Mom Cooking Tip 165

Here’s a way to transport a lot of deviled eggs with or without special egg trays.  Buy a package of paper cupcake cups, usually sold in the baking section, and pop each prepared egg half into its own paper cup.  Put the filled cups in a flat-bottomed container so they won’t slide around in transit.

                                                    See all my Cooking Tips!

Tired of Chocolate Chip Cookies? Try Chocolate Biscotti!

A huge box of biscotti somehow found its way into my shopping cart at Costco, and soon after I got home every adult in the house was standing next to it.  Maybe the see-through packaging was too inviting to ignore.  Within a few days the box of 20 individually wrapped 8-inch-long biscotti was empty.

Mom Money-Saving Tip 105

Don’t feel like buying freezer ice packs to use when transporting food to a potluck.  Fill several plastic water bottles with water, leaving the top 2 inches near the lid empty.  Store them in the freezer until needed. 
                                                             See all my Money-Saving Tips!

Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce: What Are They and How Do I Use Them?

When I moved to California, my neighbor told me about Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce, a key ingredient in some Mexican recipes.  Eventually I bought a 7-ounce can to try it.  Here is what learned:

Question for Mom

What am I doing wrong?  I wanted to make a two-layer birthday cake so I mixed up the batter, transferred it to two cake pans and put them in the oven to bake at 350 degrees.  The recipe said to bake the layers for 25-30 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the middle of the layer came out clean.  Luckily I checked after 20 minutes.  The layers were done. In fact, they were overdone. Why did this happen?—Gloria K.

If a cake cooks much faster than it should, it’s likely that the oven is too hot. Some people might say the quicker the better, but too high temperatures are not good for cake-baking. 

Can Food Look Too Pretty to Eat?

I’m not a person who spends a lot of time in the kitchen trying to make what I cook look pretty.  For me, cooking serves a purpose—feeding my family and my friends.  That means getting a meal on the table almost every night.  How the dishes look is much less important to me than how they taste.

Mom Cooking Tip 164

If you keep extra butter in the freezer and sometimes forget to take it out until you’re in the midst of preparing the dish you need it for, here’s what to do.

If the butter is to be melted before adding it to other ingredients,