Extra egg yolks? It’s easy to keep them
fresh. Photo by Michael Lorenzo | SXC.

To freeze egg yolks, you need to keep them from drying out by adding the equivalent of a teaspoon of salt per pint or a tablespoon of sugar or honey.

Another freezing tip: Place one yolk in each compartment of an ice cube tray. (After they freeze, move them to freezer bags.)

What can you do with egg yolks?

Make hollandaise sauce, aïoli or other sauces. You can use yolks to enrich sauces that don’t call for yolks. On the sweet side, there’s crème brûlée, French-style ice cream, mousse and zabaglione.

• Find egg recipes in our Eggs Section.
• Egg nutrition, facts and more tips.

Do you like oatmeal but wish the instant kind were more like stovetop-cooked?

Do you want an easy way to get your daily 48g of whole grain?

Do you want more fiber, cancer-fighting foods, the ability to lower bad cholesterol?

Malt-O-Meal, a company that makes only cereal products, has hit a home run with its new Better Oats line. It has a toothy, not mushy, consistency. No one would know it’s instant oatmeal. We don’t know all of the secrets, but one of them is the inclusion of flaxseed, which adds crunch plus Omega-3 fatty acids.

The variety of choices—classic, brown sugar, chai-spiced, cinnamon, maple, multigrain blend and even a tasty chocolate oatmeal—offer a different flavor for every day of the week. Unlike most instant oatmeal, they aren’t stripped of fiber and nutrients.

Enjoy a better bowl of instant oatmeal.
Photo by Katharine Pollak | THE NIBBLE.

• Read the full review and buy Better Oats—you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
• The health benefits of oatmeal.
• Why you need whole grain foods daily.

A chocolate-lover’s dessert fantasy:
milk and dark chocolate cups filled with
chocolate mousse.Chocolate cups from Godiva.

For an easy and elegant dessert at the end of a sumptuous dinner, simply place a scoop of ice cream into a molded chocolate cup. Garnish with a berry and a mint sprig, and you’ve got an impressive crowd-pleaser.

• Think beyond vanilla and chocolate ice cream to coffee, strawberry, mint and other flavors that pair easily with chocolate.
• For something really rich, fill the cups with mousse. Here’s Julia Child’s chocolate mousse recipe.
• We also like a filling of custard topped with fruit.

You can find chocolate cups at specialty food stores and baking supply stores. Or, get the Godiva chocolate cups in the photo. If you’re shopping online, make sure you purchase chocolate cups and not dessert cups.

• Find more of our favorite dessert recipes and product reviews in our Desserts Section.

Baked in individual ramekins, this squash soufflé recipe is a lighter alternative to pumpkin pie. You can use butternut squash or any of your favorite winter squash.

With the holiday season soon upon us and many cookies to be baked, pastry chef Gail Dosik of One Tough Cookie has some advice when it comes to working with cookie dough. Says Gail:

“Many’s the sugar cookie recipe that instructs you to collect the dough, pat it into a disc wrapped in plastic and refrigerate for an hour or so until firm. You are then instructed to roll the dough out. These recipes tell you that now is the time to sink your cookie cutters in and cut desired shapes.

“What they don’t tell you is that the dough is so soft that it can’t hold any shape, regardless of how many spatulas, shovels or other kitchen accoutrements you’ve purchased to carefully transfer that dough to a cookie sheet. And no matter how careful you are, that gingerbread man is starting to look like Salvadore Dali made him.

Frustrated with rolling out cookie dough?
We have the solution. Frankenstein
cookie cutter available from Wilton.com.

The solution, advises Gail, lies in parchment paper.

1. Take a scoop or two of the dough and place it on a piece of parchment paper. Top with another sheet. Roll dough to desired thickness. Repeat until all dough is rolled out. Use rolling pin bands if you’re not good at judging desired thickness.
2. Place the sheets of dough in the freezer—not in the refrigerator—for at least 30 minutes. The resting dough relaxes the glutens that have been have stirred up while preparing the dough.
3. Preheat the oven. Prepare cookie cutters and cookie sheets.
4. Put a tablespoon of flour onto a small plate and dip the cookie cutter into the flour to coat the edges. This will give your cookies a very sharp, clean edge.
5. Take a piece of dough from the freezer and remove both sheets of parchment paper. Cut the cookies, dipping the cutter in flour. Move cookies to the prepared cookie sheet: no more “shape shifters.”
6. If the dough gets too warm to work with, simply re-cover it with parchment paper, return it to the freezer and take out the next ball of dough. Fill the cookie sheet and bake.