Easter brunch with a pantry punch

Easter brunch with a pantry punch

The ingredients for an easy weekend breakfast or a special Easter brunch may be in your pantry right now. Holidays are the perfect time to sprinkle additional creativity or fresh new thinking into meals for family and friends and — by using staples like pancake mix, syrup and instant mashed potatoes in unexpected ways — you can craft new and deli cious dishes sure to make everyone smile. Recipes, including one for Good Morning Granola (above), on C2.

The Stuf of dreams

Have you, Oreo cookie lover, felt that even the Double Stuf Oreo somehow comes up short in the Stuf department?

Well, say hello — at least while the “limited edition” lasts — to the Mega Stuf Oreo.

Whereas each Double Stuf Oreo contains a thicker blob of filling than a regular Oreo, the filling of the Mega Stuff Oreo is really thick.

How much Stuf are we talking about? A regular Oreo cookie weighs 11.3 grams. A Double Stuf Oreo weighs 14.5 grams, and a Mega Stuf Oreo weighs 18 grams. Assuming that the chocolate-cookie part of all three versions is the same, and assuming that the Double Stuf Oreo contains twice the filling of a regular Oreo, we would calculate that the cookie part of all three kinds of Oreos weighs 8.1 grams, the regular filling weighs 3.2 grams, the Double Stuf filling weighs 6.4 grams and the Mega Stuf filling weighs 9.9 grams — more than triple the weight of the regular filling!

Regardless of any of that, all three kinds of Oreos sell for the same price.

New line of cookies

There’s a new line of Pepperidge Farm cookies called “Dessert Shop,” consisting, for now, of two kinds of soft cookies: Dark Chocolate Cheesecake (including dark chocolate chunks and “drops of real cream cheese”), and Carrot Cake (with carrots and “cream cheese flavored chunks”).

Combined dispatches