Cookie Monster cupcakes have been done. But for our son’s first birthday, I decided awesomeness was far more important than originality.

When I received a very friendly email from Chocri offering to send me three of their custom chocolate bars in the hopes of hearing my opinion of them, I jumped at the chance.

My quinoa won’t win any awards for being photogenic, and sometimes it doesn’t come out the ideal al dente texture. But I can have a healthy and satisfying one-pot meal tailored to whatever cuisine I’m craving ready in 45 minutes start to finish with only a quick raid of my cupboard and 10 minutes of my attention needed.

Reviews of chocolates and other products presented at the 2009 Seattle Chocolate Salon by Oh! Chocolate, Theo Chocolates, Forte Chocolates, L’Estasi Dolce, Choffy, Eat Chocolates, Carter’s Chocolates, La Châtelaine Chocolat, Chocolopolis, Divine Chocolate, I Love Chocolate Jewelry, Posh Chocolat, Crave Chocolate, Amano Chocolate, Intrigue Chocolates, Suess Chocolates and William Dean Chocolates.

Tres leches, move over. There’s a new cake in town with three iterations of the same component: tres (or maybe it should be trois?) ganaches chocolate raspberry cupcakes. Sounds decadent, right? Well, they were.

Roasted Campari tomatoes stuffed with falafel and served with lemon-garlic roasted potatoes, a simple tomato and cucumber salad and a quick yogurt sauce.

It’s natural to be suspicious of any signs you think you see in the world around you. Particularly when the sign in question has too much in common with the Virgin Mary burnt into a piece of toast.

In short: Buitoni’s Wild Mushroom Agnolotti is really, really good.

In search of a vegetarian Peep equivalent, I made some delicious marshmallows set with xanthan gum instead of gelatin, but stumbled when it came to trying to pipe them out like your everyday, mass-produced Peep.

Casting sugar is used mostly to make bases and supports for showpieces, but it can also be a quick way to form custom shapes. Once you learn the technique, you’ll look at everything with new eyes, wondering what would happen if you poured sugar into it.