Q: My mother used to make peanut butter eggs for Easter. To make the chocolate they are dipped in, the recipe calls for a stick of paraffin. Is it really safe to be eating paraffin?

A: No, paraffin is no longer suggested in recipes. But there are still plenty of old recipes floating around that called for it.

For an easy chocolate coating that will set up at room temperature, try chocolate-flavored candy coating, sometimes called almond bark. Or you can melt the chocolate called for in the original recipe and stir in a small amount of shortening. Mixing a little fat into melted chocolate also will create a chocolate coating that is easy to handle.

Use about ½ teaspoon shortening per ounce of chocolate.