Now That's A Mouthful

The good recipes and the bad recipes both teach, inspire, and help you focus on the ultimate goal – being a better cook in your kitchen.  This month our testing community – you might say – had their share of both.

There are lots of ways to shortcut a recipe that help you save time, and maybe even streamline your prep.  We just don’t want to sacrifice flavor or the end result by doing that.  We’ve got some ideas, tips and even ingredients to share that will help short cut recipes so you can still have those delicious meals but in less time.

The good recipes and the bad recipes both teach, inspire, and help you focus on the ultimate goal – being a better cook in your kitchen. This month our testing community – you might say – had their share of both.

For some, baking is as easy as… pie!  For others, (like me) we’re lucky if we have something that’s edible!  We tackled a couple of cookbooks that promise fabulous results – both with cookies and with cakes and brownies.  For the most part, we nailed it.

This month’s group of recipes tackles some pretty tough baking recipes – long and complex with magnificent results.  We took a look at different ways to use matzo as an ingredient and then looked at cultural cuisine through two VERY different lenses. First, celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson’s Harlem melting pot of fusion flavors and blogger Robyn Stone’s quick easy spins on Southern home-cooking classics.  All of these recipes easily passed our muster, though not all without quite a bit of commentary from our testing community.

For some, baking is as easy as… pie! For others, (like me) we’re lucky if we have something that’s edible! We tackled a couple of cookbooks that promise fabulous results – both with cookies and with cakes and brownies. For the most part, we nailed it.

This month’s group of recipes tackles some pretty tough baking recipes – long and complex with magnificent results.  We took a look at different ways to use matzo as an ingredient and then looked at cultural cuisine through two VERY different lenses. First, celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson’s Harlem melting pot of fusion flavors and blogger Robyn Stone’s quick easy spins on Southern home-cooking classics.  All of these recipes easily passed our muster, though not all without quite a bit of commentary from our testing community.

Eggs. We don’t think much about them except at breakfast. They’re included in a lot of recipes, but they don’t often get the starring role. We cooked a bunch of recipes that lead with the egg, and if we’ve learned anything we know for sure, we love breakfast for dinner!

We talk about kitchen gadgets almost every week, but what about our small electrics?  There are so many!  And, so many that do the same or similar job… or do they?  We’ll look at hand mixers and stand mixers and food processor and blenders.  Do we need them all?  Where do we store all this stuff?  And, how do they save us time?

This month’s group of recipes tackles some pretty tough baking recipes – long and complex with magnificent results. We took a look at different ways to use matzo as an ingredient and then looked at cultural cuisine through two VERY different lenses. First, celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson’s Harlem melting pot of fusion flavors and blogger Robyn Stone’s quick easy spins on Southern home-cooking classics. All of these recipes easily passed our muster, though not all without quite a bit of commentary from our testing community.