Taste before you add the garlic salt to determine if you just need to add more garlic powder, or if you actually need garlic and salt. Follow that advice and you will love this recipe :)

I tasted all components of this dish as I went along since there were some fairly mixed reviews by other members. Before I had even read the reviews, I knew that I would be subbing half of the beef for Italian sausage meat. I used Johnsonville mild italian sausage meat from my local grocery store. To my meat filling I added salt, pepper and a pinch or red pepper flakes. After reading a few reviews, I decided to play it safe with the white sauce and instead of adding all of the chicken stock right away, I added 1/4. Just a note, when making a roux it is equal parts fat and dry. Since I had taken away 3/4 of the chicken stock, I replaced that amount with flour so that my sauce would thicken properly. After tasting, I added almost all of the chicken stock back since you needed the salt and flavour to cut through the heavy cream flavour. For my red sauce, I used Best Marinara Sauce Yet from AR, made with Italian Stewed Tomates from AR which has always been a favourite of mine. There is no need to add additional basil to this sauce. To stuff the noodles, I used Jen G.'s technique of slicing the backside, spooning in the filling, rolling them back up and placing them slit side down in the pan. My 9x13 pan could only fit 8. I yielded about 20 from this recipe. I alternated red and white sauces in ribbons across the manicotti and baked as directed. When baking some of the leftovers a few days later, I used mozzarella instead of parmesan and pereferred the mozza. (WHEW!) :)

To get a TRUE RED colour, use cocoa powder instead of icing sugar when kneading, then use the gel colour red from the little tub that you can only buy at specialty stores (like Michael's) as opposed to the little bottles of liquid that you can purchase at any grocery store. Dying icing or fondant red from a white base will result in pink without the addition of A LOT of dye, and even then I have never been overly pleased with the red I ended up with. Starting from a brown base will take you to a deeper red tone with less colouring.The fondant may be a little more brittle than other colours after refrigeration, but kneading with more butter will bring back the elasticity and prevent it from cracking when working with it. I apply the same technique when going for black as well :)

... Meh... I think that next time I will substitute 1-1 1/2 tsp of Clubhouse Montreal Steak Spice (in the US, I think it's McCormicks Steak Spice) in place of both the salt and pepper to better enhance the flavour of the beef

So delicious! Definitely a keeper :) I doubled the recipe and got 12 HUGE muffins. I wanted to use buttermilk, but I didn't have any on hand so I put a tbsp of vinegar in a measuring cup, then added milk to the 1 cup line and let it sit for one minute. Voila! Instant buttermilk! I also chose to use CHEF JOY's topping but be warned: Her recipe for topping makes A LOT. I love a nice, crunchy, sweet topping as much as anyone, but I made her recipe and covered my muffins with a 1/4 inch layer so thoroughly that there was no visible batter anymore and I still had enough topping left to cover 12 more! Ah well! Live and learn :)

The taste is fantastic and they cook up beautifully. I think that this recipe is meant for use on a large griddle though. I used my usual fry pan on the stove that can hold about 2 pancakes at a time. The first two poured and cooked up perfectly. By the time I was ready to pour the next two, the baking powder had fully activated so the batter was thick and hard to pour. The rest of the pancakes ended up 'plop' shaped and were harder to flip. They still cooked up and tasted wonderful, so just use a griddle or something with a larger capacity than 2 at a time so all pancakes are equally perfect :)

Not Bad! I can never remember to buy the fried onions when I'm at the store,so I cut up 5 or 6 green onion and mixed them in with the pasta/soup/tuna. For the crunchy topping, I used my favourite crunchy topping for baked mac & cheese, crushed cornflakes :)

Yum! Instead of puree-ing the soup in batches in my blender, I used my little hand blender/emulsifier and did it all right in the cooking pot :)

This dish was okay. Tasty, but not memorable in my opinion. I doubled the recipe, but only used 2 eggs and omitted the sugar entirely and I'm glad I did. My husband loved it, but he thinks Zoodles are gourmet ;)

I think the trick for this dish is to gradually add the sugar a bit at a time and taste-taste-taste! I'd imagine that how sweet the dish is will vary depending of how you prepare the sweet potatoes. I roasted mine and only needed half the sugar. I think if you boiled them, you might need to add more :)

I find it amazing that I am seemingly the only person who ended up with a batter that needed a lot more liquid. When I combined the liquids into the dry mix, I ended up with something that was more the consistency of cookie dough than muffin batter. I had to double the milk just to get the proper consistency. Even more surprising, the muffins turned out! Fresh out of the oven, I used a butter knife and just spread the butter on them one at a time and sprinkled them with sugar (brown, because I loooove the rich taste of brown sugar), and sprinkled on the cinnamon right from it's jar. Delicious!

This was my first time making an upside down cake and I was not disappointed! I had to run out and begrudgingly buy a new springform pan after reading KB's review, but it was definitely worth every penny! I did increase the butter and brown sugar topping by 50%, and I also added a heaping half tsp of cinnamon to the dry ingredients. It was so good that my husband and I skipped dinner and went straight to the cake :) UPDATE: I just made this yesterday for one of the desserts for a big dinner at my house. The previous time I had made this, I melted the butter for the bottom of the pan in the microwave and then added the sugar and whisked it together until it was creamy, then poured it into the pan. Last night I tried doing it as instructed by placing the butter and sugar in the pan and letting them melt together in the oven and it did not work at all!!! I had melted, oily butter and clumps of sugar. Luckily I had enough time to clean the pan and start over by melting the butter in the microwave and then whisking in the sugar or my dessert would have been an epic failure to an otherwise wonderful meal :)

Definitely add a tsp of salt... To the entire batch of mix and not just the 1 cup you use to make the pancakes, of course ;)

Absolutely delicious! I used a fresh, pork farmer's sausage that I HAD to buy after sampling at the farmer's market. Also, I didn't have white wine on hand so I subbed in chicken stock. Even my picky 3 yr old loved it... After she picked off the peppers and onions ;)

This was fantastic! Make sure you use your BIG pan. My choice of 2 quart fry pan made it quite difficult to saute. I also used a red pepper instead of yellow as it was what I had on hand, accidentally switched the amounts of mozzarella and cheddar to add (but it's okay beacuse I love them both equally) and I used butter instead of vegetable oil because that's the way I roll ;)

I enjoyed this. I did a add liberal squeeze of lemon. As for baking time, I always follow Mike Fiction's advice from another salmon recipe on AR: "I would specify that cooking salmon is not as simple as placing in oven for x amount of time. You should cook salmon based on thickness. Bake uncovered in a preheated 450°F oven for 4-6 minutes for each .5 inch of thickness." That advice has never failed me :)

Great idea Sandy!

I placed a square of Cadbury Dark chocolate out of the oven on each piece that would be cut into squares when the brownies cooled. Also, I followed Sandy's custom version and cut down on the butter in favour of more peanut butter. YUM!

Yum! Now, I only had vanilla yogurt on hand which inevidably sweetened this up and I also didn't have any soy milk powder so I skipped it... But yummy none the less :)

I am a mother of 2 small children, so when I saw the slowcooker adaptation that MAZZO did for this recipe, I leapt at the idea of 'taking the easy way out'. The added bonus of their adaptation was the honey glazed carrots. I was very disappointed with this recipe done in the slowcooker with the addition of baby carrots. I found that neither the ham nor the carrots really got a strong flavour. I decided this recipe deserved fair shake so I prepared it as written and surprise-surprise, it was oodles better. Since I still really wanted to accompany this recipe with honey glazed carrots, after the ham came out of the oven, I poured the remaining glaze into a small sauce pan with a small bag of baby carrots and boiled them together for 8-10ish minutes. The carrots were a dream. Thank you, MAZZO, for suggesting the addition of carrots, but when I make this recipe again, I will stick to the original and prepare my carrots as a seperate dish :)