Vanilla Ice Cream

SCOOPS OF VANILLA ice cream take on a spooky appearance when given a witchy disguise.The hat is made from a chocolate cookie topped with an ice cream cone. The cone is dipped into thick chocolate syrup to "glue" it securely.If you like, sit the ice cream on another cookie and give it candy or raisin eyes.We used Archway-brand cookies for this recipe. Rocky-road chocolate cookies made a terrific brim while old-fashioned molasses cookies, with a scalloped-edge, made a perfect base.These frozen treats go together very quickly, making them a perfect choice for Halloween parties.

Linda Settles from Havre de Grace was looking for a recipe for brown sugar pie that duplicated the one her grandmother used to make. She said her grandmother had five daughters but none of them remember how she made the pie. Jeannie Armstrong from Dayton, MD found a recipe for the pie in a cookbook she bought at an antique store years ago. It was first published in 1915 and revised in 1944. I tested the recipe that she kindly sent in and found that it needed a little tweaking.

Item: Edy's candy ice creams What you get: 12 one-half cup servings Cost: About $4.80 Nutrition content: (M & M flavor only)180 calories, 9 grams fat, 5 grams saturated fat, 50 milligrams sodium Preparation time: Serve right out of the freezer Review: Just when it seemed there was nothing new to be had in ice cream, Edy's has come out with frozen treats flavored like favorite candy bars. We tried M & M's Vanilla Ice Cream (made with the mini candies that are extremely popular around our house)

Summer arrives at 7:09 p.m on Wednesday. Hilariously, 98 degree weather is due to arrive at the exact same time. June 20 is National Vanilla Milkshake Day. It just is. How about an Abbey Burger Bistro shake made with Gifford's vanilla ice cream, Berger cookies, Stoli vanilla and Godiva liqueur? Or you could take on the six-pound milkshake Chick & Ruth's Delly in Annapolis, part of the restaurants Man Vs. Food Challenge . (There's a one-pound burger, too.) Pictures: Great Maryland milkshakes Or, you could head to a participating Rita's , where regular size Rita's Italian Ices are $2 all day long on June 20. Price does not include sales tax.  

We love getting the email updates on the monthly burgert and shake specials at BGR The Burger Joint. The burger for March pays homage toSt. Patrick's Day. The Reuben burger is a prime, dry-aged patty topped with Thousand Island dressing and thinly sliced corned beef. And the shake of the month for March is a the Girl Scout Thin Mint Shake, which blends vanilla ice cream with the iconic minty chocolate cookie. Now that you have burgers on the brain, take a look at our photo gallery of 10 notable Baltimore area burgers .  

Ice cream bars messy but marvelous Item: Nestle Tandem ice cream bars What you get: 4 bars Cost: About $3.75 Preparation time: Serve right out of freezer Review: For some people, especially children, ice cream never goes out of season. Nestle's newest frozen treats can definitely be enjoyed no matter what the weather. The Tandem bars are, as the name suggests, two flavors in one. We tried the vanilla-chip sandwiches -- one part chocolate chip ice cream between two chocolate wafers, the other vanilla ice cream coated with Nestle chocolate and cookie bits.

The two women who help me test recipes for this column arrived at my house with the same request. They were both expecting out-of-town company for overnight visits and wanted a suggestion for a special, yet uncomplicated fall dessert for supper. I knew just what to propose. Several days before, intoxicated by the cool autumn weather, I had started working on an apple-toffee crisp, which I'm going to include in one of my autumn cooking classes. I had already made the dish twice but needed to tweak the amounts and seasonings once more, so my kitchen assistants and I baked another that day. The third time was magic.

Some taste pleasures of childhood lose their charm as the years go by. Bubble gum, Sugar Daddies, even Red Hots no longer tempt me. Milkshakes are a different matter. I loved them then. I love them now. And I'm not alone. When my parents piled my brothers and me into the car for road trips, we would wait for the magic words. "If anybody else wants a milkshake ... " my mother would say. She never had to finish the sentence. After painstaking research, selflessly volunteering myself and pressing into service several willing adults and children as guinea pigs, I have concluded that the perfect milkshake exists but that it can differ for each person, even if only slightly.

When entertaining during the chilly days of winter, when temperatures rarely rise above freezing for long stretches of time in my part of New England, I love to plan robust menus to stave off the cold outdoors.Typically, after these filling meals, I serve a warm fruit dessert as the conclusion. Among my favorite selections are apple cobblers; tarts made with dried cherries or apricots; bread puddings layered with sliced bananas; and compotes of grapes, oranges and other winter fruits marinated in spiced and sweetened wine.

This year, I teamed up with a local chef to give cooking classes in a nearby town. It's been an eye-opening experience. As the executive head of a restaurant, my pal has a staff to help him. As a home chef, I, on the other hand, am in charge of shopping, cooking and cleaning in my own kitchen. Because my colleague has access to so many extra hands, his dishes are sometimes more complex or time-consuming than mine, and his recipes often yield enough portions to feed a small army. As his teaching partner, I've taken on the responsibility of downsizing and streamlining his recipes.