"ideas" news and stories

If you order a dozen or so holiday cookies from a bakery, you don't expect them to be piled up on a plate and covered in saran wrap, although this seems to be a perfectly acceptable presentation for gifts of homemade cookies. It's true that it is the thought that counts and that good cookies will over come any packaging, but it doesn't take that much more effort to take that packaging to a new level, which will keep the cookies fresher and make a homemade gift a showstopper.

This week, along with their collection of eight great holiday cookie recipes that are all going to be a bit more impressive than your average batch of chocolate chips, including Coconut Orange Macaroons, Scottish Shortbread, Ginger Drops and Candy Cane Cookies, the Denver Post has some great tips for packaging. For kids, try packing up "blank" gingerbread cookies in a small toolbox with frosting, sprinkles and other things they can use to customize the cookies. For cookies that will long outlast the holiday season, giving an unbaked roll of cookie dough (choose an attractive one, like the Chocolate-Coconut Pinwheels the article includes) and baking instructions wrapped up in an elegant tube that will put any store-bought dough to shame. And for the baker, consider wrapping the treats up in or on a pan, so they'll have something to use when they want to bake a batch themselves.

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Over the last week or so, we got some fantastic holiday dinner ideas from a lot of our food blogging friends. First, we were inspired by turkey and stuffing recipes, and then were moved on to some delicious side dishes. No big feast would be complete without dinner rolls or some kind of bread, and so we got some wonderful ideas for breads to serve, too. As we come down to the wire for Thanksgiving, we're finishing up our little series with a look at some outstanding desserts.

• The gold standard of Thanksgiving desserts is the pumpkin pie. There are several recipes to choose from for this category, including the Accidental Hedonist's fresh pumpkin pie, a back-of-the-can pumpkin pie, or a do-it yourself pie that sill uses canned pumpkin.
• Sweet potato pie is also a favorite, and the pie at Simply Recipes has a pecan topping which will add a nicely contrastive crunch.
• You can't go wrong with apple pie, and our detailed homemade apple pie recipe shows you what every step should look like.
• The Homesick Texan shares a pecan pie recipe from her grandmother - and grandmothers almost always make the best pies.
• Elizabeth Ryan's cranberry pie (pictured) at Kitchen Chick will add a huge boost of color to your meal.
• If pies aren't your favorite, you could always opt for Alpineberry's Creamy Pumpkin Cheesecake with Ginger-Pecan Crust.
• One Whole Clove gets some chocolate into her pumpkin dessert with a Pumpkin Bundt Cake with Chocolate Glaze and Pumpkin-Chocolate Truffle Center.
• And to really impress guests, bring out Pumpkin Seed Brittle and Burnt Sugar Ice Cream from Tartelette.

Normally, I don't make a habit of covering sites with the word cute in the URL (I"ll leave that to all you knitting bloggers), but Cooking Cute looks to be a bento site worth noting. The recently launched site has plenty of tips for packing and preparing bento lunches, a glossary of terms, recipes and links to way more bento blogs than I ever knew existed. I'm also fond of the bento calendar, which features photos and links to descriptions of the different meals. And you know, aside from a bunny and a few flowers, the cute isn't that overpowering.

Earlier this week, Nicole posted about recipe searches using Google itself, or Cooking with Google. Along those same "help me with what's in my fridge," life-gives-you-lemons kind of lines comes Snacksby.com. Admittedly still in its infancy, Snacksby describes itself as "like MacGyver, but for food." A search for "chicken, cucumbers, corn," which is what's in my fridge now, returned "Don't really expect anything, we've only got like 3 recipes and 12 ingredients here right now anyway. You should totally add a recipe or an ingredient." That may be a bit of an understatement, and some of Snacksby's features-tag clouds, food photo sharing-could be a lot of fun if/when more people start to contribute to the site. It's definitely worth a look. 

Have you ever looked at a product and thought I could come up with that! or this would be so much better if they had just added (blank)? Now is your chance to have your idea made into a blockbuster. Kraft announced in last week's Wall Street Journal that they are accepting ideas from real people about what products they want to see on the shelves. Generally, product ideas come via market researchers or trend-watching firms, then are made into reality by food scientists (link to bread article) before being taste tested by groups of consumers. In this new campaign, the product starts and ends with consumers.

In all honesty, it sounds like they must be having some creative problems with their product development team, especially because they are particularly interested in ideas that haven been patented and "can be brought to market quickly." Nevertheless, this sounds like a great opportunity for anyone with an innovative idea to get their product across to one of the largest food companies in the world - without the usual hassle and red tape that go along with regular submissions.

There is a set of rules to help protect the company and the rights of the person submitting the idea for new products, packaging, or business processes/systems (all of which are being accepted), so be sure to check them out first.

 

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