Just about every frozen treats on sticks, homemade or bought, drip everywhere. Unlike us grown-ups who race to finish our treats before even wasting a drop, our kids dawdle, savor every lick leaving a big sticky mess all-over. Keeping them from enjoying these delightful popsicles is simply not an option! Finally, I found a work-around [...]

Making rock candy is a fun and easy experiment to do with your kids while teaching them a little bit about chemistry and a lot about patience. Plus, there’s a sweet reward at the end. Candy making usually involves thermometers and lots of corn syrup. Not so with rock candy! You just need sugar and [...]

If you’ve scoured the internet and various cooking books, you’ll notice that recipes for homemade dumpling skins all have the basic two ingredients, flour and water, but the proportions and technique vary greatly. They all work – dumpling skin dough is very forgiving. Using the right proportion and method, however, can make the process a [...]

How often do they fall on the same day??? As with every holiday, our family celebrates both occasions with food and lots of cooking on the days before and the day of. For Chinese New Year, I like to make homemade jiao-zi, Chinese dumplings (more on this on another post) and fortune cookies. This year, [...]

I rarely use whole wheat flour exclusively in my recipes because, well, I love the taste and baking characteristics of white flour. Crackers are an exception. They don’t need to rise and you can pack a lot of flavors alongside wheat. Here’s my favorite cracker recipe which is simply a version of the basic cracker [...]

November through the new year is always a busy time for our family and I feel like I’m always in the kitchen! Here’s one must have food tradition for our family – oven roasted chestnuts, the next best thing to roasting on an open fire. The key to making them easy to peel is to [...]

Crackers are one of the easiest, most versatile “quick breads” you can make. A basic cracker recipe contains just flour, fat, baking powder, and liquid. As for seasonings, anything goes! Once I discovered how quick and easy it was to make especially with the stand mixer doing all the work, I’ve not bought crackers since! [...]

What I love about using honey instead of sugar is that I can use about half the amount of sweetener. Also, it’s just healthier. Slightly. We make vanilla ice cream more than any other kind. It goes well with so many fruits, nuts, and chocolatey toppings. This recipe is about as simple as it gets. [...]

Some of the best teas only come in loose leaf form. Having used a myriad of tea brewing paraphernalia, the French press is still my tea maker of choice. It is non-electric, economical, easy to clean, and does not take counter space. Though the French press is meant for brewing coffee, the same concepts apply [...]

Freeze and Thaw. With minimal effort on your part or a machine’s, you can easily extract the syrupy naturally sweet liquid from some fruits. You just have to plan ahead and be willing to wait a day or so. This works especially well with strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries. I have not tried it with other [...]