*The original store is in Beverly Hills. There are outposts in Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Newport Beach, Phoenix/Scottsdale and Palo Alto, with 16 additional locations on the boards (see the website).

If you’re looking for a better cupcake than what you can buy…if you’re tired of trying recipes, only to find that they’re not what you were hoping for…we hope that your search, like ours, has come to an end. Your new favorite gourmet cake mix purveyor is Candace Nelson, co-founder (with her husband) of Sprinkles Cupcakes. Some day we’ll get to a Sprinkles bakery; until then, we can only judge the cupcakes made from the mixes as A to A+.

The best cupcakes in town are at your house,
with Sprinkles cupcake mixes. Photo by Victoria Pearson | Sprinkles.

• Read the full review to discover our favorites and how to make the best cupcakes in town.
• Find more of our favorite cupcakes and recipes in THE NIBBLE’s Gourmet Cakes Section.

A bowl of tomato soup garnished with crab-meat, fresh basil, shredded Grana Padano cheese and snipped chives (photo © Wisconsin Dairy)..

Remember when a garnish meant parsley? Today, part of the creativity in cooking is the choice of edible garniture. Just a bit of glamorous garnishing makes any plate look better.

Try whole or halved cherry or grape tomatoes or actual grapes, caperberries with stems (or scatter small capers on the plate), beads of whitefish caviar, edible flowers…

There are dozens of tasty choices whether your course is sweet or savory.

So whether you’re presenting the turkey, yams, stuffing, cranberries, or other dishes tomorrow, consider whether sprigs of rosemary, orange peel, dill, or other garnish (yes, even parsley) can make them even more of a visual “wow.”

> For a cornucopia of ideas, see our article on glamorous garnishes.

While many cookie bouquets are sugar cookies—hard and pretty flavorless—Corso’s Cookies produces softer, higher-quality shortbread, made with butter and almond flavoring. Even after a big lunch, they were popular with our group of Nibblers.

If you’ve missed the opportunity to send a Thanksgiving bouquet prior to the big day, there’s still time to send some for weekend enjoyment—or a Thank You bouquet to your dinner host. And of course, there are Happy Anything Else, Congratulations Get Well and many more cookie greetings. With the skyrocketing cost of paper greeting, cookie bouquets may become the new standard way of messaging.

We gobbled them up! Photo courtesy CorsosCookies.com.

• See our favorite cookies and recipes in THE NIBBLE’s Gourmet Cookies Section.
• Should you freeze or refrigerate an overload of cookies? Read our cookie storage tips.