The vast majority of recipes are written for standard pan sizes: 8-inch square, 9-inch round, 12-inch bundt, 11×13, 9×5, etc. Pans in these sizes are available in just about any store with a baking section and if you stick with the standards, you shouldn’t have any trouble matching the size called for in a recipe to one in your collection.

But cake pans come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, far more than the 8-inch and 9-inch varieties, and I’ve certainly found that the more I bake, the more tempted I am to branch out into adorable mini cake pans and creatively shaped ones. Recipes are rarely developed specifically to work with these, and even if the packaging comes with a suggestion or two, you don’t want to be stuck with a pan you can only use with one recipe when the are so many good ones out there.

To make it work, you’ll have to get a little creative in your approach. The first thing you need to do is measure your pan, then you can use a very handy pan conversion chart to determine the volume of your non-standard pan (or you can fill it with water and get the volume that way, which might be necessary with a really unusually shaped pan). With the volume and the conversion chart, it will be easy to figure out what type of recipe you need to look for. If your non-standard pan holds up to 8 cups, for example, you can use a recipe for a 9-inch round or 8-inch square pan. If the pan is very small and only holds 4 cups, you might have to halve a recipe to make it workable.

Beyond choosing a recipe and getting all the batter to fit into the pan, the most important thing you’ll need to do is to check the cake carefully for doneness. You can’t rely on the baking time given for a square pan if yours is octopus-shaped. Use your best judgment and have a stash of clean toothpicks on hand. If the cake seems thin, or the pan is quite large, test the cake a few minutes early to avoid potentially overcooking it. If the cake seems thick or the pan is deeper than average (usually 1 1/2-2 inches is about average), be prepared to let the cake bake for a few extra minutes, if necessary, to ensure it cooks all the way through.

With a few precautions, your cake should turn out just fine no matter what size pan you use. And in the worst case scenario, you might end up with a few cake scraps from a rejected cake to munch on while you try for a second round - which will no doubt turn out perfectly after your first test cake.

It’s not all that difficult to find a group of foodies to join for cooking ideas, restaurant tips and other food-related chit chat. Not only are there sites like Chowhound and Group Recipes, but there are plenty of message boards floating around, affiliated with one website or another. Naturally, baking comes up with regularity on forums like these, but the website BakeSpacewas created specifically to give bakers a place to meet up - online, of course - with other bakers. The appeal of joining a targeted social-networking site like this is that it immediately puts you right into the heart of an existing group with similar interests, unlike, for instance, ambling around existing food blogs and making friends by starting comment discussions (which, for the record, is actually not that bad of an idea if you specifically want to chat with the writer or another regular commenter).

If you’re not interested in actually signing up for BakeSpace, you can still take advantage of the community by reading through their forums or perusing their recipe database.

 By and large, cookie doughs tend to be all one flavor - usually chocolate or vanilla. It’s easy to throw some chocolate chips into cookie dough if you want to add a bit of chocolate to your baking, but since marble cakes represent one of the best ways to feature chocolate and vanilla in the same cake, why not marble two different cookie doughs to get the same effect in one cookie?

This cookie recipe was originally from Tish Boyle’s The Good Cookie (a fantastic source for cookie inspiration) and it is noteworthy for two reasons. The first is that the cookies taste amazing. They are tender, chewy, buttery and vey chocolaty. As much as I enjoyed the swirl, I made an effort to get separate bites of chocolate and vanilla, to better appreciate the difference between the two flavors - not that there is anything wrong with just munching straight through, mind you.

The second reason is that the cookies are very easy to make. Unlike many marble cookie recipes, which frequently call for two separate doughs to be created, this one starts with one basic dough . The dough is split in two and cocoa powder is added to about half to create the chocolate portion of the cookie. There is enough butter in the dough that the extra mixing needed to incorporate the cocoa powder prevents the finished cookie from being tough.

I used some good-quality semisweet chocolate chips to finish these off, but you could use coarsely chopped chocolate chunks instead, which would give the cookies a slightly different look as the smaller bits distributed themselves throughout the white dough. Or, opt for a mixture of dark and white chocolate chips to really highlight the two-tone look of these cookies.

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This year marks the 30th anniversary of the opening of the first Mrs Fields cookie shop. The wildly successful chain was started in 1977 by Debbi Fields, whose career began with a love of baking and progressed from there. Fields, I should add, is not the grandmotherly type that so many (for whatever reason) seem to associate with the brand. She opened her first store when she was only 20 years old.

As part of the celebration, Mrs Fields launched a cookie contest to find the next great flavor. The 30 semi-finalists have already been announced, and you can see all the recipes online here. Each entry has a little story about why the submittor likes it so much, but unfortunately, many of the recipes are not very original. Anzac biscuits, which I love, are about as original a choice for submission to a cookie contest as standard chocolate chip cookies. You can find a good recipe for them here and a variation on the original here). I won’t be rushing out to try all the submissions, though I will keep an eye on which recipe wins.

Don’t be fooled by the cake-like appearance of the treat in the photo above, nor by the name. This coffee cake has only a slightly resemblance to the moist, dense cakes you can find in just about any coffee shop. It is actually more like a sweet bread than a cake because it is made with a yeasted dough instead of being leavened with a chemical leavener, such as baking soda.

The original recipe came directly from Fleischman’s and I used RapidRise/instant yeast to make the dough. This allowed me to incorporate the yeast without first proofing it in warm water and, at least in theory, cut down on the overall time needed for the dough to rise. If you want to try it with active dry yeast, just proof it for 10 minutes in a bit of warm water until foamy, then proceed with the recipe as written. You might want to let the dough rise a bit longer before putting it into the oven, but proofing should provide all the activation that active dry yeast needs to get started.

Getting back on topic, this is a very easy bread/cake to make and well worth the few minutes it takes to mix up the batter. The base dough is made in one bowl and put into a baking dish, no kneading required, and topped with fresh sliced fruit (nectarines, in this case) and a crumble topping. It needs only an hour to rise before it can be popped into the oven, baked and served. The bread is light and slightly eggy, with a taste that reminds me a bit of challah. The topping turns a bit caramely and complements the flavor of the fresh nectarines very well. The crumble comes out of the oven crisp, but will soften as it cools because of the natural juices that are released from the fruit. Don’t worry too much about this if you’re planning to bake the bread in advance. It tastes great both ways.

Fresh fruit will give you the best results, but if you do want to try it with frozen, defrost the fruit completely and gently blot up any excess juice before adding the fruit to the cake. I left the skin on for a bit of color and the slices are quite thin, so it is really unnecessary to peel the fruit if you are using one with a thin skin. In place of nectarines, you can use apples, peaches, apricots or plums in this recipe.
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Yesterday, Ryan Donlon and Jennifer Farina from Philadelphia, PA spoke to each other for the first time in 31 days. This wouldn’t be noteworthy event for most couples, but this pair was participating in a contest sponsored by M&M in which they only used the messages printed on My M&Ms for a month. They took a “vow of silence” at the end of June and relied on the customized candies from that point on. As a reward for completing the challenge, M&Ms presented the couple with a $31,000 prize.

Now, real estate on an M&M is limited, and although you can order My M&Ms in a variety of colors with just about any message you can get to fit, it’s not like you can really have full conversations with them. To get an idea of how they made it through, you can check out some clips on the M&Ms website. The most popular messages that this couple used included: “31 days”, “July 26″, “CU 2nite” and “Love You.”