A piece of cake can look a bit lonely on a plate all by itself. Dressing up the plate with a little garnish or a little sauce can go a long way in making a plain chocolate cake look like something very special - perfect for a romantic dinner, a dinner party or just when you want to do something nice for yourself.

Adding a few fresh berries or a small dollop of whipped cream is the easiest way to add to the presentation. A sprig of mint looks nice on chocolate desserts and ice creams. But these are simple garnishes, and to really make an impact, you’ll want to add a swirl of sauce or a splash of coulis to the plate. Chocolate sauce and a fruit coulis (smooth puree) add a little extra flavor to each bite of your dessert, and you can be a lot more playful with them than you can be with a sprig of mint.

You’ll want a small pastry bottle - a plastic bottle with a small tip - or a small pastry bag to do your decorating with. Transfer a thin sauce to the bottle - storebought caramel sauce, chocolate sauce and vanilla sauce will work well, as will any thin fruit puree or creme anglaise - and squeeze a design of spirals or swirls onto the plate before adding your dessert. For an even more impressive effect, pipe a flat area of one color of sauce. Use another sauce to pipe straight lines through the blank palate created by sauce number one, then drag a toothpick through both sauces at a right angle to the lines you just drew. The result is pictured above and is a beautiful canvas on which to plate the perfect dessert (I used vanilla and caramel for that photo).

Are you rooting for Peyton Manning and the Colts this weekend, or Drew Brees and the Saints? Even if you’re one of the many viewers who tunes in to the Super Bowl just to see what million-dollar commercials, you’re probably going to want to stock up on snacks for the big game this weekend because it is one of the biggest party days of the year. The savory stuff, like chili, chips, dip and guacamole, are standards for Super Bowl parties and easy to come by. I’d like to focus on dessert a bit, since a nice sweet snack will finish off the 4th quarter on a high note, even if your team isn’t in the lead.

Indianapolis doesn’t have a signature dessert in the way that some other cities do, but if you don’t mind a New Orleans dessert at your party, Homemade Beignets - the powdered sugar dusted donuts so popular in the southern city - are a great party option. Fresh, hot donuts are sure to win over any football fan (or other party-goer). For Colts supporters, you might want to simply tint some icing and decorate some cookies or cupcakes in white and blue to show your team spirit. For instance, you can use Black and White Cookies, make a double batch of the white icing and dye half of it blue.

For a more directly football themed dessert, you should definitely try making Chocolate Football Cakes, which are like cupcakes in the shape of little footballs. They’re made from a sheet cake and glazed to give them a smooth, finished look. A Helmet-shaped or football-shaped pan can easily give you a full-sized cake to decorate in support of your favorite team.

Other good choices for a party are bite-sized desserts that will travel well and keep easily during the game. Brownies and blondies are always good options. Magic Bars offer something for everyone and are very easy to make. A batch of homemade S’mores Fudge is a nice choice, too, and can be made well in advance.

It is easy to talk about your favorite Girl Scout Cookies. Mine are Samoas. This shouldn’t be much a surprise because the two most popular Girl Scout cookies are Samoas and Thin Mints, and they have been for years. These are the cookies that, even if you’re making them at home, you still wait eagerly for in the late winter when Girl Scouts start selling them. But other cookies come and go, dropped from the production lineup for lack of popularity.

So, while I know what the most popular cookies are, I have to ask what are the least popular Girl Scout Cookies? As much as I’d like to think that they’re all pretty good, I’ve had some over the years that were pretty bad - the kind of cookies where the box never really gets finished because you’ll reach for another snack long before taking a cookie from the already open box. For me, I would have to say that I’ll pass on anything reduced fat or reduced sugar. This is primarily because if I’m waiting a whole year to pick up a box of cookies, I’m not going to worry about a few extra calories, but also because these cookies don’t even approach the flavor of the classic cookies in the lineup! Over the years many cookies have come and gone - some better than others. What were your least favorite Girl Scout Cookies?

If you want to reference some of the cookies from years past to refresh your memories, take a look at these comments were people relive some of their favorites, too.

Weddings are undeniably special occasions and you’ll see some of the most beautiful and most elaborate cakes ever baked on display at wedding receptions. You’ll also see some of the most over-the-top cakes, for better and for worse. One of my favorite instances of this is a life sized wedding cake made to look exactly like the bride herself. It was certainly memorable, down to the matching dress, bouquet and hairstyle of the bride. This wedding cake wedding dress, a designer creation by Lukka Sigurdardottir that is unlikely to be appearing at any real ceremonies in the near future, was built along a similar vein. Instead of making the bride out of cake to wear the cake dress, this gigantic dress-shaped wedding cake has a real woman at the center - “wearing” the dress! Naturally, she can’t move too well in the outfit, but she is in a good position to snack on the rainbow-colored, multi layer cake while she waits to be rolled - since walking is pretty much out of the question - down the aisle.

This month, Girl Scouts around the US will kick off their annunal cookie sales. Some councils have already started, and some will be gearing up in the next few days. This is a time of year that most cookie-lovers look forward to because it means we can pick up a few boxes of our seasonal favorites. The Girl Scout Cookies are produced by two different bakeries, Little Brownie Bakers and ABC Smart Cookies, so the distribution of the new cookies flavors varies by region and which bakery supplies cookies in your area. Samoas (Caramel de Lites), Thin Mints, Tagalongs (Peanut Butter Patties), Do-Si-Dos (Peanut Butter Sandwich), Trefoils (Shortbread) are available everywhere. Lemon Chalet Cremes, a lemon-filled cookie, and Lemonades, a lemon iced cookie, are back for another season but are available in different regions. Thanks-a-Lot, a chocolate-dipped shortbread cookie and the 100-calorie pack Daisy-Go-Rounds are also back from the ABC Bakery, while the Dulce De Leche shortbread cookies return from Little Brownie Bakers. One new cookie this year is called Thank U Berry Munch, light and crispy cookies with dried cranberries and puffed rice cereal in them. As much as I like the new cookies, I still think back to some of my favorites from years gone by and hope that some of them - like Lemon Coolers, Golden Yangles, Aloha Chips and Juliettes - will make a return!

While I’ll be on the lookout for Girl Scouts to support (and new cookies to try), I’ll also be baking my own at home as I do every year. Homemade Girl Scout Cookie recipes make it easy to have cookies any time of year and, since they tend to cost less than the boxed cookies, where only a percentage goes to the troops, you can donate the savings directly to your favorite group of Girl Scouts (and maybe encourage them to have their own bake sale) to support them.

One of the most frequently recommended ways to make Dulce de Leche is to put a can of sweetened condensed milk into boiling water and cook it for a period of 2-4 hours. This is not a good thing to do - and one look at the warning on a can of sweetened condensed milk will tell you why: the can can explode. This can happen when the water level in the pan gets to low, when the burner you’re using has a hot spot below your can, or when any other situation arises in which excess heat builds up in that can. I’ve used the method with good results - but it’s not worth the risk of stepping out of the kitchen and returning to a big mess of sweetened condensed milk everywhere, not when there is a safer method that is just as easy to do and that is even a bit faster.

This method for making dulce de leche uses a double boiler. Simply open a can of sweetened condensed milk and pour it into the top of a double boiler, where the bottom is already filled with a few inches of simmering water. With a double boiler, you don’t need to worry about the water evaporating while you cook, and since there is no pressure from a sealed can, there is no risk of an unexpected explosion (yes, it really does happen).
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