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.

I’ve seen a lot of little gift cooking kits popping up over the past few months, and The Cupcake Kit is one that catches my eye every time I see it in a book or gift store. The kit comes with a 64-page book on cupcake recipes and decorating techniques, a pastry bag, a variety of decorating tips and 250 cupcake liners in two different sizes. Everything is packaged neatly an in easy-to-wrap box, perfect for giving as a gift to a baker.

The kit is a good way to start off for bakers who may be young or inexperienced, but want to improve their decorating skills. The fact that it comes with a pastry bag and tips, not to mention that the shot book covers a lot about decorating technique, is great. The pastry bag and cupcake wrappers also make it a good gift for more experienced bakers. I don’t know too many home bakers who wouldn’t appreciate getting a whole bunch of new stuff to play with in the kitchen! It also makes a good “gift” for yourself, since it is a pretty good value for everything that you get.

In addition to the equipment, the book is very good, and though it contains on 24 recipes (compared to some super-sized cookbooks that seem to have hundreds), they are easy to follow and produce good results. There are ideas for every day cupcakes and for fancier cupcakes/decorations in here, so the book and kit will probably come in handy on more than one occasion.

My mom always reminded me to pack a few granola bars or some similar treats with me when I traveled because, according to her, you never know when you’re going to need a snack. The plane might be late and all the restaurants will be closed when you land. You might end up spending 2 hours waiting in an unavoidably long ticket line. She was right. I pretty much always pack a granola bar or two just in case. I think I may have found a snack that could replace my granola bars, though: Nutella To Go.

I’ve seen small, snack-sized packages of Nutella before, but these combination biscuit and Nutella packs are a little handier because they include a way of easily delivering the Nutella without having to stop and pick up some bread or crackers to go with. They fit easily in a pocket or purse, plus they’re only about 250 calories and 4 grams of protein. The little biscuit sticks are a little bland on their own, but the generous amount of Nutella makes up for it.

I found these packs on my trip to Paris, so I’m not sure if you can buy them in the US, but keep an eye out. You could always put together your own snack-sized packs with homemade Nutella!

When you color granulated sugar, you can add a small amount of liquid food coloring to the sugar, mix it in and let the excess moisture evaporate. It is much more difficult to dye powdered sugar because it is so fine that it clumps together almost immediately after any kind of liquid is added. To make matters worse, it dissolves very easily if you mix it around at all, so stirring it in is quite the challenge when you compare it to granulated sugar. As a result, I tend to keep my confectioners’ sugar white. Wilton recently launched a series of colored dusting sugars in blue, pink and green that allows for much more colorful presentations than white sugar alone.

There are is no hassle to trying to use these sugars (unlike trying to make your own), just pretty pale colors to use as accents. They stand out well on a dark background, but are perfectly visible on a light colored cake or frosting. You can simply sift the colorful sugars on top of cakes, cookies or brownies, just as you would with regular sugar, but they add a new element to cake and cupcake stencils when you use them to make different designs.

Glass bakeware from Green Apple isn’t exactly the same as Pyrex bakeware, although the two are both made of glass. Glass bakeware is made of borosilicate glass, a glass that is extremely temperature resistant with a low expansion coefficient. It is most often used for for scientific and laboratory tools, but is also used for lamps and other glassware that might be exposed to high temperatures. Up until 1998, Pyrex was also made from borosilicate glass, but is now made with soda-lime glass, a glass that is already used in the manufacture of many food and beverage products, as well as for windows.

Green Apple Nonstick Glass Bakeware is a line of glass bakeware that is being pitched, not only as non-stick, but as “all natural.” What makes this bakeware nonstick is an “FDA approved NAMI™ coating” that provides a chemical-free, antibacterial surface. The website, unfortunately, doesn’t explain what the coating is made out of. Nevertheless, I wanted to see how it worked compared to my pyrex (mine is older and also borosilicate, as opposed to the newer glass) and whether the nonstick coating worked - and if so, if that made it worth buying.

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It’s hard to find a good lemon cookie. Either they don’t have a particularly strong or distinctive flavor to them, or the cookies have an artificial sweetness to them due to overuse of (cheap) imitation flavoring. As a result, I was a bit reluctant to try Trader Joe’s Meyer Lemon Cookie Thins at first, but was willing to give TJ’s the benefit of the doubt because their Ginger Thins are quite good, so the lemon wafers seemed promising.

I wasn’t disappointed.

These thins are bright and lemony, and are made with all natural ingredients - including butter and lemon - instead of using artificial flavorings.  The wafers themselves are incredibly thin, maybe 1/8th of an inch high, and are very delicate. They break very easily in the package, despite their protective plastic case, so they must be treated with care. They almost shatter into your mouth when you bite into them, then the thin cookies seem to melt onto your tongue; it’s a perfect combination of crispy and delicate.

I can’t say with certainty that I could distinguish these meyer lemon thins from ordinary lemon thins if given an option, but the lemon flavor is unmistakeably zesty and fresh. The cookies are tasty and very addictive. They’re good with tea and work well in place of graham crackers if you want to make a citrus tart crust.