It’s time to ‘relish’ the cranberries
If you’re going to use canned cranberries, at least consider the whole cranberries. Avoid the jellied stuff that has ridges from the can still showing. Then, get creative and add some real orange zest, red peper, marmalade, walnuts (or pecans from the Golden Triangle Sertoma Club sale) or something with a little spice and texture. Try it out a week ahead of your party and play around with it all.

Cake equals art
Lips, moustaches, clowns, clouds, tiny tea pots, sushi and poker chips are a few designs Molly Bakes has up her sleeve. When she lost her job, she turned to cake and her stall at London’s Brick Lane Market is all the talk. Abundant photos make readers of “Crazy for Cake Pops” confidant they can achieve desired results. Here’s a very simple recipe (the real work is in the designs):
Peanut Butter Frosting
1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 ½ tablespoons smooth peanut butter
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon milk
Cream the butter and peanut butter together. Gradually add the sugar, then continue to cream until light and fluffy. Finally, mix in the milk. Refrigerate for 30 minutes before using.

Something to drink with that?
I confess, I’m a “True Blood” fan, thanks to season check outs from my public library. Enhance your viewing pleasure with Tru Blood Beverage, a snappy carbonated water drink based on the libation vampires imbibe in the TV show. I sipped one of these straight and truly enjoyed the blood orange flavor. Of course, you can mix up concoctions like Lovin’ in the Coven or Faeries’ Nectar. Here’s one based on a main character’s name:
The Belve Compton
2.5 ounces Belvedere Orange
½ ounce lime juice
3 ounces ginger beer
3 ounces Tru Blood Beverage
Add all ingredients to a highball glass filled with cubed ice and garnish with an orange wedge.

Are you a Christian Dior cosmetics fan? Then you may be familiar with Icelandic Glacial Natural Spring Water. This past December, the company announced it would use this brand only to hydrate its skincare cosmetics products, because of its “optimal biological properties, including brightening efficacy.”
Just think how good it is as a beverage. I tried some of this good stuff that comes in a squared off bottle that looks like it was chipped from a block of ice. It’s bottled from Ölfus Spring, making it “microbiologically pure when extracted and free of even trace levels of contaminants, boasting a Total Dissolved Solid (TDS) level of 62 mg/l.” Purely delicious.
ddoiron@panews.com