"I often buy whipping cream planning to make a dessert, but my plans change and the cream just sits in the refrigerator and goes sour. Surely I can still use it ... or can I? Can you make biscuits, etc., with cream after the expiration date has passed?"

ABBIE HARLIN, Atlanta

DEAR FOOD GODDESS: E-mail the Food Goddess Related: • More on food and drink • Restaurant reviews and search More Food Goddess columns Here are readers' favorite potato salad recipes  Chicken salad, fruit salad recipes from Rich's  Here's how to tell when blue-veined cheeses go bad  Everyone has opinion on potato salad  Pavlova a wonderful light dessert for warm weather  Here are readers' favorite potato salad recipes  Chicken salad, fruit salad recipes from Rich's  Here's how to tell when blue-veined cheeses go bad  Everyone has opinion on potato salad  Pavlova a wonderful light dessert for warm weather

While it is said not to cry over spilled milk, when your cream spoils you might as well weep since there's nothing you can do with it, except throw it out. Unlike wine, dairy products do not improve with age. That's nasty bacteria in there stinking it up, which not only tastes bad, but will ruin whatever you mix it with and could make you feel even worse if you ingest it.

Luckily, because of advances in pasteurization, cream is designed to last for well over a month (a quick check of dates in the supermarket showed sell-by dates well into the end of May), giving you lots of time to think of other ways to use it. Don't let an absent dessert deprive you of your carton of yum. If you can't manage to find some excuse for whipping it to top some confection, don't despair. A bit of cream added to soups and pasta sauces adds incredible lushness.

Recipe swap

As many of you might have noticed, the goddess has been unceremoniously bumped from these pages off and on for several weeks. This is totally undeserving and unacceptable for a dining deity. Because of these unfortunate lapses, the culinary queen has an abundance of requests that she desperately would like help with. There's one for three consecutive decades. If anyone can help guide this heavenly helper, please write in.

Ellen Phillips of Tucker is looking for a cake recipe her grandmother made in the 1950s. She called it Japanese Layer Cake. It had three layers, two yellow layers and one that was a chocolate spice layer. It had a pineapple filling between the layers and had white icing.

April McCafferty of Covington is looking for a coconut pudding recipe from the 1960s. It had a meringue and vinegar crust and meringue on the top. Her grandmother used to make it for her dad years ago and she would love to make it for him again.

Mary Ann Holder of Conyers has lost a recipe from the 1970s for Brunswick stew, which was originally printed in Outdoors in Georgia, a publication of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.