You're either a DIY candy person or you're not. I tend to shy away from making my own candy because I've had awful luck with brittles and barks. Generally when there's a candy thermometer involved, I find that things go south pretty quickly. However, when a beloved candy is so easy to recreate at home, like these Tootsie Rolls, I'm sold. More

Confession: I am not the world's #1 Halloween fan. Call me a wimp, but I just don't do well with scary things, even if I know they're fake. So while I applaud the ingenuity of the spooky foods showing up all over the internet right now, they also sufficiently creep me out and thus keep me out of the kitchen. But these homemade cheese crackers, courtesy of our friend Olga from Sassy Radish, are just my kind of Halloween treat: more cute than scary. Friendly ghosts! Plump pumpkins! Benign bats! (Well, at least I'm determining they are.) More

Pumpkin soup. Pumpkin blondies. Pumpkin rolls. Pumpkin seed pesto. We get it! It's the season of pumpkin (not to be confused with pumpkin spice) and we're not fighting it. Add this to the list of pumpkin foods we're craving: pumpkin gnocchi!
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Sometimes the best pasta happens without a recipe. Just the other day, I served chili over some freshly cooked pasta, and it was great! So, what happens when you love lasagna, but aren't quite up to the whole assembly process? Read on for your dinner plan! More

Did you know that there are more than 350 shapes of Italian pasta? We kid you not. You're likely to only find only a fraction of that number at your supermarket or specialty grocery store, but even that can be overwhelming. How does cavatelli differ from cappellini? Which sauce goes best with which pasta? Thankfully, CHOW has a visual guide to pasta to help you sort it all out. More

I've been having a love affair with pumpkin lately, and looking for a new way to incorporate it into a sweet baked good. These spiced, Autumn-colored pumpkin blondies seem to fit the bill perfectly, don't they? More

Brussels sprouts are back, and I couldn't be happier. In the Fall it's not uncommon for me to make a meal of roasted brussels sprouts, browned and crispy with a little bit of parmesan cheese. I've never had them with apples, although I know that's a favorite combo for some people. This recipe from Oh My Veggies looks so simple and delicious, I think I'll have to try it! More

I recently discovered a blog called Handwritten Recipes. Have you heard of it? You can probably imagine what it's about, given the title, but there's a twist: the blog, written by a bookseller, is all about the handwritten recipes he finds stuck between the pages of old books. It's fun and also strangely moving to discover these forgotten recipes again, and in the most unusual of places. More

Sometimes you find or see something that just makes you want to give a long, slow clap. That's how I felt when I came across Vicky's (of the blog S'Tasty) Rubik's Cube birthday cake. Based on a Battenberg-style cake (a marzipan-covered cake that reveals a check pattern when you cut into it) the different pieces of this cake are dyed in the traditional six colors of the Rubik's cube. But the kicker is that she decided to have each slice of cake reveal a different combination of colored squares, just like a Rubik's cube! More

A recent post on Guys Drinking Beer has me thinking about corn. In my beer. Corn is an adjunct grain (ie, something other than the traditional barley) that has gained an unfavorable reputation for its use in big-name macrobrews like Bud Light and Coors. But is there a place for it in the craft brewing world? More