<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/insidevoice/3217678480/" title="Bourbon-Pecan Tart by (ariel), on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3486/3217678480_3ac0730596.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="Bourbon-Pecan Tart" /></a>

After completely overdoing it with the holiday biscotti, cookies, brownies, pie, cupcakes, and other assorted sweets, I declared that I wouldn't bake any more desserts from January 2 until February 1. It took me ten days to break that rule.

I had some friends over for dinner, and I just had to make a birthday dessert for one of them. Good enough excuse, no?

I made this <a href="http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&amp;recipe_id=1673138">Bourbon-Pecan Tart</a> entirely with ingredients I had in my pantry (yes, I even had some Trader Joe's prefab pie crust in the freezer -- it was left over from the holidays). It took about 15 minutes to prep plus baking, cooling, chocolate-drizzling and more cooling time. Easy peasy. And it impressed the heck out of my lady friends.