When making oatmeal cookies, be sure to use old fashioned rolled oats.  Do not use instant or quick cooking oatmeal.

A fluted pastry wheel or pizza cutter is a handy tool for cutting strips of dough for braided or lattice tops pie crusts.

When making cream puffs, make sure that your oven is 425 degrees for the first 20 minutes, so that steam can cause the “puffing” action.

When making cream puffs, use a heavy duty whisk when whisking the cream puff mixture.  The dough will become very thick.

You can use a microwave to melt chocolate if needed.  Place the pieces of chocolate in a microwave dish and heat on Medium for about one minute per ounce.  Don’t wait for them to look melted — they tend to hold their shape when melted.  Stir about half way through the melting time and stir again when you take them out of the microwave.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve done these, but it’s my goal to get this up and going again. So without further ado, here’s today’s tip of the day:

When making a souffle, do NOT open the oven until near the end of the baking time. Otherwise, it may fall.

If you want a great summer snack, I’d recommend getting your hands on some of these Skinny Cow sandwiches!

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 8 inch square glass baking dish with cooking spray. Cook and drain pasta as directed on package.

Brown the sausage and onion. Drain. Stir in tomato sauce and diced tomatoes. Heat to boiling and reduce heat. Cook 5-10 minutes. Remove from heat and add in cooked pasta. Stir and then pour into baking dish.

Spray sheet of foil with cooking spray and place sprayed side down on the baking dish. Bake 15 minutes.

Uncover and sprinkle with cheese. Bake uncovered 5-10 minutes.

In April 2009, Baskin Robbins started making Hard Candy, and my household is loving it.  I never knew a piece of hard candy could taste as good as eating ice cream (which for me is great since I am lactose intolerant and can’t eat ice cream!).  We tried the Cookies N Cream and Mint Chocolate Chip flavors, and they are so good as the ice cream.  It was very hard to stop at one candy.  The retail price is $1.99 for a 2.75 oz bag and is worth every cent!  Now, if they come out with plain chocolate, I may have died and gone to heaven.

Now, I know that you are all salivating and want some of these for yourself. I have arranged for 2 lucky winners to try some of this awesome candy.  Here’s what you need to do:

Each one of these gives you one entry:

1. Leave a comment on this post. Tell me your favorite flavor of ice cream.
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify. If you want, use something like this:

RT @blm03 is giving away Baskin Robbins Hard Candy!  http://lisacooking.com/2009/05/21/baskin-robbins-candybaskin-robbins-candy/

3. Stumble this post.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc.

Each one of these gives you 5 additional entries:

1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
4. Add my badge to your sidebar:

<a href="http://lisacooking.com"><img src="http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk258/blm03_photos/125ad.png" border="0" alt="Lisa Cooking" /></a>

Good luck! This contest will end June 5, 2009 at 12:00 PM CST and is for US residents only.