Bill Daley

Q: My brother and I were recently talking about a cake that our mom used to make called Triple Chocolate Cake (in a 13-by-9 pan) The three chocolate items were chocolate cake mix, chocolate instant pudding mix and chocolate chips. When our mom passed away...

Julia Child would have been 100 on Aug. 15, and the occasion is being marked by a flurry of published works honoring her as a woman, a cook, a television legend and even a cat fancier. But what about Child as writer? After all, her inaugural cookbook...

Q: I asked my brother, an executive chef at a golf club, the following question and he never (gave) me an answer either way: Is it possible to microwave a souffle? —Joanne Thompson Pease, Torrington, Conn. A: Conceivably you could, but why?...

New crop of fish cookery books arrives for summer dining Just in time for summer's lighter fare, a trio of fish books washed up on American shores. They are new editions of European books retooled to varying degrees to needs of United States consumers....

Q: I got a bunch of dried organic lavender flowers from a local co-op. I have always wanted to cook with lavender but my first attempt to infuse the flavors into a tart was a disappointment. Do you have a suggestion? —Andrew Maselli, Chicago A:...

Q: I dislike food with soot or smoke on it or in it although I like well done meat and fowl. Could a charcoal grill work which had a thin metal plate under the grill? This would, of course, be circular, and would have three short arms which rest on the...

Vanilla pudding can bring out the kid in you, especially as it conjures up memories of those huge institutional cans cranked open in summer camp dining halls or the tiny cups your mom would tuck into your school lunchbox. Part of the appeal of vanilla...

Q: My whole family has tried to duplicate my grandma's pound cake recipe without any success. It tastes the same but doesn't rise and if becomes a really heavy dense cake. Any idea why the cake won't rise? I want to be able to figure this out and make...

Q: Can you direct me to where I can find a brownie-type recipe from the 1950s that was made with chopped dates?  It is a childhood favorite I used to make with my Aunt Anne. She is long passed away. I think it was a Hershey recipe? I have looked at...

Q: Last time I made pate a choux for chocolate eclairs, I used the same recipe that I've used for 30 years. But for some reason, they did not puff up as expected. Any thoughts on what went wrong? —Tom Gull, Oak Park A: A quick call got Tom Gull'...

Michael Natkin is a vegetarian, not a lecturer. So he's not going to go on endlessly about why you should eschew meat. His new book touches on all the reasons — ethical, ecological, physiological and so on — but he seems far more interested in...

Father's Day grilling around my house was always fraught with tension. My dad was not the genial Fred MacMurray type. He paced irritably, chain-smoking, beside the Weber grill in the backyard of our cottage in Madison, Conn., with a kitchen timer in hand....