Crisco No-Stick Flour Spray. $2.40 per 5-ounce can.
Bonnie: Nonstick cooking sprays have been around since the 1950s. They're good for keeping foods from sticking to pans without adding fat or calories. I also use them to keep sticky items like honey or molasses from sticking to measuring cups.
The more recent variation is the nonstick cooking spray with flour, pioneered by Baker's Joy, but also made by Pam and now Crisco. Use any one of the three on baking utensils, rolling surfaces or pans. In a side-by-side test, Pam for Baking and this new Crisco No-Stick Flour Spray each performed similarly, but Crisco is more natural. Pam contains artificial flavors and the preservative TBHQ, and Baker's Joy contains preservatives. That's enough for me to select Crisco over the other brands.
Carolyn: To figure out how to add flour to a nonstick cooking spray, as Baker's Joy did in 1980, was quite an accomplishment.
But do you need Baker's Joy, Pam for Baking or this copycat Crisco with Pillsbury Flour? Only if you do a whole lot of baking. Everyone else can save money and avoid cluttering up their closets by sprinkling some flour on a pan that's been sprayed with plain Crisco or Pam.
Nestle Toll House Swirled Morsels. Milk Chocolate and Peanut Butter, and Milk Chocolate and Caramel. $2.69 per 10-ounce bag.
Bonnie: While in the midst of developing 365 recipes for a cookie cookbook, I recall secretly thinking the only cookie recipe anyone really needed was Nestle Toll House.
So I looked forward to this excuse to make the recipe, hoping these three new Swirled Morsels would make my cookies even more delicious. Sadly, that's not the case.
Unlike Nestle Toll House Semi-Sweet Morsels, these Swirled Morsels don't melt while baking or in your mouth, even when the finished cookies are eaten warm from the oven. They also taste artificial, not something I want or expect when going to the trouble of making from-scratch cookies. And ounce for ounce, these cost more than Nestle's semisweet chips, as the bags are 2 ounces smaller.
Carolyn: Ruth Wakefield would turn over in her celestial oven to see what her little idea of putting chunks of chocolate into a cookie has wrought: caramel, butterscotch, peanut butter, white chocolate, chocolate mint and now these Nestle Swirled chips that combine several of these flavors with chocolate in alternating, barber pole-like stripes.
They look great and stay that way, even after cooking. The stripes don't melt under oven heat, which is also why they don't — and can't — melt in your mouth, Bonnie.
If you, like me, thought you might also be able to use these in a recipe calling for half chocolate and half caramel or peanut butter chips, I say: only if you mix three parts of one of these in with one part real semi-sweet chocolate. I can recommend buying these only for their looks.
Ghirardelli Baking Chocolate. 70 Percent Cocoa Extra Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Bar, 60 Percent Cocoa Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Bar, 60 Percent Cocoa Bittersweet Chocolate Chips and 100 Percent Cocoa Unsweetened Chocolate Baking Bar. $2.59 to $2.99 per 4-ounce bars or 11.5-ounce bag of chips.
Bonnie: Buying chocolate for baking is becoming more complicated. Now in addition to milk, semisweet, bittersweet and unsweetened chocolate, manufacturers are offering bittersweet with a variety of intensities based on the amount of cocoa in the chocolate.
Let me back up a bit. Semisweet chocolate contains less than 50 percent cocoa, which is why sugar is the first ingredient in any brand. Bittersweet contains more than 50 percent cocoa. Exactly how much cocoa is contained is traditionally not specified, but Ghirardelli's new line of baking chocolates tells you exactly. The more cocoa, the less sugar, up to Ghirardelli's 100 percent unsweetened chocolate bar, called for in a number of baking recipes.
So when should you use the 60 percent or 70 percent bittersweet chocolate bar? At this point it's really a matter of preference — the more sophisticated your palate is, the less sugar you'll probably want. But I'm betting that baked goods recipes will soon appear calling for specific amounts.
Carolyn: Is this new cocoa-percentage-labeled supermarket chocolate just another thing to feel inadequately informed about, or is it genuinely helpful information? I think it would be a lot more helpful if each bar and bag came with the seesaw explanation that Bonnie just gave: the more sugar, the less cocoa and vice versa. I can say from baking with Ghirardelli's new line that 10 percent more cocoa is a big difference. To wit, its 60 Percent Cocoa bar and chips tasted rich; the 70 Cocoa Extra Bittersweet, bitter.
I think this percentage information would be more helpful on the low end of the chocolate baking scale than on the high end.
Bonnie Tandy Leblang is a registered dietitian and professional speaker. Carolyn Wyman is a junk-food fanatic and author of "Better Than Homemade: Amazing Foods That Changed the Way We Eat (Quirk). Each week they critique three new food items. © Universal Press Syndicate