It’s inexpensive, retro, a party mainstay. Sure, it’s gotten its share of jokes, but not as many as the fruitcake! I say it’s time for a cheese ball comeback, perfectly time with our ailing economy. How about a pimento cheese ball rolled in chopped parsley alongside a blue cheese ball rolled in bright red pomegranate seeds? Here is a recipe that has been in our family for many years. It makes two small cheese balls rolled in chopped pecans.

Cheddar Cheese Ball

Makes 2 cheese balls
Prep: 15 minutes

16 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
8 ounces sharp Cheddar cheese, shredded (2 cups)
2 tablespoons chopped green onion
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce, or to taste
Cayenne pepper to taste
1 cup chopped pecans (preferably toasted)

1. Place the cream cheese and Cheddar cheese in a large bowl. Blend with an electric mixer until the mixture just comes together. Add the onion, Worcestershire sauce, and the cayenne pepper to taste. Continue blending until the mixture is smooth.
2. Shape the mixture into two small balls. Roll each ball in the pecans. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill until time to serve with crackers and fruit.

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Baking your own holiday gifts is a special and delicious way to show friends and family that you care. The Snowman Cupcakes (page 213) and Holiday Gift Cupcakes (page 216) recipes from Cupcakes! From the Cake Mix Doctor look as great as they taste, and their unique appearance makes the gift all the more special. Both recipes are also great choices for a special dessert at an office or classroom holiday party.

Snowman Cupcakes recipe from Cupcakes! From The Cake Mix Doctor

Five Easy Desserts
With the dessert baked you can breathe easier when entertaining guests at home this month. Here are five fast and festive desserts we bake and love:

Thank goodness Halloween is just days away. It might cheer us up from all the dire economic news. I walked into a grocery store last week just to wander the aisles while my teenage daughter was shopping next door for a Halloween costume. I was overcome by the pleasant sights – big piles of pumpkins and apples, cinnamon wafting through the air from the bakery, gallons of apple cider in the cooler. For 10 minutes I felt as if I had been transported out of my real world and to the mountains of New England. Food – the sight, smell, and taste of it – has a way of comforting you. It might be the vision of fresh apples or the smell of your mother’s apple pie or the taste of a pie, cake, or muffin you only savor once a year.

We tend to bake with pumpkin just in the fall, and mostly around Halloween. I will roast wedges of small fresh pumpkins, drizzling them with olive oil and sprinkling with garlic slices before baking. With any leftovers, I’ll make pumpkin soup, pureeing the cooked pumpkin, stirring it into sautéed onions, adding chicken stock, then a splash of cream at the end. We stock up on canned pumpkin, too, because it’s tough to find in the stores after Christmas. Then I bake pumpkin muffins. All these thoughts danced through my head as I walked through that store. My daughter found her costume, I was refreshed and renewed, we turned the radio to music, not news, and smiled on the drive home. Here is a simple five-ingredient muffin recipe to bake with your family this weekend.

Pumpkin Muffins from Cupcakes! from the Cake Mix Doctor

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It’s Monday, the stock market has dipped to new lows, we hear of bank failures and mergers, politics and debates and you wonder what I do in troubling times? I cook. This afternoon I am making oatmeal cookies with my 10-year-old son because he thinks I make the best oatmeal cookies in the world. These may be trying times, but when my son tells me how wonderful my cookies are things just don’t seem so bad.

My husband and I are not old enough to be children of the Depression (our parents were) but we have survived the financial ups and downs of family life by simplifying. Baking cookies is just one way to step back and savor the downturn. The kitchen smells wonderful, the ingredients are so basic you probably have them on hand, and your family will love you for it.

Other ways of cutting costs? Shop less, take catalogs immediately to recycling, drive less, eat out less, and pare down your schedule so you and your children do fewer activities. When you are at home more, your children are generally happier and more rested. You have more time to plan meals ahead, thus saving money. I won’t go so far as to say there is a silver lining to this economic mess we are in, but some of my favorite meals are pasta, beans, and a nicely roasted chicken. And oatmeal cookies.

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This week's winner for best advice for saving money on food goes to Elvia Montanez of San Dimas, CA. Elvia knows how to cook from her pantry, thus reducing trips to the supermarket and being creative with what she has on hand. She shared her recipe for a tuna sauce, which her mom used to make on Fridays during Lent.

File this money-saving advice away for fall when your children or grandchildren head back to school or use it now to pack lunches for work and camp. Carol O'Shea of St. Louis is the latest winner in our Cheap Eats contest for creating what she calls lunches from leftovers.

According to Carol, school lunches have not only risen in price but they are often not filling enough for her sons who will be in 8th and 10th grades this fall. In addition they are not always as healthy as a home-packed meal . . .

Thanks for all your terrific ideas for saving money the supermarket. This week's winner for the best idea is Sandra Alexander of Burbank, CA. She will receive a copy of Cheap. Fast. Good. from Workman Publishing. Sandra cooks in quantity so "there is always something in the freezer for dinner and I spend less time at the grocery store, which means I'm also using less gas!" Sandra's favorite cook in bulk recipe is chicken enchiladas.

Thanks to all the readers who have sent their creative and heartfelt ideas on how they save money on the high cost of food. I will be sharing these ideas with you in the next few weeks. . . . And this week's winning idea (drumroll, please) comes from Carol Williams of Bedford, NH, for her "3-Fer from one inexpensive chicken." Although this would only feed a small family and not with those of you who have hungry teens in the house, this is great advice and something we all can do. You could double this for larger families. Carol begins with a whole chicken, bought on sale.

My heart goes out to the victims after tornadoes belted through Tennessee Tuesday night. More than 30 people died and hundreds were injured. Tornadoes are something we've gotten used to, living in this part of the country, but unlike the flat Midwest our middle Tennessee terrain is of rolling hills. When tornadoes come through they hop, skip, and jump around, and the path is tough to determine no matter how sophisticated the weather-tracking equipment.

Anne has been busily criss-crossing the nation, sharing wonderful recipes from her new book, the What Can I Bring? Cookbook. Click Read More to see photos from the events.

Anne's new book, What Can I Bring? Cookbook is in stores, and you all know what that means. Anne is traveling the nation, visiting bookstores, meeting readers, and showing off delicious creations from the new book. See if she'll be coming to a location near you.

Anne's 3rd appearance on QVC with What Can I Bring? will be this Friday, November 16th from 3:00 to 4:00 pm. Don't miss this chance for more recipes from the new book and Anne's answers to your questions!

Plus, she'll be on tour this fall, and she might be coming to a city near you. Check her schedule here to find out.

A friend stopped me today and asked if I had a great recipe in one of my books for a Halloween potluck lunch. Hmm, I hadn't thought about Halloween lunches but we always do a potluck dinner with neighbors on Halloween night, after the trick-or-treating has ended.

Sorry for the confusion about ordering a copy of the Christmas cookbook/magazine I wrote last year for Oxmoor House. The toll-free number in the recent newsletter is correct, but honestly, the operators don't always know about my book. The reason, as it was explained to me, is that the publication is more of a special release magazine, not a hard cover book. So the Oxmoor people are advising you order copies online—there'll be no confusion. Go to www.oxmoorhouse.com. Just to make sure this worked, I went to the site, typed "Christmas Cake Mix Doctor" in the search box and there the book was! Hopefully (fingers crossed) this will work for you, too.

It was a crazy summer at my house, but on top of my usual three children out of school, my reminding them of their summer reading, fun out-of-town guests, a trip to the beach, and a new yellow Labrador puppy named Cooper, I've been working hard on a new book and a newsletter coming to you soon. If you're not already on my newsletter list, I hope you'll take a minute to sign up, because I've got so many exciting things to share with you all this fall.

I love the convenience of a brownie mix, but I adore the flavor and texture of the cakey brownies my mother used to make. So in trying to recreate them in a fast version, I poured a package (Ghirardelli) of brownie mix into a mixing bowl, added a stick of very soft, almost melted, butter, and 2 eggs.

Don't let winter fly by without baking a gingerbread cake. This gorgeous cake was baked by Danielle from New Jersey (danibakes) just before Christmas.

Give me your input on my new cake mix line!

I adore holiday dinners because I enjoy getting together with family and friends. And I love to sample everyone else's cooking for a nice change.

I've been getting a lot of questions about my Christmas Cookbook, so I decided to answer them all here on the blog so that everyone can see them.

In the carpool line again. I figure I spend 40 minutes each afternoon just sitting in the car, waiting. And since we're not allowed to talk on cell phones in the carpool line I read the newspaper, open mail, jot notes, but mostly think about what's for dinner.