01.01.70

When the winter holidays roll around each year, Bev Brauer, president of Cornerstone Title Groupe in Springfield, calls Del’s Popcorn Shop co-owner Shellie Jacobs to order gifts for business clients and associates.

“I give Shellie a budget and tell her the number and sizes of baskets we need and she takes care of it. She brings them to us and we deliver them to our client base,” Brauer said. “She does a wonderful job and we get great feedback on the quality of the products.”

Like many local businesses, Cornerstone Title uses Del’s for holiday gifts. In fact, the 78-year-old sweet shop more than doubles its business in the month of December, thanks in large part to corporate accounts.

“We try to make it as easy for the customer as possible,” said Jacobs, who recently welcomed her 20-year-old son Logan Kohlrus as a co-owner of the business. “We meet delivery deadlines and have convenient terms. And we pay a lot of attention to packaging, trying to make each gift unique. We go for the ‘wow’ and I think we make a good impression,” she added.

Source: The State Journal-Register

by mjl

By Laurisa White Reyes

Turning the kitchen into a classroom is common enough. I often hear of homeschoolers using recipes as math lessons. At one time, public schools included cooking in home economics. Young cooks can even learn about world culture through cooking. But the one subject that is the very heart of cooking is the one about which I hear very little. The fact is, the kitchen makes for a perfect laboratory for the study of science and can be taught on many different educational levels. Young children can come to understand how applying heat or introducing certain elements to food changes it, while older children and teenagers can learn about the chemical components of certain foods and how they interact with each other on the molecular level. No matter how you approach it, the science of cooking is both educational and fun.

There are many different lessons that can be derived from cooking. Every time we prepare food, we are, in effect, performing a science experiment. Foods change when certain elements are introduced into them, be it heat, energy (such as beating or stirring), or other foods. Cooking an egg or popping popcorn are simple demonstrations of how heat changes the properties of food. To demonstrate how energy changes food, place a cupful of shelled peanuts, a pinch of salt, and two or three tablespoons of butter in a Ziploc bag. Use a mallet or rolling pin to crush the peanuts to make peanut butter. Another example is to take a pint of heavy cream and shake vigorously for several minutes until the sloshing sound stops. Open the container and you will discover a lump of fresh butter. To change the way a food tastes, add sugar, salt or lemon juice....

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by Christina Gilman

I made three batches according to his recipe and then off-roaded a bit to come up with a salted variation, which have generally been well received. Those who really like salted caramel think I didn't add enough salt, but those who don't really like the stuff think there's just enough salt to make the caramel flavor pop without being too salty. I might try a version next December that's slightly less salted and a version that's slightly more salted. See how that works. And this year's new addition: nougats! Sugar in several forms, mixed with whipped egg white, folded around chopped cashews, then dipped in chocolate. The stuff is amazingly hard to cut into bite-sized pieces. A two-handled knife would help. Beyond that, I'm not sure. Warm nougats stick to the knife. Cold nougats shatter when cut. Ideas? I'm super-pleased with how they came out and have serious ambitions about making these bags part of the candy tradition. After making the dozen I did this year, I felt a bit...

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