August 2003 “Cooking Tips” Winner —
Robbie Haferkamp

Cake Tips:

When using a glass baking dish for cakes, lower oven temperature by 25 degrees.
To keep a cake longer, place half an apple in the cake container when storing.
To cut a cake without messing up the decorative icing, cut it with dental floss.
When a cake recipe calls for flouring the baking pan, use a bit of the dry cake mix instead, and there won't be any white mess on the outside of the cake.
Don't have a cake or tart cover? Try inverting the bottom of a salad spinner or springform pan.
To dress up cakes and pies, place a doily on top, then sprinkle powdered sugar and remove. Quick and impressive!

Robbie Haferkamp

Prize:

• Cooking tips:
  Morea Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  Hellas International

August 2003 “Cooking Disasters” Winner —
Sheena

My younger brother, Shawn, is a big health nut and is constantly pressuring me to eat right. Reluctantly I gave in to a six-week "shape yo booty" program that he invented himself. He had me running, dancing, swimming and walking until I could barely move.
On day 3, he started to wean me from junk food and began feeding me fruit and other healthy foods. We started off the day making some healthy smoothies. Shawn threw some strawberries and banana chunks into the blender and ran to the restroom. I took over blending the fruit while he was gone. Our blender is rather old and doesn't work as well as it used to. So I decided to speed up the process by taking a plastic spatula and cutting up the chunks in the blender with it. It was rather difficult trying to do this while the blender was running, but I got the job done.
We sat down to drink our smoothies when Shawn started complaining that they were too thick for the straws. Come to find out... the smoothies weren't too thick at all. It was the chunks of plastic spatula that were clooging up the straws!!
I'm not allowed in the kitchen anymore.

Sheena

Prize:

• Cooking Disasters:
  Napflion Cracked Green Olives
  Hellas International

Previous Winners

Click here to see our previous "Cooking Tips" and "Cooking Disasters" contest winners!