I decreased the corn syrup to one tablespoon instead of two. My only other change was that instead of using 1 1/2 cups AP flour, I used I cup AP and 1/2 cup whole wheat. I figured that since the cinnamon would turn them brown anyway, I might as well sneak some wheat flour in there. The cakes themselves were very good; however, that sugar sauce that goes over top was too sweet. The pancakes were easily five stars, but the sauce ruined it. I'm glad my boyfriend forgo the sauce in favor of maple syrup -- mine were too sweet to eat. I'm not sure why . . . cinnamon buns have the same sauce and are usually not too sweet to eat. And, most pancake syrups are mostly sugar anyway. I'm not sure what went wrong here. All I know is they were far too sweet to enjoy. Thanks anyway.

I omitted the leek because I didn't have plans to use leeks in anything else this week, and I didn't want to buy a whole bunch for the quarter of a cup called for in this recipe. This was a great way to jazz up a canned soup. I usually put tomato paste in the stock when making vegetable soup, so this was a quick and easy veggie soup for me! Thanks!

I'm hard to please when it comes to cornbread. For me, a good cornbread recipe has to walk a very fine line. It has to be sweet enough that the cornmeal itself is not overwhelming, but not too sweet that it becomes more of a dessert or breakfast bread than something that could be served alongside supper. Besides that, I don't like it too grainy, but I also don't want it to be too cakey. A good cornbread recipe must be middle of the road in those two areas. This recipe fit the bill perfectly. It was sweet enough, but not too sweet, had marvelous texture, and was wonderfully moist. I will use this recipe again. Thank you.

Usually, I'm not crazy about biscuit recipes that use shortening. I've tried several, and found that they're not as good as one's that call for butter. However, this was the best shortening-type biscuit I've ever made. I made exactly twelve normal sized biscuits, with less than a tablespoon of leftover dough. The only change I made (besides making them smaller) was that I didn't knead the dough. I'm always wary of overworking the flour as it toughens the end product, and since there's no yeast in these, I didn't think it would be a big deal not to do it. I wasn't expecting great biscuits, but I got them anyway! Add my five star rating to the rest!

I have a recipe that I usually use for brownie making, but it calls for bars of chocolate, and I was fresh out. We were in the mood for brownies, so I thought I'd give this a try since the picture looked so good. I haven't used a boxed cake or brownie mix for several years, but this recipe took me right back to the flavor and texture of boxed mix brownies, except they had too much sugar. Also, they were too much work sifting and measuring for the same effect of a $1 box of brownie mix.

I usually enjoy vinegar, and you wouldn't think that only one and a half teaspoons of cider vinegar would overpower a cup and a half of beans, but my dinner plate was the proof of that. As for the garlic -- I could smell it, but the flavor of it came in to play only as an aftertaste. First, you get hit with the vinegar, and then after that wears off, you taste the garlic. The only saving grace here is that, by the time you're halfway through with your serving, you do kind of get used to the flavor and it ceases being so "in your face." If you read the other reviews, which I just did now, you'll find that quite a few of the four and five star raters used a different type of vinegar (either plain or balsamic). If you want to try this dish, I think that might be a good place to start.

I found a recipe that I wanted to try that called for Bisquick, and as I don't buy the stuff, I decided to try this. I halved the recipe and whipped it up in my food processor. I do agree with the reviewer who said it would have been useful for the recipe poster to include directions for whipping up a batch of plain biscuits. I'm sure a box of Bisquick comes with instructions for doing so. If you were planning on using this just to make biscuits -- and not in a recipe -- this mix is completely useless if you don't know how to make the biscuits out of it.

I didn't get the "wow" factor with these that so many other people seemed to get. I thought the seasonings needed to be kicked up a notch to taste like the ones from Red Lobster. If I didn't know they were supposed to taste like the ones from Red Lobster, I never would have made the comparison. I used homemade baking mix since I didn't have any store-bought.

I have never made fortune cookies before. Due to the fact that the recipe said to "tilt the sheet to move the batter into round shapes," I was expecting a "batter" similar to pancake batter. What I got was a paste. I used a large egg. Would an extra-large egg work better? I think it might be beneficial here if the recipe would state what size egg to use, since the egg white and the vanilla are the only liquids used. I whipped my egg white to frothy, as stated in the recipe, but when I added the quarter cup each of flour and sugar, the whole mixture formed a paste. I added a tiny bit of water, but I wasn't sure what exact consisteny I was going for. Needless to say, I had to manually spread my paste on the baking sheet. My cookies came out too thick and would not fold properly. They had nice flavor, but they were very unattractive. I'll try them again another day with an extra-large egg white, or maybe even a whole egg. If I get better results, I'll bump up my rating. For those who had a problem with the cookies sticking, I use a baking spray -- the kind with the flour in it -- and nothing EVER sticks. Although, adding butter might help the consistency. Reading the reviews, it seems like most of the people that had success with this either reduced the amount of sugar or increaded the amount of liqid.

This worked out great for me. The sauce was DIVINE! You can absolutely forget about it on the stove, once you put the cornstarch mixture in. Mine sat over very low for at least half an hour, with no ill side effects. I did leave out the peppers and the chunks of pineapple, as no sweet and sour chicken I've ever had in any Chinese restaurant had them in it. Also, I didn't have any orange food coloring, so I used a few drops of red and a few drops of yellow. I wonder if there's a way to get that color naturally? I considered not adding the food coloring, because, let's face it, the sauce would taste the same without it. But, in the end, I couldn't leave it like that, so I added it. I think next time I may use the pineapple chunks, because they look really good in the picture. Thanks for the recipe!

This was an interesting recipe to work with. I didn't have to use extra flour to roll it out -- it didn't stick at all. Unforunatley, I found it just about impossible to roll this dough as thin as it should have been. I allowed my dough to rest for the specified ten minutes, tried to roll it out, and found that I could only roll it so thin. I kept rolling, but it never got any thinner. I used this to make pot stickers, and let's just say they wound up being a little bit of filling with a ton of dough! And, they took twice as long to cook as the dough was twice as thick as it should have been. I'd try this again, but only if I get a pasta maker first, as someone else mentioned. Overall, I found this to be just okay. They tasted fine, but the fact that they wouldn't roll out properly killed it for me.

I found out, after I'd made my shopping list, that my grocery store doesn't carry ground pork or egg roll wrappers. I checked another grocery store, and they didn't have them either. I used to make egg rolls with my grandmother ten years ago, and she lived in a very small town about forty-five minutes from here and they sold them there. ?!? Oh well. So, I used ground turkey and made my own wrappers. I also used fresh garlic instead of the powder. The homemade wrappers didn't turn out so well, but the egg rolls were good. They were three stars with my wrappers, but I'm sure they'd easily score four with the real thing -- so I'm rating four.

I'm not sure what about this recipe makes these peas "Italian." Peas are my favorite veggie, so I'm always looking for new ways to cook them. This was just peas with onions and a little garlic -- nothing about them tasted Italian to me. Still, they were pretty good. Nothing mindblowing here, but tasty.

The only substitution I made to this recipe was to use chicken broth instead of vegetable. I cut my carrots and zucchini into matchsticks instead of shredding them. The end result was very attractive and colorful. The lemon flavor wasn't intense enough for me, so I sqeezed some juice over at the end, and I think next time I would leave off the parm.

This tasted very much like the boxed slices of garlic bread that you can buy in the frozen foods aisle at the grocery store. It smelled great while baking, too!

This dressing wasn't bad, but it didn't taste remotely like creamy Italian dressing. My boyfriend liked it, but I was disappointed in the flavor.

Even though I used a lean ground beef, cooking the meatballs totally in the sauce made it very greasy. I think this could be helped by not using the entire quarter cup of oil that the recipe calls for to sautee the onions, and by the using the leanest possible beef, or perhaps ground turkey or chicken instead. Also, I thought the sauce needed some more flavor.

I find it funny to rate jello five stars! But, for what it is, it's a great recipe. I used strawberry jello and prepared in individual serving sundae dishes. My boyfriend wolfed his first one down, got another one out of the fridge, and ate that one before I had finished my first. Alas, five stars it is!

Dry seems to be the word of the day with this cake. I used ginger instead of cloves and added some vanilla to the cake and the frosting. Also, I did not have any maple flavoring, so I just used maple syrup instead of the milk in the frosting, which was amazing. I had ample frosting for my two-layer cake -- I'm not sure what the problem was with other reviewers there. However, I must strongly agree with the rest who said the cake was dry, dry, dry. The problem is not with the preparation, as I followed a more classic preparation technique of creaming the butter and sugar first, then adding the eggs, sifting the flour, and so forth. Though the flavor was good, the cake was dry to the point that it made me not like it. I have had two different people tell me that spice cakes are always dry. Maybe that's so -- I'll try a different recipe next time to find out.

I can't tell you when I last bought salad dressing, as I have been making my own for so long. This one did not cut it. I used lemon juice and dijon mustard, and I did not care for the blend of flavors. I've found in the past that dijon works well with vinegar, but I did not like it with the lemon. I think less mustard would work better, too. One tablespoon only might make a tastier dressing. I'm not going to try this again to find out, though. There's lots of other fish in the sea.