I usually try to make my pie crusts from scratch when I bake. It may seem like a challenging proposition at first, but once you have made a few, they’re easy to put together and they keep for a couple of days in the fridge after making them (longer in the freezer), I can even make them in advance and use them. That said, there are always times where you need the convenience of a premade pie crust. Marie Callender’s has offered frozen desserts at the grocery store for some time (in addition to their fresh baked pies in their restaurants) and also has a line of frozen Deep Dish Pie Crusts available.

The pie crust that Marie Callender’s uses for their own pies is good, and the frozen version didn’t let me down. It’s made with shortening, so while it doesn’t have a particularly strong flavor on its own, it is flakey and extremely tender. In fact, it has an almost melt in your mouth quality to it. It also cooks up to be very crisp - exactly how I want my crust to be to create a contrast with the pie filling. You can bake the crusts from frozen, but I find that I always get better results after defrosting a frozen crust and baked these crusts after they were close to room temperature.

One of the best parts about these crusts is the tin that they come in. It is a solid pie plate, not the flimsy foil kind that you find beneath store-bought graham cracker crusts. This means that it is actually easy to put the pie in the oven, take it out again and serve it without needing an extra baking sheet or serving tray just to support the weight of the pie and prevent the tin from bending in half (yes, this has happened to me with heavy pie fillings).

Anyone who has been in a Starbucks lately has seen Starbucks Via. The coffee company has been promoting their new instant coffee like crazy, so it’s pretty hard to miss. If you were lucky, you might have even gotten a free sample or two in a promotional taste test. I say “lucky” because Via is actually excellent for an instant coffee (and quite a bit better than some regular coffees). Starbucks came up with a new process to produce it, so it is not the same as the freeze-dried instant coffee that populates store shelves, nor does it taste anything like that watery, bland stuff. Via comes in two flavors - Colombian and Italian roasts - and tastes fresh and strong. It also dissolves easily in both hot and cold water, thanks to that new production process, so it can be used any time.

While I actually have taken a big like to taking a few packets of Via when I travel, I have found that it is an excellent baking ingredient in the home, too. Adding it into a recipe that calls for coffee flavoring is like adding a whole cup of  coffee with just a little bit of powder. It definitely packs in much more flavor than regular instant coffee and incorporates much more seamlessly. This means that there is no need to dissolve it in a bit of hot liquid before adding it to a batter; you can stir it into dry ingredients just as you would with any ground spice, and it will blend perfectly into your finished product. The Colombian is good, but the Italian has a darker and stronger flavor, more like espresso. Via is a little more expensive than a generic instant coffee, but definitely well worth the price for the flavor and the convenience. I think that it is actually easier to use than the instant espresso powder that I usually use, and pretty much ties with Trablit coffee extract for flavor. Definitely worth keeping a box around the pantry if you like to use coffee flavoring in your baked goods or other dishes.

Homemade cookies just about always beat store bought, prepackaged cookie doughs. They’re more fun to make - especially if you’re looking for an activity to do with your kids - they’re tastier and they don’t have any strange ingredients, like preservatives, in them. The only advantage of the prepacked doughs is that they’re quicker and more convenient if you absolutely don’t have time to make dough from scratch. Pillsbury recently introduced a new line of prepackaged cookie dough called simply Cookies that give packaged cookies a push closer to homemade. The real selling point is that they are not made with any artificial ingredients. In fact, the ingredient list of the cookies reads just like a recipe ingredient list would (flour, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, etc.). I had a chance to taste the Peanut Butter Cookies when I visited General Mills a few weeks ago and was quite impressed with them. They were nice and chewy, and they had a great peanut butter flavor. They are made with shortening (non-hydrogenated), so they don’t have a real buttery flavor to them, but that’s not a drawback in a peanut butter cookie where you want the peanuts to be the star.

Now, I’m still going to make my cookies from scratch, but I do think it’s nice to know that there is good store-bought option out there if I need some cookies in a pinch or if a friend who is short on time (or ingredients) needs a recommendation.

Even though I could inhale raw cookie dough when I was little - and did, if no one was there to keep an eye on me when I was making chocolate chip cookies. I still eat raw cookie dough, raw eggs and all, but the practice is somewhat frowned upon these days. Raw eggs carry a risk for salmonella, and even though the risk is very small (only 1 in 20,000 eggs might have the bacteria, and even then might not cause illness), it is still recommended that children under the age of 10 and pregnant women avoid them or eat pasturized eggs instead. Science isn’t going to stop kids from wanting to eat raw cookie dough, however, so if you want to play it safe, it is best to look for a safer alternative before you let your kids indulge a little.

One alternative is the Safe-to-Eat Cookie Dough from Bliss Candies, made without eggs, this cookie dough is designed to be eaten straight from the container. It’s made to order from scratch, and is shipped out in small containers. You can eat it straight from the packaging, or you can use the cookie dough in homemade ice creams (or store-bought, of course) and other treats that might need a little bit of cookie dough. The chocolate chip has a lot of chips and stays softer in the ice cream than the cookie dough that comes in premade cookie dough ice cream, which is nice. It’s also nice that you can control how much cookie dough goes into each serving. The dough was much better raw than it was baked (I tested a few and they were just “ok”), but that is really the point of this product. Even though you don’t quite get the satisfaction of licking the spoon that comes with homemade dough, it’s less work and less cleanup (and less worry, if kids are a concern) to dip a spoon into this container and indulge.

The Julie/Julia Project was a blog about one woman’s - Julie’s - adventure of cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child. The blog was eventually turned into a book, Julie and Julia, and that book has now been turned into a major motion picture of the same name. It stars Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell. Luckily for me, I was recently invited to a screening for bloggers, along with Matt Bites, Cooking With Amy, Food Blogga, Daily Dish, Squid Ink, Eater LA, Steamy Kitchen and Food GPS, where we got to see the movie a few weeks before its official release on August 7. I can’t give a full review right now, but I will say that I enjoyed the film a lot. It definitely made me want to do some French cooking - almost as much as my recent Paris trip did. Doesn’t Meryl (below) make a great stand-in for Julia ?

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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.