Ad Hoc is one of Chef Thomas Keller’s restaurants in Yountville, California. The restaurant has an interesting story behind it, but even more interesting is the food, which is high quality, family style fare. They actually have just one menu each day - just like Mom might make (assuming that she is a truly excellent cook) for dinner. Since the food is homestyle, it’s not too much of a stretch to take their food from the Northern California restaurant into actual home kitchens. There is now a line of Ad Hoc food products to choose from, from a Fried Chicken Kit to gourmet cake frostings.

I don’t usually think of canned or jarred cake frosting as being a gourmet ingredient, but Ad Hoc’s Milk and Dark Chocolate Frostings certainly are that. These frostings are made with premium ingredients and are definitely a cut above your average grocery story frosting. Of course, at about $20 per jar - enough jar is enough to frost a 9 inch layer cake - they had better be a big cut above! Both frostings are rich tasting and creamy. I’ve had other dark chocolate frostings with a similar bittersweet flavor, so I wasn’t as impressed with it as I was with the milk chocolate option. The milk chocolate frosting really did have a great milk chocolate flavor to it, like hot chocolate or an actual chocolate bar. I haven’t had too many milk chocolate frostings with a similar flavor, and I know that I haven’t had a premade milk chocolate frosting that was anywhere near as tasty.

Both frostings were easy to spread and there was plenty in each jar to cover a cake well, assuming that you don’t eat a couple of spoonfuls straight from the jar (recommended on the label) before you finish off your cake! I don’t know that it’s worth the price tag when you could make your own frosting much less expensively, but because they are very good, they might be worth a splurge for yourself and would make a nice gourmet gift for a baking friend.

Since it’s Girl Scout cookie season again - whether you’re buying from a local troop or using it as an excuse to make some Homemade Girl Scout Cookies - it also means that Dreyer’s has put its seasonally available Girl Scout cookie ice creams back in grocery store freezer cases. These limited edition ice creams feature some of the most popular Girl Scout cookie flavors, like Samoas and, in this case, Tagalongs. Tagalongs are shortbread cookies topped with a layer of peanut butter and then coated in chocolate, a bit like a peanut butter cup with a cookie base. This Dreyer’s (Edy’s on the East coast) flavor has a vanilla ice cream base, along with swirls of peanut butter and fudge, and some Tagalong cookie bits.

The ice cream is good, it has a nice vanilla flavor to it and is both creamy and light, along the lines of other Dreyer’s Grand ice creams. The fudge and peanut butter swirls really make it taste like a peanut butter cup, too, and there are plenty of each mixed into the ice cream. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the cookie content. While I found plenty of recognizable cookie chunks in the Samoas ice cream, the cookie pieces were few and far between - and they tended to be so small that they really didn’t contribute much. So, while it was good, I might stick to mixing in some Tagalong cookies that I’ve crunched up myself to make sure that I get a lot of crunchy cookie pieces along with all that fudge and peanut butter.

Cookies are not generally geeky things, they fall more into the “all around” category of things that can be enjoyed by anyone. But once you move away from chocolate chip and peanut butter and into more complex cookies, it’s only natural that things will sometimes go to far. Besides, didn’t anyone ever tell you that baking was a science? Today, The Huffington Post celebrates all of the Geekiest Cookies Ever with a big gallery that features everything from Periodic Table Cookies to gingerbread men clad in lab coats.

Most of the innovative cookies featured come from the very creative Not So Humble Pie, who has been putting a nerdy twist (in a good way!) on cookies for quite some time now. I am particularly fond of the containment suit cookies and the gel electrophoresis cookies, although of course the Wii controllers look very tasty, too. You can also find two more big galleries of Science Cookies on her site.

Pearl sugar is a type of specialty sugar that is often used in baking in Scandinavia and a few other countries in Northern Europe. The sugar is not completely round, like real pearls, but it comes in large round-ish chunks of sugar. The most remarkable thing about this type of sugar is that it doesn’t melt easily when exposed to moisture or to high heat, meaning that you can mix it into some cookies for a little crunch or sprinkle it on top of a cake and the sugar will stay put (and stay very visible) as you bake. Pearl sugar can be found in different sizes, varying primarily by brand. Some are the size of large sea salt flakes, while others are more like peas or macadamia nuts. For me, the smaller sizes tend to me more versatile because they can double as sprinkles for baking.

At a glance, pearl sugar resembles sugar cube pieces. Sugar cubes are compressed blocks of sugar that are designed to dissolve easily in hot liquid. The individual grains of sugar are not held tightly together. Pearl sugar is much more heavily compacted, which is why it does not melt easily during baking. Mixing pearl sugar into baked goods will give them soem extra sweetness and crunch. Sprinkling it over the top of a bread or pastry will do the same, and will also give your baked good a nice finishing look.

You won’t find pearl sugar in just any market - not unless you live in Scandinavia, Belgium or some other country where it is commonly included in goodies - but you can find it at some specialty cooking stores, like Sur La Table, and at Scandinavian import stores, like the food section at Ikea. And, of course, you can also find it online.

There is nothing better than a batch of homemade cupcakes, but a dozen or so from a favorite bakery can come in at a close second - and can actually take the first place spot for those who don’t bake. Cupcake shops are still more popular than ever (especially here in LA), but that doesn’t mean that you can find one as easily as you might find a Starbucks. The Wall Street Journal’s Cranky Consumer column, which rates mail-order products, took on the oh-so-difficult task of taste-testing a variety of mail order cupcakes that promise to deliver a gourmet bakery-quality cupcake to your door.

They compared cupcakes from Georgetown Cupcake, Dean & Deluca and Godiva, all of which came via overnight shopping with cupcakes frozen for freshness, as well as cupcakes from Crumbs, a bakery which had a nearby NYC location and was able to deliver locally(although they ship overnight, as well). They compared these cakes to a batch of cupcakes made with a cake mix and looked for both flavor and freshness in the finished cake.

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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).