Crisco spray with flour dusts the competition

Crisco No-Stick Flour Spray. $2.40 per 5-ounce can.

Bonnie: Nonstick cooking sprays have been around since the 1950s. They're good for keeping foods from sticking to pans without adding fat or calories. I also use them to keep sticky items like honey or molasses from sticking to measuring cups.

The more recent variation is the nonstick cooking spray with flour, pioneered by Baker's Joy, but also made by Pam and now Crisco. Use any one of the three on baking utensils, rolling surfaces or pans. In a side-by-side test, Pam for Baking and this new Crisco No-Stick Flour Spray each performed similarly, but Crisco is more natural. Pam contains artificial flavors and the preservative TBHQ, and Baker's Joy contains preservatives. That's enough for me to select Crisco over the other brands.

Carolyn: To figure out how to add flour to a nonstick cooking spray, as Baker's Joy did in 1980, was quite an accomplishment.

But do you need Baker's Joy, Pam for Baking or this copycat Crisco with Pillsbury Flour? Only if you do a whole lot of baking. Everyone else can save money and avoid cluttering up their closets by sprinkling some flour on a pan that's been sprayed with plain Crisco or Pam.

Nestle Toll House Swirled Morsels. Milk Chocolate and Peanut Butter, and Milk Chocolate and Caramel. $2.69 per 10-ounce bag.

Bonnie: While in the midst of developing 365 recipes for a cookie cookbook, I recall secretly thinking the only cookie recipe anyone really needed was Nestle Toll House.

So I looked forward to this excuse to make the recipe, hoping these three new Swirled Morsels would make my cookies even more delicious. Sadly, that's not the case.

Unlike Nestle Toll House Semi-Sweet Morsels, these Swirled Morsels don't melt while baking or in your mouth, even when the finished cookies are eaten warm from the oven. They also taste artificial, not something I want or expect when going to the trouble of making from-scratch cookies. And ounce for ounce, these cost more than Nestle's semisweet chips, as the bags are 2 ounces smaller.

Carolyn: Ruth Wakefield would turn over in her celestial oven to see what her little idea of putting chunks of chocolate into a cookie has wrought: caramel, butterscotch, peanut butter, white chocolate, chocolate mint and now these Nestle Swirled chips that combine several of these flavors with chocolate in alternating, barber pole-like stripes.