Rose Levy Beranbaum is an award winning baker, cookbook author (The Cake Bible), and authority on CAKE! I recently stumbled across a collection of "Cake Questions" on Beranbaum's blog that address a variety of issues that may come up:
The secret to the perfect homemade pizza? No need for a professional pizza oven, apparently a cast-iron skillet will do the trick.
Not sure when this might come in handy, but I'm a fan of these silly DIY edible googly eyes. Tutorial courtesy of Evil Mad Scientists:
Martha shows Carson Kressley of Queer Eye how to make a gingerbread house. Warm, spicy gingerbread and sweet, sturdy royal icing serve as the brick and mortar for this classic holiday decoration. Gingerbread houses are actually quite easy to construct, especially if the gingerbread pieces are baked ahead of time. Once the gingerbread is done, gather all the materials needed to construct a finished home and place them in a decorative box. Template is on article part of video. Make a simple gin...
Using water, nail polish, and a white ceramic mug, you can easily create your own artsy DIY coffee mug with a "watercolor" effect colored on its surface.
Making your own leaf skeleton is a fun, DIY project where you strip green leaves of their outer coating and tissue, leaving behind the "skeleton" of delicate veins underneath. Leaf skeletons can then be used as framed art pieces, or delicate decor for homemade cards or ornaments.
While you can go to the doctor to have an unsightly mole professionally removed, there is a good chance that a DIY home remedy can reduce or completely eliminate the appearance of your mole using items found in your kitchen or medicine cabinet for a much cheaper price.
Need to heal your unsightly acne scars? For a quick and easy treatment, dab a little vitamin E gel onto affected area overnight daily until scars begin to fade. You can also use lemon juice, baking soda, aloe vera, and apple cider vinegar with honey.
While candy-making can seem like an intimidating task, making your own homemade Tootsie Rolls is actually surprisingly easy. For a super-easy, no heat version, you can simply gather all your ingredients, mix and knead them together until everything reaches a Play-Doh-like consistency, and cut the resulting sticky ball into bite-sized pieces.
While blackheads are a little different from your run-of-the-mill acne and zits, they are still annoying when they appear on your face and, thankfully, can be banished with a number of DIY home remedies incorporating common household products.
Need a quick and dirt-cheap way to make your running shoes smell less? Fill old nylon tights with baking soda, enough so that they would fit inside the shoes. Then, tie the open ends and stuff them into your offending shoes overnight. Or, if you have fabric softener dryer sheets, you can simply make a point of placing them inside your shoes every night.
Are you tempted to splurge over your budget on an expensive restaurant meal or cool new jacket? Before you make an impulse purchase, imagine how much that indulgence costs in terms of hours of work based on your current salary.
With all the kitchen sink debris that goes down the drain, it should be no surprise that your garbage disposal sometimes gets a little smelly and needs some extra cleaning. Using common household items from your kitchen or medicine cabinet, you can easily clean your garbage disposal in ten minutes or less using one of the following six DIY methods listed below.
If your smile is looking less pearly white than usual, rub the inside of a banana peel on your teeth every morning before you brush your teeth on a daily basis to brighten them to a whiter spectrum.
Originally discovered in dry lake beds in Tibet, borax is a mineral and a salt of boric acid, and is usually sold in white powder form in drugstores. Like baking soda, borax has many household cleaning uses, and can also be used to get rid of insects and pests from your living space.
In addition to unclogging your toilet using common household items, you can also clean and disinfect your toilet for cheap without ever having to use expensive and chemically-toxic toilet cleaners ever again.
Got a clogged kitchen sink? Before you reach for the plunger, see if you can fix the problem using Alka-Seltzer tablets and white vinegar.
Got a stubborn splinter lodged into your finger? There are a number of ways you can remove it easily using materials found around your home. Elmer's glue, banana peels, eggshells, potatoes, and baking soda are all great at painlessly extracting those tiny pieces of wood, glass, or other material.
Got pesky weeds in your garden? Rather than stocking up on toxic weed killers from your local gardening store, you probably already have everything you need to kill weeds in your kitchen or living room.
Also known as shower soothers or vapor shower tablets, vapor shower disks are circular tablets you place at the bottom of your warm to hot shower to release effervescent vapors into the steam, which you then breathe in to relieve your cold congestion, allergy-induced stuffiness, or simply stress.
After cutting fruits, veggies, and especially meats, it's good idea to regularly disinfect and deodorize your cutting board thoroughly. From using kitchen chemicals, to all-natural ingredients you probably have around, there are several ways to do it.
Whether it's for Valentine's Day or you simply want to send a note to someone in a unique way, a secret message inside of a seemingly untouched raw egg is the perfect way to go.
Why give a heart-shaped card to your favorite person when heart-shaped bacon can convey the same message and taste so much better?
To make your own fabric softener at home, simply mix together six parts water, three parts white vinegar, and two parts hair conditioner into one solution. Once you're done mixing, use ½ cup of the solution for every load of laundry during the rinse cycle to soften your clothes and to keep them static-free.
Do you hate bringing drinks outdoors because of the possibility of leaves, bugs and other debris flying into your cup? Solve this annoying problem by placing a cupcake liner over the opening of your cup when you are not drinking it. Mission accomplished.
If your shoulders are starting to look like a white Christmas in the summertime, then you might have a chronic dandruff problem. Thankfully, there are numerous DIY home remedies at your disposal, which use cheap and common household products that are probably already in your kitchen or medicine cabinet.
Is your favorite black T-shirt starting to look a little old? To restore a faded black fabric color to its former glory, add two cups of brewed coffee or black tea to your washer's rinse cycle.
After you've completely emptied out your coffee can of its coffee beans, put your caffeinated high to good use by getting crafty and productive with the empty vessel that now lies before you.
What should you do with an orange peel after you're done eating the fruit part? If at least one half of the orange peel is still intact, consider using it as a seed starter pot, emergency oil lamp, bird feeder, or a super-easy, salt-packed DIY fridge deodorizer.
Other than serving as the raw ingredients for your epic spaghetti and meatball feast, uncooked spaghetti noodles can also be used to make a DIY knife block for your kitchen knives, light a candle with a deep holder, check the done-ness of your baked goods, and double as a DIY toothpick or skewer you can break into your desired length for cooking or serving.
Cornstarch, a fine, powdery starch commonly used as a thickening agent for sauces and gravies, can also be used to remove ink stains from the carpet, detangle stubborn knots, silence your squeaky floorboards, and give your pooch a dry shampoo.
In their cooked form, rice is great for making spam musubi, sushi, and other amazing meals. In their uncooked form, dry rice grains are unexpectedly useful for preventing your salt from clumping in your salt shaker, cleaning out the insides of weirdly-shaped, hard-to-wash containers, weighing down your unbaked pie crust, cleaning out your coffee grinder, and—if you act quickly enough—saving your wet cell phone from cell phone death.
We all know that distilled white vinegar is great as a general non-toxic cleaning solution and for deodorizing funky smelling rooms, but did you know that vinegar is also great for curing hiccups, deterring ants from invading your home, relieving jellyfish stings, and testing the alkalinity of your garden soil?
'Tis the holiday season—a time for family and the best damn drunk uncle stories that you'll hear all year. Which is all the more reason to make these tasty little alcoholic treats... Spiked eggnog may be the more popular holiday vice, but these Baileys-infused homemade marshmallows from blogger Devon are looking to make a case for the top spot. Here's what you'll need to make these fluffy holiday party treats:
Step 1: The Problem It can be a frustrating thing… Spending precious time making cupcakes for an event, only to have the liners peel away from the cupcakes after they've been baked. Not the end of the world in the grand scheme of things, but, if you're concerned about presentation for a wedding, for example, the little things make all the difference. Step 2: The Solutions
If you have an excess of glass bottles lying around in your home, don't throw them into the recycling bin just yet. With a little creativity and handiwork, you can make terrariums, hummingbird feeders, candle holders and fish tanks out of them.
The next time you buy bread, tortillas and other produce or baked goods items that come with twist ties, don't throw them away. These handy pieces of plastic-covered wire come to good use when you need to build a garden trellis, organize your power cords, replace your zipper pull or securely tie your Christmas ornaments to your Christmas tree.
Middle school lunch tables are begging for this prank. Wait, who are we kidding? Everybody's lunch table could use a ketchup explosion every once in a while!
Blowing an egg out of its shell is one of the oldest tricks in the book. However, it's not quite as easy as a quick exhale into a fractured hard-boiled egg.
Sunday morning. Don't cook at home. Been there, done that. Use the heat of the engine. Bake your meat. Put those 8 cylinders to work. Gas prices across the country average out at $2 to $2.50 a gallon, so you might as well get your money's worth.
