Using Jelly Belly jelly beans in six different green colors and flavors provides lots of variety.

Each large shamrock pulls apart into three mini cupcakes. If you don’t have time to bake the cupcakes, you can purchase them and focus your time on decorating.

SHAMROCK CUPCAKES FOR ST. PATRICK’S DAY

Ingredients

• 45 mini cupcakes, baked in green paper liners
• 6 thin chocolate cookies
• 2 cans (16 ounces each) dark chocolate frosting

Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with green jelly
bean shamrock cupcakes. Photo from the
book Hello Cupcake by Karen Tack and Alan
Richardson.

• 3/4 cup each (about 6 ounces) Jelly Belly jelly beans in Green Apple, Kiwi, Lemon Lime, Margarita and Watermelon

Preparation
1. Trim the chocolate cookies with a serrated knife into fifteen 1/2-inch- by 2-inch-long strips for the stems. Spoon 1/4 cup of the chocolate frosting into a small zipper bag. Press out the excess air and seal.
2. Working on one shamrock at a time, arrange 3 mini cupcakes close together in the shape of a shamrock.
3. Spread the tops of the cupcakes with some of the chocolate frosting. Add a piece of chocolate cookie in between 2 of the cookies allowing it to overhang about 1 inch to make the stem.
4. Starting on the outer edge of the cupcakes, press like colored green Jelly Belly beans, lengthwise around the cupcakes to make the shamrock shape. Fill in with more jelly beans as close together as possible.
5. Snip a small corner from the bag with the chocolate frosting and pipe a line on the top of the cookie piece. Add 2 like colored jelly beans on top to make the stem. Repeat with the remaining cupcakes, jelly beans and frosting.

Does anyone need a gadget to remove the
avocado pit and slice the flesh? If so,
here it is.

Some tools, like a garlic press, an egg separator, a cherry- or olive pitter and an egg slicer make a difficult job easy. Others, like a vegetable peeler and a mandoline, are indispensable.

However, the vast majority of gadgets we test are such a waste of money and drawer space that we get angry at free enterprise for allowing them to exist. All they do is replace a sharp knife, and often not as well.

Here are some of the time- and money-wasters we’ve tried over the past year.

Chocolate fondue is easy prepare, so why don’t we have it more often? You don’t need a special fondue pot: You can use a standard sauce pot and a portable burner to keep the chocolate warm. However, long-handled fondue forks are needed.

A fondue sidebar: Back in the day, we were big fondue fans, hosting frequent fondue parties. We owned the specialty pots dictated by convention for each type of fondue:

We’re trading in our sterno-heated brazier
for this electric fondue pot from Rival.

 
The cheese and chocolate, and the oil for the beef, were heated on the stove. They were brought to the table and placed atop a brazier, a portable metal frame with an underneath heating source: alcohol, Sterno or butane (or the original, less effective heating source, a tea candle).

Today’s portable electric burners and electric fondue pots are a better solution, but for the electric cord and an extension cord trailing over the dining table.

We’re actually moving our fondue party into the 20th century, donating our three fondue pots to a good cause and purchasing one electric pot.

Back to the chocolate fondue:

Chef Trey Foshee of George’s at the Cove in La Jolla, California, goes a step beyond the traditional chocolate fondue recipe and adds creamy mascarpone cheese (a key ingredient of tiramisu).

Thanks to Chef Foshee and the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board for the delicious recipe.

What the king ate after the speech:
A Stilton from purveyor Neal’s Yard. Photo
courtesy Whole Foods Market.

We’ve received dozens of recipes for themed cocktail recipes for Oscar parties. For example, combine gin with Earl Grey Tea, and call it The King’s Speech cocktail.

Fatigued at the idea of 12 different “Best Picture” cocktails, we’ve published just two over the past month.

But the idea of an Oscar-themed cheese board caught our interest. Here are suggestions from ArtisanalCheese.com, one of the finest online cheese purveyors, on how to create an Academy Awards cheese board:

While she is an experienced baker, in her rush she grabbed baking soda instead of baking powder. It’s an easy “oops.” Some recipes use both leveners, but if only one is called for, be sure that it’s the right one. Baking calls for very precise chemistry.

So what’s the difference between baking soda and baking powder?

Both baking powder and baking soda are chemical leavening agents that cause batters to rise when baked, by enlarging the bubbles (gases) in the batter. Sometimes you want a little rise (in a cookie, for example), sometimes a lot (in a fluffy layer cake).

Baking soda, also known as bicarbonate of soda and by its chemical name, sodium bicarbonate, is about four times as strong as baking powder.

It’s used to neutralize the acid in recipes that contain an acidic ingredient (for example, brown sugar, buttermilk, chocolate, citrus juice, chocolate, fruit, honey, maple syrup, molasses, sour cream, vinegar and yogurt.)

The acid-neutralizing quality is what makes baking soda, dissolved in a glass of water, a cure for upset stomachs. It’s the key ingredient in Alka-Seltzer, launched in 1931. There’s also aspirin in Alka-Seltzer, but take extra tablets for the headache portion of a hangover.

Check that label twice to be sure you’re
adding the right leavener. Photo courtesy
Clabber Girl.

The cornstarch absorbs moisture so the chemical reaction does not take place until a liquid is added to the batter. Baking powder creates a better rise than baking soda. Nearly all baking powder made today is “double acting,” containing two different types of acids that react at different times and make the baked good fluffier.

The first acid creates gases when mixed with the liquid in the recipe, the second type creates gases when the batter is exposed to the heat of the oven.

 
Using the wrong leavener can cause bitterness and/or toughness and a compact (not fluffy) crumb. Once you’ve made the mistake (and we did, when we started to bake), you’ll never do it again. We still keep checking back and forth from the recipe to the can or box: Soda, soda, check. Soda, soda, check. Only then do we add the leavener to the batter.