• With one simple cookie dough recipe, Lucy Waverman morphs it into fruitcake squares, plus chocolate, thumbprint, pinwheels, and toffee cookies.
• If you're looking for a good melting cheese, try Raclette -- melted over baby potatoes, sliced meat, and gherkins, in fondue, on pizzas, or gourmet nachos.
• The economy might be suffering, but Vancouver's restaurant industry continues to expand -- this time with Twisted Fork Bistro...
• ... and also Miku, brought to North America by the Toro Corp.

Cookie dough ice cream is a favorite of ice cream lovers young and old, but Baskin Robbins is taking the popular flavor to the next level with some new fall flavors. Makin' Cookies ice cream has a base ice cream that blends of brown sugar and butter flavors ice with chunks of baked chocolate chip cookies, mini chocolate chips and swirled with a cookie dough ribbon. Oatmeal Cookie Crunch ice cream is vanilla ice cream packed with oatmeal spiced cookies and swirled with a crunchy cinnamon graham cracker ribbon.

On top of the straight ice cream offerings, they have the Cookie Overload Sundae, which pairs the two cookie ice creams with caramel, whipped cream, and crushed chocolate sandwich cookies.

Head over to a store to try the new flavors when you get a chance because they'll only be available to a limited time. Besides, how could you resist brown sugar and butter flavored ice creams? These cookie flavors may not be around for too long, but I don't think anyone would complain about those being added to the permanent menu.

There are many bakers who use a cookie scoop to ensure that their cookies come out to be the exact same size with each batch they bake. For a professional baker, the tool can be helpful because it guarantees that they will get the exact number of cookies that they need from a batch of dough. For a home baker, it simply means that baking times will be standardized and the finished cookies will all be evenly done.

But because some find the useful, it doesn't mean that scoops are necessary objects. I don't like using cookie scoops at home, despite the fact I have several different kinds. I don't find that they work well, even when I use warm water to rinse them between every few scoops, because dough will inevitably stick to them. I get results that are just as good - evenly portioned and evenly baked - when I simply "eyeball" the sizes of my cookie dough balls.

Scoops are a great idea for kids, though. They have a hard time measuring out the dough by eye and will end up with cookie dough in fewer places (hair, clothing, etc), if their hands aren't directly touching the dough. There is an added bonus of your child having their very own "special" tool in the kitchen, which will probably encourage them to come in and help out more often.