when we had turkey or chicken "giblets". Now they wouldn't eat it for any reason.

Annie

Ann, I thought sneaking pork cracklings was my dirty little secret.

My little dividend is the hot fudge sauce I make. I usually double the recipe and pour it into a 1 quart canning jar, but, there's always a little bit left that just won't fit in the jar.

Granted, the supermarket is only a brief cattle stampede from my house, but I've found other ways to deal with this dilemma.

Sol

The first little crunchy bit of roast turkey skin, raw pie dough, the crispy piece of fat from a grilled steak, bacon snuck from the pan, still to hot too eat (how do you spell that sound you make blowing air in and out trying to cool hot food IN your mouth???).
Deanna

The cookies that just happen to break when you're moving them from pan to rack.

That small bit of soup that goes in tasting bowl.

That bit of raw potato when you're peeling them for supper.

That hard boiled egg with the off centered yolk you come across when making deviled eggs.

Running my finger through the roasting pan for the last bits of sticky fond. The burnt fat edge of a steak or pork chop and the oysters of the whole chicken. Or the turkey neck meat on Thanksgiving.

I call it my reward for cooking! Some of mine have been mentioned above but here's another.

When I panfry fish or chicken using a recipe where you dip in egg as one of the steps, there's always a bit of unused egg at the end. I pour it into the pan and make myself a small bit of scrambled egg. It's delicious because the fish/chicken & spices on the coating have all gotten mixed in a bit and frying it in the pan with the leftover bit of oil gives it a lovely fluffy texture. Yummy.

The crunchy stuff off of almost anything.

don't get this one anymore ... licking the ice cream off the paddle from an old-fashioned hand-cranked ice cream freezer --

Ah, I have a cherished picture of my late dad, visiting my home Memorial Day weekend, sitting outside and licking the ice cream paddle.

I make these vanilla pistachio crescent cookies at Christmas. After they've baked for about 10 minutes, you take them out of the oven and brush them with an egg wash, then sprinkle with vanilla sugar. When you remove them from the pan, some of the sugar stays behind, kind of like butter toffee crumbles. If DD is awake, she and I almost fight over them!

Thought of another....biscotti butts!
Linda C

Now I finally have a name for my dividend...biscotti butts LOL. The biscotti butts from my cranberry-orange biscotti. To-die-for! This past week my dividend was the "extra" raspberry jam...not quite a pint, but ohsoclose. I brought it to work with some Ritz crackers and shared it with the girls. We all felt very naughty.

the end piece(s) of a loaf of banana bread still warm from the oven

What Lowspark said!