Meet The Team / Emily Matchar

As someone who has never managed to make ravioli that didn't look like thin, lumpy pillows from some dystopian prison ward bunk bed, I'm completely and totally awed by these beauties, from Jezzfoodieme on Slashfood's Flickr pool.

They're filled with pumpkin and piave vecchio cheese, toasted in butter and topped with walnuts. There's a link to a recipe at Yum-O-Rama, with helpful photos -- unfortunately for me it calls for a ravioli mold.

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Sugar, once demonized by parents and dentists alike, is back in style, this time as a selling point for food companies who want to broadcast that their products are free from high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the New York Times reports. HFCS, though believed by most scientists to be the same as sugar for your health, has become a whipping boy these days.

Log Cabin syrup recently announced that they've stopped using HFCS in their syrup; Pepsi has come out with new sugar-sweetened Pepsi and Mountain Dew; ConAgra uses only sugar or honey in its Healthy Choice All Natural frozen entrees.

"The argument about which is better for you, sucrose or HFCS, is garbage. Both are equally bad for your health," says Dr. Robert H. Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco Children's Hospital.

"For consumers, perception is reality," says Jim Sieple, a senior vice president for Log Cabin syrup.

This seems like an incredibly cynical move, preying on people's misperceptions about HFCS to market products filled with equally obesity-promoting sugar as "healthy." It feels very wrong that a soda company or a frozen dinner company slaps the words "all natural" (a totally meaningless marketing phrase) on a piece of junk food to make people feel like it's wholesome.

The problem is not HFCS OR sugar, it's the fact that items like frozen dinners are larded with sweeteners to make them more appealing (I don't put sugar in my pot pie, do you?), and that we drink gallons of soda instead of water.

What do you think? Is it wrong for companies to promote sugar-sweetened foods as healthy alternatives?

[Via: New York Times]

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Don't have an ice cream maker? No problem. You don't need one to make kulfi, a molded milk-based ice cream from India.

These beauties come from Nicisme on the Slashfood Flickr pool, from her Cherrapeno blog, adapted from Passionate About Baking. They're flavored with cardamom and frozen overnight in silicone molds, though you can use any kind of mold you have.

Kulfi is denser than ice cream, but since it's made with milk instead of cream, it's also less rich. The single serving size makes them perfect for an afternoon snack (heck, what with the fruit and nuts we might eat one for breakfast!).

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On a recent trip to Singapore I fell hopelessly in love with the unholy, neon-colored love child of a Sno-Cone and a Jell-O salad, also known as the ais kacang.

The ais kacang is wildly popular in Singapore and Malaysia (where it's sometimes called an "ABC"), served in outdoor food centers and in mall food courts countrywide. In its most basic iteration, it consists of a scoop of roughly shaved ice drizzled with varicolored sugar syrups and evaporated or condensed milk sitting on a nest of corn kernels, red beans and cubes of herb jelly or gluey sago pearls.

It's the hyperstimulating carnival of desserts, with every texture -- Crunchy! Chewy! Icy! Glutinous! Creamy! -- and dozens of flavors exploding in your mouth all at once. Some versions even include a scoop of ice cream or a pile of fresh mango or (eeek!) durian. More is more, right?

Never mind that it's still 45 degrees and raining here; I've been craving ais kacang as if it's midsummer in Southeast Asia. So I decided to make my own. I simply ground up ice in my food processor and doused it with Torani raspberry syrup (the kind you use to make Italian soda) and a milk syrup I'd made by cooking evaporated milk with brown sugar. I omitted the corn and beans, but next time I'll try adding some sago pearls or chopped fresh berries.

Guess what this purple velvet torte doesn't contain? Flour. Guess what it does contain? Beets. That's right, this drool-worthy specimen from Elana's Pantry is not only gluten-free, but it actually gives you a dose of veg. Elana says this is her second attempt at "hiding" beets in treats, and that the torte passed her picky husband's taste test with flying colors. The torte is sweetened with agave nectar and moistened with grapeseed oil. As a mild beet-phobe myself, I'm desperately curious to see how well the beet-y taste is hidden.

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