When you stick to a holiday’s “theme” colors - red and green for Christmas, pink and red for Valentine’s Day - it makes it much easier to come up with treats to make in celebration. These Red, White and Blue Chocolate Dipped Strawberries incorporate both the colors of the 4th of July holiday and fresh, in-season strawberries. They look extremely patriotic, as far as strawberries go, and taste like summer.

Just like any other chocolate-dipped strawberries, the method for making these is very easy. There is only one additional step: dip the tips of the strawberries into some blue sprinkles or blue sanding sugar once they have been dipped into the chocolate. Blue sprinkles or jimmies have a bold color to them and look cute on the strawberries, but blue sanding sugar, which I used for the strawberries here, gives the berries a little bit of a sparkle. The color of the sprinkles will not stand out well on milk or dark chocolate, and you won’t get the same visual effect as you do with white chocolate. That said, if you really want to incorporate milk or dark chocolate, just double dip the berries first into the chocolate of your choice, let that layer set up, and continue on with the white chocolate and sprinkles.

Store the berries in the refrigerator until you’re ready to eat them, as white chocolate is a little more heat-sensitive than other chocolates. The berries are best within a day or two of being made.
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Grilling is a great way to feed a crowd. It’s done outdoors, so it’s easy to be social while you work, and you can fit a lot more food onto a barbecue than you can fit into a frying pan on the stove. The hardest part about grilling is getting the timing down. This isn’t a big deal for chicken, which really needs to be well-done no matter what, or for long-cooking items like ribs, but it can be a big deal for burgers when people want their meat cooked to different levels of “doneness.” Hand-shaped burgers are different sizes, different thicknesses, and need vastly different cooking times. It’s frustrating for the griller and the diner when the burgers are under or over cooked.

The only way to minimize the problem is to standardize the burger patty sizes so that you will know exactly how long they need to cook. There are lots of cookie cutter-like gadgets that do this, but the Kitchenart Adjust-A-Burger lets you control the size and weight of your burger a little more easily. It works just like the Adjust-A-Cup measuring cups, where you press your meat into the cup after setting it at the size you want, then push up on the plunger to eject the burger. The meat shouldn’t be packed in too tightly, as that can have a negative impact on the texture of the burger, but it’s pretty easy to avoid this issue with this gadget, since you really don’t have to handle the meat all that much. The Adjust-a-Burger makes 1/4, 1/3 and 1/2-lb burgers. There is a mini version that makes 1, 2 and 3-oz sliders, as well.

Ever since I had my first one, sitting in front of a roaring campfire with a semi-clean stick skewered with lots of toasting marshmallows, I have been a big fan of s’mores. If I could go back in time, only thing I’d do differently now is to use a really clean skewer for my marshmallows, but when you’re camping and very young, you don’t tend to think about those things. I still like classic s’mores made with squares of milk chocolate, store bought graham crackers and jet puffed marshmallows. Now that my culinary skills are a little improved, however, I do like to experiment a little bit and see how I can get even more flavor out of my s’mores. Homemade graham crackers and homemade marshmallows are great examples of small changes. A big change is to turn a simple s’more into a S’mores Cake.

You don’t need a campfire for this cake, but you do need an oven. It’s a graham cracker cake, layered with marshmallow creme and milk chocolate frosting. The cake is made with graham cracker crumbs where you might otherwise use all purpose flour, and is leavened with both baking powder and egg whites that have been beaten to soft peaks. The finished cake is light in texture, but has a ton of graham cracker flavor. It is very moist, so it will crack if it isn’t handled with care when you’re stacking up the layers.

The milk chocolate frosting - chosen because the typical s’more uses milk chocolate - is almost like a milk chocolate ganache. It is made with chocolate, half and half and butter. The thing that differentiates it is that I included a little bit of corn syrup, which gives it a shiny look and makes it very easy to work with. The marshmallow creme is just store-bought marshmallow creme. It spreads onto the cake easily and stays nice and soft, making the cake easy to cut and serve.

One final note: a fire pit makes a great backdrop for a photo of a S’mores cake, but the cake really isn’t designed to hold up to heat of any kind. Both the frosting and the marshmallow creme are a little heat-sensitive. Unless it’s a cold day, you can - and should - store this cake in the fridge to keep everything intact. The cake will stay moist and tender even after a couple of days in the fridge. But if you don’t mind a melty, slightly messy cake that is like a real s’more, than by all means, go for the fire.

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• Today is Canada Day, and in tribute, Dinner with Julie baked some Maple Cupcakes. Maple cupcakes are a fitting treat for the holiday because maple syrup is so closely associated with Canada and Canadian foods. The cupcakes have quite a bit of maple syrup in the cake itself, and are topped off with a decadent maple syrup frosting. If you want to take the maple flavor even further, try to track down some maple sugar to replace the regular sugar called for in the recipe.
• Both cheesecakes and apple pie are staples of American dessert menus, but there is absolutely no reason that the two couldn’t be combined into one rich, creamy, fruit-filled dessert, like the Brown Sugar Apple Cheesecake at Eat Me Delicious. This cheesecake has a gingersnap crust, made with all the usual apple pie spices, and is filled with a layer of light-sauteed apples. Although cream cheese isn’t typically found in apple pies, all the flavors of regular apple pie can be found in this cheesecake, making it novel and familiar at the same time.
• Tomatoes are in season and very plentiful. When you have good, fresh tomatoes, you probably want to enjoy them as close to their natural state as possible. Ezra Pound Cake’s Fresh Tomato Tart with a Basil-Garlic Crust is a good way to do that, and a nice change from making just another salad. The tart is filled with a simple mixture of mozzarella, tomatoes and olive oil. The filling sits in a savory crust flavored with fresh basil and garlic.
• The Apple Popovers from The Way It Crumbles are a twist on apple pie that I haven’t seen before! For this recipe, apples are diced up and caramelized on the stovetop with sugar and butter. The apple mixture is then ladled into the center muffin cups already filled with popover batter. When the popovers bake, they form a light “crust” around the apple mixture and leave you with a treat that could be served for dessert, breakfast or just eaten as a snack. Don’t forget the ice cream if you’re looking to make them a little more like regular apple pie!
• When I think of whoopie pies, I tend to think of chocolate cookies with a cream filling. Sweet Charity Pie’s Lemon Whoopie Pies may not be perfectly traditional in that respect, but they certainly sound like a refreshing change of pace. The cookies are soft, almost cake-like, and are packed with lemon zest. The cream cheese filling also has more lemon juice and zest in it to give the cookies a bright flavor. These keep well and travel easily, so they’re a great choice for summer barbecues and parties.

Is bigger better when cookies are concerned? As long as the cookie is a good one, it doesn’t really matter how big it is. That being said, there is nothing better - and few things more indulgent - than a giant chocolate chip cookie fresh out of the oven. Just imagine the drisp edges, chewy center and lots of oozing chocolate melting into your mouth as you devour the cookie bite by bite. Hungry yet? These are the thoughts that ran through my head when I saw this I You Jumbo Cookie Cutter Set. The trio of cookie cutters makes for some gigantic cookies, as well as providing a more reliable shape than trying to form letters and heart-shapes by hand with cookie dough.

The cookie cutters can also be used to cut shapes out of trays of brownies or blondies, pizza and other flatbreads, and even out of sheet cakes (although you may get some icing on your fingers if you frost the cake before cutting it). It goes without saying that the message made by the cookies is sweet, and not just because of the chocolate and sugar content of the cookies. Any treats made with these cutters would be a cute addition to a date night, birthday or anniversary celebration, as well as to any “just because” occasion.

Popsicles are even easier to make than ice cream because you don’t need an ice cream maker or any other special appliance to make them. What you do need, however is a mold to shape them with. The simplest way to make a popsicle is to use a small paper cup or yogurt container, fill it with juice (or whatever else you choose to use as a base for popsicles) and put a popsicle stick into it as it firms up in the freezer. If you’re going to make them on a regular basis, popsicle molds can make things a whole lot easier. Inexpensive molds are easy to find, but the Orka 4-Ice Pops have a few features that make them stand out from the rest of the pack.

The base of the pop is made of silicone, which just pops off of the frozen popsicle when you’re ready to eat. Most popsicle molds have hard plastic bodies that are difficult to remove, or require you to run them under hot water to loosen them before serving. Also, the pops have cup-shaped popsicle sticks that will catch drips. A small stand holds the popsicles upright while they freeze, too. Finally, the swirly shape of these popsicles is very appealing on its own. It’s easy to eat and reminiscent of some of the fancier popsicles you could buy from ice cream trucks as a kid, rather than typical the plain Jane homemade popsicle mold.