It is Christmas time. And if you’re like me, during this season of giving, it’s hard to draw the “Who should I get presents for?” line. That, my friends, is why baked goods were invented. They are an easy, thoughtful and cost-efficient way to say, “Hey, I think you are sweet, like these cookies I baked for you.”

So, instead of wondering what dinky little gift you should get all your co-workers (I got a flashlight one year; nice, but not edible), why not go for a cellophane-wrapped, baked goodie bag?

All you need to achieve this fabulous gift is some festive cellophane bags to assemble your swag and…some swag. You can get festive bags in bulk and for cheap from your local Wal-Mart, grocery store or Target. So go check it out. Some curly ribbons might be nice, too. And you can get some great ideas for baked goods right here and right now. If all goes as planned, I’ll be sharing a holiday recipe each week to help you achieve the perfect holiday medley of taste bud joy.

Scotch-a-roos

My first recommendation is Scotch-a-roos; they are completely sinful and totally delicious. Perfect for the holidays. This recipe makes a 9-by-13-inch pan’s worth, and the deliriously good product can easily be cut into squares to dispense to all of your “Hey, I like you a lot, but I can’t spend money on you for Christmas” friends. Read on for the details.

The Action:

Combine one cup of sugar and one cup of karo syrup in a sauce pan over medium heat. Don’t fight me on these ingredients. They’re worth it. And hey, there’s no butter. See? Much better.

Stir until boiling. Then remove from heat. Um, I just have to point out that I snapped an awesome boiling action shot, thank you very much.

Add one cup of peanut butter and six cups of Rice Krispies. You will get to enjoy a blissful “snap crackle pop” chorus as you stir and stir and stir until all ingredients are combined.

Place this glorious mixture into the greased pan of your choice.

Melt one cup of chocolate chips and one cup of butterscotch chips in the microwave. And I don’t know if I have to say this, but use a microwavable bowl. Nothing like a fire to extinguish the holiday spirit. Melt the chocolate in 30-second intervals, stirring in between. Burned chocolate is also no good for festiveness.

Finally, pour melted delight onto glorious Rice Krispie mixture. Halleluiah! Then arrange on your table, so you can take a picture of your masterpiece.

Cut into squares and share!! These can get dried out, so make sure to cover and wrap individually when dispensing to your BFFs.

If you try this recipe, you will thank me. Personally. And I know I am pushing the holiday goodie bag idea, but this recipe has also been a hit for me at holiday parties. I will warn you: these are rich, so that is why I only recommend them when you are surrounded by people who are also willing to eat high-calorie food.

I love cooking, and I love gadgets. Therefore, I especially love kitchen gadgets. I got to have a little fun back in the fall when I wrote about cheap alternatives to wicked expensive kitchen gadgets for The Boston Globe. (Though secretly I’d love to have every expensive gadget there is.)

When I was working on that “Frugal Foodies” story last October, I used a few Oxo products as my cheap alternatives for a juicer and an can opener. Afterward, the company started sending some of their gadgets for me to test out. The one that really stuck out was the Oxo Steel series Mango Splitter.

I’m not much of a mango guy, and I’ve had bad experiences with products designed to cut or slice one specific kind of item. One-piece apple corers are a pain in the ass to clean, and I once had a cheap one snap apart while I was using it and hit me in the face. Garlic presses are even harder to clean (though a sewing needle works). I even once saw a $5 plastic “banana slicer.” That last one got me thinking — if you need to buy a product just to cut your fruit, then you’ve got all sorts of problems that a banana slicer is not going to fix.

But after doing some research and doing some cutting and doing some tasting — mangoes are delicious BTW — I’ve found out that cutting and coring a mango is an utter pain in the ass.

The Oxo Steel Mango Splitter ends up being a useful alternative to a sticky mess with a knife. It’s solid, with rubber grips and no detachable parts. The splitter is sharp, and the stainless steel construction is durable.

You hold the mango in place, then put both hands on the splitter and push down slowly but firmly. This splits the mango perfectly to remove the seed.

Cleanup is easy. Just make sure you rinse it off each time. I wouldn’t bother putting it in the dishwasher.

Spring is coming. It is inevitable. The second the temperature hits 50 degrees I’m over the snow, the sweaters and the coats, and I’m ready for the crocuses and Easter eggs and warmth, oh precious, precious warmth.

Warmth means all of the plants in my mom’s gardens come back to life.  Rhubarb battles the crocuses for first plant creeping over the muddy March ground.  It’s only a matter of time before the strawberries start spreading and dreams of strawberry rhubarb pie begin to fill my sleep.

Since it is only March and the strawberries are further than a dream away, this sour cream rhubarb crumb cake might spread the feelings of spring and cause it to come a little faster. It is fresh with just a touch of sweet.

Sour Cream Rhubarb Crumb Cake

Cake:

½ cup of butter

1 and ½ cup brown sugar

1 egg

2 cup flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 cup sour cream

1 and ½ cup rhubarb — diced

Cream the butter and brown sugar. Add the egg and beat until light and fluffy. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. Add dry ingredients alternatively with sour cream to the creamed mixture. Fold diced rhubarb into batter. Pour batter into a greased 9×13 pan.

Topping:

½ cup of sugar

½ cup of walnuts (optional)

1 tbsp butter

1 tsp cinnamon

Mix the sugar, cinnamon, walnuts and melted butter. Sprinkle topping on cake batter. Bake at 350 F for 40 — 50 minutes. Be sure to share your taste of spring with other people in your life. They will definitely be more than grateful.

I am dating a veggie hater. He would be thrilled if every night for dinner he could have meat with a side of meat. Unfortunately for him the green stuff has a lot of the nutrients and vitamins that he and everyone else in the world needs. I try to sneak veggies into our meals whenever I can. Roasting vegetables gives them an interesting new flavor profile. They don’t taste so much like veggies, and they actually retain more of their nutrients than when you boil them.

The first time I tried roasted asparagus I was in shock. I had actually given up on asparagus a long time ago, because the boiled kind was icky, in my professional 13-year-old opinion. The epiphany of roasted asparagus became so much more magical when I realized how incredibly easy it was to make.

Roasted Asparagus:

I like to use the thinner asparagus, especially when I’m cooking for non-veggie lovers. They are more tender and their flavor is a little less strong.

Cut the ends of the asparagus off. Try to save as much of the asparagus as you can; you just want to cut off the dry ends much like you’d cut off the dry ends of roses before placing them in a vase.

Place the asparagus on a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and move the asparagus around so it gets coated in the oil.  Season with salt and pepper and garlic powder. Move the asparagus around a little more to make sure everything is evenly covered.

Roast in a 375 F oven for 15-20 minutes. The asparagus should shrivel up a little and turn a little brown. Serve warm with steak or pork chops or, if you want to be really healthy, a broiled chicken breast. Your veggie haters won’t know what hit them. They might even start asking for the green stuff.

Last weekend my friend called me up for recipe ideas.  She liked to butter up the maintenance guys where she worked with some homemade baked goods, and she just couldn’t think of what to make.

Baking for the office is a great way to remind coworkers, who help you all week, that you appreciate them.  It’s also a great way to make sure that people, like maintenance workers, are on your side and willing to help you out when you need them.

Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes are a Pennsylvania tradition made from the Tasty Cake Company. This recipe, stolen from my mom’s recipe box, tastes just like Kandy Kakes.  They are easy to make and maintenance department approved.  Just be sure to ask around about peanut allergies, before you pass the plate.

For the Cake:

4 eggs
1 cup milk
2 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp baking powder

Grease a 13×9 inch pan. Mix all of the above ingredients. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes or until it is golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.  Allow the cake to cool.
1 Cup peanut butter

Spread the peanut butter over the cake.

7 oz. Hershey’s Chocolate Bar

Melt the chocolate bar and pour over the peanut butter. Be sure to break up the chocolate before melting it or it will melt unevenly and burn. Melt with a double boiler, or in the microwave on medium heat.  Cool completely.  Use a warm knife to cut the cake into individual servings.

Mom avoided fat in recipes.  She replaced all red meat and pork with turkey.  The refrigerator was full of turkey bacon, turkey ham and turkey ground meat.  It’s amazing my brother, sister, and I did not sprout feathers and start clucking at the dinner table.  During the winter, when there was a cold spell, mom would buy real bacon and make potato soup.  She tried making it with turkey bacon, but the bacon fat made the soup.  It’s a tasty cure for those midwinter blues and takes less than an hour to make. 

Homemade Potato Soup

2-3 slices of bacon

Fry the bacon in the pot the soup will be made in.  Remove the bacon.

Add to the pot of bacon fat:  

3 medium potatoes (peeled and cubed)

2 stalks celery (chopped)

2 medium carrots (diced)

1 small onion (diced)

1tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

Cook ingredients with a cup of water for 15 minutes.

Combine:

2 tbsp. flour

2 cups milk

Add to mixture in the pot. Heat until the mixture boils. Crumble the bacon over the soup and serve.

A snow storm made this West Chesterfield, N.H. reader’s mini gas grill look like Darth Vader

It’s actually an uncanny resemblance. Thankfully, the snow did not make the grill look like Jesus, or we’d have a serious religious phenomenon on our hands in New Hampshire.

Turkey frying is a tradition in the South, but it’s beginning to catch on all over. Frying a turkey is quick — usually about an hour — and it results in a juicy bird that’s packed with flavor.

There are some problems with this process, however. Obviously, deep frying a turkey in oil isn’t very healthy. There are some size issues. You need a huge pot to cook for an entire family. Most of all is the risk of fire. If you throw a frozen turkey into hot oil, it will explode. If you drunkenly tip over the boiling oil, you can run into a host of problems with grease fires and personal injury.

I’ve had firefighters all over New England tell me that they practically expect turkey fires every year. One fire captain in a city in southeastern Massachusetts said he has two hot spots where some idiots light up a bird every year.

That’s where The Big Easy comes in. Char-Broil’s propane-powered infrared cylinder allows you to “fry” a turkey, and a variety of other meats, without the health and hazard risks of cooking in oil.

It operates very much on the same principals as a gas grill, specifically those more modern infrared gas grills. Instead of boiling oil, the cylinder has holes that allow for the conduction of heat even throughout the device. This results in a thoroughly cooked turkey that’s not burned on the outside.

Now, Char-Broil did not overcome the size issue. You can’t toss a 30-pound Thanksgiving turkey in it, but it’s a great solution for a few turkey breasts. So on Thanksgiving, when you’re still making the big, huge roasted turkey and other fixings, you can throw some extra meat in the Big Easy. It’s also a great barbecue tool for making turkey, chicken, ribs, brisket, and more. There is another version of The Big Easy that can accommodate a turkey up to 25-pounds.

Another advantage — albeit one I didn’t realize right away — is that The Big Easy has a side-out tray that collects drippings you can use for gravy. You can’t do this when you’re frying a turkey in oil, of course. The problem is, I didn’t notice the tray right away. If you don’t clean and empty it out every time you cook, you’ll be left with a gross, rancid, insect-infested mess.

That’s a basic maintenance thing, but one complaint I did have with The Big Easy was that the legs aren’t very sturdy. They are more like sheet metal, and I would have liked something a little thicker and weighty. The rotary ignition system wasn’t very impressive either. I actually had to resort to match-lighting the cooker.

The idea when cooking is to leave the fryer open, but there’s a mesh lid that you can throw on for 10-20 minutes at the end of the cooking cycle to crisp it up a bit. See, the way The Big Easy cooks meat is that it generates heat all around and all through the device.The wall of the cooker radiates infrared heat that penetrates the food as it rises out the top before the stale air has a chance to dry out the food. It’s like cooking in a really hot wind tunnel.

Shortcomings aside, at $149 for the standard version and $169 for the 25-pound variant, (available at Costco) The Big Easy is a great toy. It’s sort of the opposite of a smoker. Instead of low and slow, it’s hot and fast, but it doesn’t dry out your food the way a hot oven would.

There’s something special about smoked ribs or beef brisket. It’s the taste of picnics and summertime and good times.

Unless you’re a vegetarian, of course.

The Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker is not your typical smoker. It’s upright, and looks more like a space ship or a time capsule than something that slowly cooks meat. But cook meat it does.

The dual level, 22.5-inch cooking surfaces give you plenty of room for several racks of ribs or just “a lot” of whatever animal you intend to smoke. The lid-mounted thermometer also lets you make sure you stay in the 200-300 degree smoke zone.

We liked the space saving design. When you already have a grill on the patio, you might not have room for a smoker, which is often the same width or wider. The upright design is also functional. Ribs are especially good. Rib meat comes right off the bones and remains flavorful despite what you might think happens when meat cooks for several hours above a fire.

What exactly is smoking? For nearly as long as people have been cooking meat and fish, they have been smoking it. Early on, before refrigeration, smoking meat provided a way to preserve it from spoilage, as absorbing smoke removes water and kills bacteria on the food. In modern culture, the smoky flavor provides a tasty BBQ delicacy. Smoking meat slowly, at low temperature also renders out the fat and breaks down tough connective tissue, making “rougher” cuts of meat easier to eat.

The Smoker Mountain Cooker is easy to use. Dump in your charcoal and choice of wood chips, and light a fire at the bottom. Don’t use lighter fluid. An egg carton or crumbled newspaper will do the job, but chemical fluid will hurt the pure taste of your food. Make sure the water pan is full — try it with apple juice!

Allow the smoker to warm up to about 250 before you add your meat, or you’ll have a difficult time keeping the smoker in the right temperature range. You’re going to leave it going for several hours, so wake up early if you’re having an afternoon cookout.

This is a vocation. For all you gas grill users, you just turn it off and maybe give it a brush-down when you’re done. Not with a smoker. Cleanup is a process. You have to let it cool down, remove the racks and brush them off. It’s actually better to soak them in dish soap in a large cast iron basin if you have one. The water pan will be a caked mess, especially with us throwing juices and beers into it for more flavor. You have to clean that each time you use the smoker. You also have to make sure the fire is out and the ashes are properly disposed of. But as long as you’re willing to put the man hours in, smoking will give you and you guests a delicious meal.

The Smokey Mountain is well-built and will last you as long as you take care of it properly. It’s $499 and is available at a variety of stores where grills and smokers are sold. It’s a great product, and the perfect BBQ companion. The smoked meats and fish are a great compliment to the super-hotness we often achieve with a traditional grill.