Cookie Dough

I was baking some oatmeal raisin cookies this evening (as I had intended to do while I was at school, but never got around to because of finals and whatnot), and of course, being the perpetual kid that I am, I had to sample some of the dough at least several times before baking.  Which got me wondering: what is it about raw cookie dough that makes it taste so much better than cookies that have actually been baked?  I'm sure we can all remember our moms chiding us about how eating raw cookie dough could make us sick.  When I was a kid, I never got to try cookie-dough ice cream until I was 10 or 11, because my parents just didn't find the concept of eating raw cookie dough palatable.  Then I learned that there isn't really raw eggs in the ice cream; they've already been pasteurized beforehand to kill off any germs.  I still remember the first time I tried it - it was after a round of mini-golf with my aunts and cousins - and I was thinking, man, what have I been missing all these years?

Did that make cookie dough taste even better, the fact that it was forbidden, or at least discouraged?  It can't be the entire reason.  I mean, I'm 22 years old and have been doing a lot of baking on my own lately, and I still find myself popping fingerfuls of dough into my mouth.  No one's stopping me from doing it, and having a few bites doesn't kill me, though I do avoid consuming the entire bowlful simply out of fear of getting food poisoning.  And when I make cakes, I still lick the beaters before I wash them, or offer them for anyone nearby to do the same.  I mean, c'mon, I just can't let that small iota of perfectly good batter go to waste - think of all the starving kids in Africa! 

So why do we take pleasure in consuming raw cookie dough or cake batter?  Are we that desperate for sugar that we can't wait 10-15 minutes for the cookies to finish baking?  My best guess is that it's something to do with the chemical reactions that the dough undergoes while it's baking.  Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I think some of the sugar gets melted or evaporated in the heat of the oven, so the finished product isn't quite as sweet as it was before.  Or maybe it's the difference in texture that makes raw dough taste better.

Which begs another question: why, then, do I like bread better when it's toasted?

The world may never know...

B-)