Photo: Thinkstock

As French macarons continue to invade our shores, vying for the spot of sweetest little treat and giving the cupcake craze a run for its money, it can be easy for fans of the delicate almond-flour cookies to overlook one thing: Cupcakes are damn easy to make. Most of us grew up dumping flour, sugar, and eggs in a bowl for school birthdays and Girl Scout bake sales. There's an art to the cupcake, of course, but it's unfussy, and even a lumpy or chewy batch can be slathered over with enough icing and eaten. The macaron, though, can be intimidating. Crispy on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside, the brightly colored cookies burn easily and seem to crack without reason. When I made my first batch at home, piping almond batter onto a cookie sheet, I was left with more corkscrews than ovals on the tray and in my zeal to sandwich two of them together around a sweet jelly, I overfilled them and helped more than one friend stain her shirt.

So when I met Daniel Hebet at a macaron-making demonstration in southern France, I had a few questions. (To start, why do my macaroons come out like broken jelly bombs while yours are perfectly airy, brightly hued confections?) Hebet cut his teeth at Ladurée, the famous macaron shop that opened its Parisian doors in 1862, and he's now the owner of the Michelin-starred Les Jardins du Quai in Provence. (It's from there that he leads cooking demonstrations for Trafalgar Tours.) As we whipped up a batch of perfectly shaped, perfectly baked macarons, Hebet shared these secrets, which will work with any macaron recipe you favor.

Photo: Craig Cutler

With six Momofuku restaurants in New York, Sydney and Toronto, chef David Chang is an expert at pleasing multiple and varying palates. And then there's Thanksgiving with his family. For the annual eat-fest, 40 or 50 of his Korean relatives all bring their own "famous" dish. The menu mixes classic Thanksgiving foods with Korean specialities, like Chang's aunt's "insane dumplings," and his mom's braised short ribs. Six years ago, Chang started contributing his own dish to the potluck: the Brussels sprouts with chili, cilantro, and lime juice he'd just started making at his restaurants. Today, it's his famous dish for the annual family feast.

The side isn't completely vegetarian (it does contain fish sauce), but it's considerably less meaty than the fare Chang is known for, in that it does not call for at least a little bit of chicken fat. And while we are aware that some people keep a safe distance from these cute little cabbages unless they're served with some sort of cured meat (and yes, this Bacon Brussels Sprouts recipe does sound amazing), there's so much excitement in Chang's dish--spicy heat, tangy citrus, cooling herbs--that they just might turn on the teenager whose plate is usually a half-and-half mix of turkey and mashed potatoes. It's a brilliant mash-up of international flavors with a traditional American food (for more examples of fusion that works, check out this Ginger-Pear Cranberry Sauce and this Goat Cheese Panna Cotta with Canned Cranberry Jelly Cut-Outs).

For Chang's recipe--and 8 other sides from Emeril Lagasse, Wolfgang Puck, Giada De Laurentiis, April Bloomfield, Eric Ripert and others--see our Thanksgiving Side Dish Recipes from the World's Best Chefs slideshow.

Photo: Courtesy of Yoox.com

If you missed the server-crashing stampede when Missoni launched everything from shoes to shower curtains at Target, you'll get another opportunity to shop on Yoox.com. Margherita Maccapani Missoni designed a 12-piece collection for M Missoni, featuring the brand's zigzag pattern, to benefit OrphanAid Africa. And not only do we love that we're getting a second chance to buy these signature stripes at affordable prices (like these flats), but knowing that our purchase helps reunite children in Ghana—separated by poverty and HIV/AIDs—with their families, makes this bold line even better.

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I once shared an office with a detail-oriented and devoted online dater, and thus was privy to many a profile-tweaking-session. "Wait, do I really want someone who listens to Hall & Oates?" she'd mutter, brow knit. Or else she'd report on the previous night's date: "It was all right, but he's shorter than me. I just don't know if I can do it." This woman was attractive, educated, funny, successful, and at 40, really wanting to find The One, lickety-split.

As an old married lady, I'd find myself saying things like, "Well, you know, if you really like each other, you probably won't care that he likes Hall & Oates, or it he's short." After all, I've been surprised to learn that my soul mate/life partner enjoys football, hates garlic, and thinks cats are demonic. I never would have programmed those parameters into my perfect mate profile. And yet...

"Impossible!" Email deleted. Sorry, guy.   Well, in case my discerning former coworker is still on the prowl, she might want to try the newest trend in online dating—genome dating. Lone Frank writes in the Huffington Post that a Swiss company called GenePartner "has taken the search for a mate to a new level by developing a biological matching system using your human leukocyte antigen, or HLA, genes to find your perfect match." You take a q-tip swab to your inner cheek and that of your potential mate, stick it in the mail, and then the love scientists (ok, that's my term, not theirs) offer an analysis of your results.

Photo: Thinkstock

The long-running campaign to eradicate wrinkles has taken a new, sci-fi turn. LaVív, an injectable wrinkle filler made from your own skin tissue, has been approved by the FDA for the treatment of smile lines. The procedure requires removing small pieces of skin from behind the ear with a circular blade called a punch; the skin is then shipped to a lab where the fibroblasts (collagen-making cells) are multiplied and frozen until you're ready to have them injected back into your face. Three injection sessions (three to six weeks apart) are necessary, and results last six months.

LaVív is being called a custom-made, more natural approach to line filling (you're simply using your own skin cells, after all). But only one of a half-dozen dermatologists we spoke with is planning to offer it. Because LaVív is more invasive, time consuming, and expensive than the fillers already available—and hasn't been shown to last longer—doctors aren't that impressed.

Bottom Line: This concept could inspire a new generation of wrinkle fillers in the next several years, but for now it's a work in progress.

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