Six lucky winners will each receive a set of four My Little Cupcake molds—guaranteed to become the most popular molds in the house. For a kids’ project, there’s a no-bake cupcake recipe (simply make a dough from cream cheese and ground chocolate sandwich cookies—it’s delish) and push the dough into the mold. There are other recipes as well.

Once popped out of the mold, a lollipop stick can be added (we dipped pretzel sticks in chocolate) and the cupcakes can be decorated with sprinkles, mini chips, etc.

The little cupcakes make charming ice cream toppers. We decorated a whole layer cake with mini cupcakes. Learn more at MyLittleCupcakePop.com.

The mini pink mold on the left produces the
mini cupcakes the right. Photo courtesy My Little Cupcake.

• To Enter This Gourmet Giveaway: Go to the box at the bottom of our Gourmet Cake, Cupcakes & Cake Mix Page and click to enter your email address for the prize drawing. Approximate Retail Value Of Each Prize: $24.00. This contest closes on Monday, January 17th at noon, Eastern Time. Good luck!

Bunn’s sleek new single-serve coffee maker.
Photo courtesy Bunn.

While that counts for just 5.2% of the coffee category, single-cup coffee sales are growing 28 times as fast as the overall coffee market. Keurig, which is owned by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, has a reported 71% of the market, according to Bloomberg.com.

Convenience and taste are the drivers. Everyone in the household can have a fresh cup whenever they want one. And it’s not just a fresh, hot cup of java,* but whichever origin and style they want at that moment—from decaf French roast to vanilla hazelnut.

*Reference to coffee as “java” dates to 1850 and a specific type of coffee, grown on the island of Java and other islands in what is today Indonesia.

In mid-December, we began to test the Bunn My Cafe Home Pod Brewer. Everyone could have the exact kind of coffee he or she wanted; and there was no need to yell “Who wants coffee?” when a fresh pot was made, so as not to let good coffee get baked on the warming plate.

The Bunn was received so well that some testers purchased it as holiday gifts.

While THE NIBBLE has an assortment of coffeemakers (cone filter, drip, French press and vacuum brewers) that enable us to test different types of coffee, we think a Bunn single-serve coffee maker will be joining them soon.

Brush up on your coffee terminology and find recipes in our Gourmet Coffee Section.

Or, you can go glam with grapefruit sorbet, one of our passions.

You don’t even need a sorbet maker. These two recipes are for grapefruit granita—a “crunchy” sorbet.

All you need to do is sweeten fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice to taste, cook it with water until the sugar dissolves (or substitute simple syrup for the sugar), pour the mixture into a pan and put it in the freezer. Then, just break up the ice crystals as they form in the pan, every two hours or so.

• Here’s a more precise recipe for this easy grapefruit granita.
• We prefer this more sophisticated recipe for grapefruit granita with fresh tarragon, a perfect complement to the tart grapefruit. If you’re not a tarragon fan, substitute mint.

Grapefruit and tarragon granita.

• While you can use any type of grapefruit, pink or red grapefruit (Marsh Ruby, Ruby, Rio Red and Star Ruby are examples) enhances the appearance.

The most memorable granita we’ve ever had was at a Michelin two-star restaurant in the south of France. It was appropriately flavored with herbes de Provence—basil, lavender, marjoram (a member of the mint family with citrus and pine notes), rosemary, sage and thyme. No grapefruit juice was used. The recipe was simply water, sweetened and frozen with these heavenly herbs. Try it.

That particular dish of granita was served as a palate cleanser, between the fish course and the meat course. (Palate cleansers are refreshing foods, such as sorbets and beverages, served in-between courses of a meal. They eliminate any lingering flavors on the palate so that the next course may be tasted with a “clean” palate. They are served after fish courses, highly spiced courses and heavily garlicked courses; but you don’t need any excuse other than “it tastes good.”

You can serve grapefruit granita as a palate cleanser; or enjoy it as a light dessert or an after-dinner drink. Pop a scoop into a glass of gin, tequila or vodka. Or do the reverse: Add three tablespoons of gin, tequila or vodka to the granita mixture before freezing.

• Find more of our favorite sorbet and granita recipes.
• Master the differences between granita, sorbet, ice and other frozen desserts in our Ice Cream Glossary.

Bake. Eat. Pose. Photo courtesy
TheKitchenYogi.com.

Yoga cookies, anyone?

Two entrepreneurs—one a certified yoga instructor and the other a marketer/package designer—have translated their love of yoga and healthy eating into The Kitchen Yogi. Their first products are cookie cutters in the shape of three yoga poses.

Each cookie cutter comes with a healthy cookie recipe and instructions for doing the pose (perhaps while the cookies are baking?).

The cookie cutters are $7.50 each or three for $20.00 (if you want one, you’ll want all three). Buy them online at TheKitchenYogi.com. Ten percent of profits go to animal welfare organizations.

You can make make healthy Valentine cookies for your yoga-enthusiast friends by adding a small candy Red Hot heart (available in bulk here) to each cookie.

If you don’t want to bake, BakedIdeas.com makes the cutest gingerbread people (year-round) performing 10 yoga poses: Down Dog, Lotus, Plow, Tree, Triangle, Savasana, Spinal Twist, Warrior I, Warrior III and Wheel. You never saw a happier bunch of cookies.

Baked Ideas also sells its cookie cuttters boxed with the gingerbread recipe for $32.50, in either the Down Dog Group or the Lotus Group.

Pose. Eat. Enjoy.

But with convenience comes salt, one thing that few people need more of.

The American Heart Association recommends 1,500 milligrams of sodium (salt) per day. But the average American’s salt intake is more than twice that: 3,436 mg sodium daily.

A single teaspoon of salt contains approximately 2,000 mg of sodium. If you think that this doesn’t apply to you since you don’t salt your food (or add just a slight shake of salt), it’s the processed food—canned, prepared and frozen meals or components—that make us consume more salt than deer at a salt lick.

Just look at the sodium content on the nutrition labels of big-sodium canned foods, which include such seemingly innocent products such as condiments, mixes, soups, tomato sauce and any prepared foods or meals.

If you’re using canned vegetables for
convenience (or preference), look for No
Salt Added and Low Sodium varieties.
Photo courtesy Del Monte Foods.

Single items sold by fast food restaurants can typically have 2,000 mg of sodium. And many other restaurant meals are also packed with hidden salt.

No matter how young and healthy you feel now, control your salt now and you won’t have to pay the piper later—in the form of hypertension (high blood pressure) and other conditions.

Del Monte Foods and Green Giant both have reduce-salt and no-salt-added options, as do many healthy and organic brands. If you can’t find enough reduced-salt options in your supermarket, check out the nearest natural foods store.

Here are sodium-level definitions from the American Heart Association:

 
Instead of salt, add flavor to foods with your favorite herbs or spices. The line of Mrs. Dash herb and spice blends makes it easy.

Here’s more useful sodium information from the American Heart Association.