Lol Ann you and my mom, she despises raisins. She'd sooner eat a chocolate covered cockroach! Even craisins make her nauseous. I've never 'plumped' a raisin - sounds fairly lascivious ;-). Most recipes I've used them in call for them to accompany the dry ingrdients before adding liquids. The drys seem to collect in the wrinkles [they look like brain sulci to me] and maybe that dry attracts the fat liquids ala the roux process? because the raisins in my recipes are never tough. But heck I may have to try it out! Plump on! BTW I like goldens over regular or reds personally.

I had a German shepherd/boxer mix dog as a kid. She could and did eat anything. My first from-scratch cake was a devils food with a thick, rich chocolate frosting. We put it on the coffee table with plates etc., as we'd invited friends to come for cake and coffee. I was so proud of that cake. It never occurred to us that LuLu would bother it, she was very good about not taking food etc unless we gave it to her. I walked out into the living room just in time to see her oh-so-casually saunter by the coffee table...and nibble off the cake with the side of her mouth as she passed. She must have been making passes for a while, because she'd managed to eat about 1/4 of the cake. She used to pick all the low hanging pears from our tree, she'd circle the tree staring up until she found the ripest one before jumping up to grab it. She ate a lot of pears, they never seemed to bother her. The only thing she ever ate that I recall making her sick was the time she got into the coffee can full of bacon fat we kept under the stove. It was a 10 pound can, and it was getting pretty full, I noticed as I was draining that morning's pan. When I came home from school, there were these odd little pools of some light brownish-grey stuff everywhere and the house reeked of bacon. LuLu was nowhere to be found (she often hid when she knew she'd done something wrong). In the kitchen, the cabinet under the stove was open, and the coffee can only had a few inches of fat left in it. LuLu was eventually found, huddling in the corner of the yard looking pretty miserable...still retching once in a while. To the day she died, some 15 years later, she wouldn't touch a piece of bacon. If you offered her one, she'd back away from you, whites of her eyes showing!

Could you use pasteurized eggs? It's probably not a big deal unless someone pregnant or a person with immune issues eats it. I wouldn't but lots do.

My biggest sellers at Farmers Market are (in order): Lemon Bars, Fudgey Brownies with and without walnuts, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Peanut Butter Cookies, slice of Marble Pound Cake with chocolate drizzle, Carrot Coconut Pineapple Pecan Muffins, slice of Frosted Cinnamon Raisin Bread, Toasted Coconut Macaroon with centered whole almond, baby Banana Bread loaves, White Chocolate Macadamia (or Cashew) Cookies. All of them are gluten free, some are also dairy free, and some are also egg free. It took a long time determining what people wanted - - what they don't want are cupcakes, candy by the piece (they want 4-6) for really cheap, hard biscotti, snickerdoodles, and slices of any flavor of regular cake. But, they also love the unusual offerings that are sugar free - - hummus with little pita chips, spinach quiche squares, dried apples, and cold gazpacho in a cup. Everything has to be easy to eat while walking around. Rarely do people take stuff home for later, unless, in my niche, they are celiac than they buy a whole plate of assorted for the week. The average buyer just wants something for now to eat out of hand. Nancy