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I bought a dozen pastel Wilton silicone cupcake bakers when they first came out more than a year ago just to try them. It has taken me awhile but I finally used them. I baked 24 cupcakes for one of my daughter's birthday parties. [She had two this year; one with each side of the family because they live in different towns.] I have just one cupcake/muffin tin and I didn't want to hold over the second half of the batter. Here are my observations of the silicone baking cups' performance: 1. The cakes didn't brown as dark (or at all) as the cakes in paper wrappers. Not that that is good or bad one way or the other. 2. Though the cakes pulled away from the sides of the cups as they baked, it was hard to remove them from the holders without tearing the cakes. This is because the cups have to be so sturdy so as not to collapse under the batter. You can't bend and manipulate the silicone holder as easily as paper which will yield or "give", thus leaving the delica...

I do this thing -- well, I used to do it more often, when I had a bigger grocery budget and reason to be near a big-city grocery store -- where I see an ingredient that I consider hard to come by in rural parts. Rose water, for example. I used to snap up the hard-to-find ingredient -- one time it was haluski noodles -- and bring it home only to find that I had misplaced the recipe I'd been saving to try if I ever found the elusive ingredient. The ingredient would spoil or go stale and I'd toss it, never having found the recipe I wanted to try. That's why I never bought the rose water when the nearest Kroger opened its ethnic section a few years ago. I was tempted, but I knew that recipe would be nowhere to be found at home. But that fear and reasoning didn't stop me from snapping up a package of chorizo, a Spanish link sausage, at a fancy Giant Eagle a few months back. And it stayed in my freezer until I found a good recipe to try. But to try that recipe required some s...

Five years ago today the weather was unrelentingly steamy, a lot like today's 89 degrees. About this time I was waking from a nap, 41 weeks pregnant, exhausted from a busy day walking around a charity chicken wing cookoff and getting a flat tire on the way home. Within hours I would realize I was in labor. Arabella would be born the next afternoon. I was past my due date and I did a lot of walking and had some stress with that flat but I teased that the "special" wings from Legends bar put me in labor. Legends wasn't at this year's wing-off, held last weekend. But our favorite bar, Archie's, was. We love love love their Corona wings. In past years, when we had more patience, we dutifully sampled two wings from each vendor standing in line after long line, cast our ballot for our favorite and went back to our favorite with more tickets for a whole dozen. This year, we divided our tickets and chose four of the nine vendors -- knowing we were going to vote for Ar...

A parenting rite of passage has been stripped from me the same year my only child starts kindergarten. We met my daughter's teacher at an open house and received some of the paperwork we need to fill out. Among the documents was the school handbook, in which I read this little gem: Under "Unauthorized Articles" "FOOD: New state [that'd be West Virginia] policy prohibits homemade or unpackaged food items to be brought to school. Snack or party treats must meet nutrition guidelines and come in unopened." A literal reading of the first sentence would lead you to believe that you can't send chocolate-chip cookies in a lunchbag. I wouldn't be surprised since some schools have banned peanut butter because of allergies. But I think the second sentence gets at the meat of the message. Don't send homebaked goodies for your child to share with others. So I can't send cupcakes decorated like groundhogs on Feb. 2 or snack mix in plastic food service glov...

Weekends are the time for farmers markets. Here are some of my finds from recent trips and what I've done with them. I'm lucky to live across the street from my community's farmers market. It's also on Friday mornings so I can go to neighboring towns' markets on Saturdays. To find a farmers market near you, go to www.localharvest.org . Sheesh! Blackberries are expensive! Ads in our local paper range from $15 to $18 a gallon. I paid an indulgent $7 for a quart at the market. Next time I'll just pick them myself. But these made a lovely cobbler with my mom's crust recipe. 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon salt 3 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 cup sugar 1/3 cup Crisco 3/4 cup milk Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9-by-9 glass baking dish. If you have enough berries to make a 13-by-9 pan, double the crust recipe. Rinse and pick over berries. Sweeten with sugar as desired (maybe 1/2 cup). Stir in cornstarch or tapioca -- I'm bad at estimating this and my filling is always ru...

I'm all about food, and sometimes that's a bad thing. Like when I can't get to a grocery store that carries chorizo, Manchego and membrillo (quince paste). Or when I don't get my expected freelance check and have to eat canned soup instead of another "splurge." But I digress. I had hoped this would be a light-hearted post about how food-centric and quirky I am. I noticed it a few months ago when I responded to a silly MySpace game asking me to blog about six weird habits/things associated with me. Four of the six were about food. Here's the text of that post. "Tia tagged me to blog about six weird habits/things associated with me. It wasn't easy coming up with them probably because there are some really weird things about me that I consider perfectly normal. And further, if I consider it weird, then why do I want to point it out? "All this to get to No. 1: I tend to overthink things. "2. I put ketchup on my scrambled eggs, too,...

My husband rolled his eyes at the name of this recipe. Hey! I didn't make it up! But he changed his tune once he bit into a warm, chewy cookie. "These cookies rock!" is his totally subjective and not all that descriptive opinion. CHOC-OAT-CHIP CHERRY COOKIES (All props to the recipe writers at Quaker Oats) 2 sticks margarine or butter, softened 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar 1/2 cup granulated sugar 2 eggs 2 tablespoons milk 2 teaspoons vanilla 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 1/2 cups Quaker Oats (quick or old-fashioned, uncooked) 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips 1 cup dried tart cherries Heat oven to 375 degrees. In large bowl, beat butter and sugars with electric mixer until creamed. Add eggs, milk and vanilla; beat well. Combine flour, baking soda and salt; add to the butter-sugar mixture and mix well. Stir in oats, chocolate chips and cherries; mix well. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 9 ...

Impulse buy: The girl who never buys junk was lured to this item in a Dairy Mart convenience store. Was it the pretty purple bag, the promise of "spicy sweet" goodness or just a hormonal urge for salt and plenty of it? I dunno. But at least it's a blog entry. I don't care for regular Doritos. I could take 'em but mostly leave 'em -- ever since they were popular with the slumber party set in the late '80s and my girlfriend Donna and I ate ourselves sick of them and then decided we'd much rather lick the flavored powder off them and throw away the corn chips. Plus I think they make your breath smell like feet. But these new Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos have captured my tastebuds if only fleetingly. "Good" not a very good descriptor so I will draw on another childhood memory to be more precise. Growing up, sometimes my snack crackers were either Chicken in a Biscuit or Vegetable Thins or those buttery rectangles you spread with "cheese" u...