honey + milk chocolate caramel corn
What’s a Super Bowl party without something sweet to break up the monotony of salty, savory snacks? This honey caramel corn will fit right in between the endless bowls of chips and piles of hot wings, for sure!
Author: Amanda
Blue jean baby. AZ lady. Baker for the band. // Blogger, professional baker, sweets-eater extraordinaire
mini taco salad cups!
I’m not usually much for sports.
I enjoy sports, but I don’t actively watch them on TV or in person. There is one exception, and that’s the Super Bowl! Sort of like those people who only go to church on holidays, the only time I watch football is the Super Bowl. And not even for the commercials which, I admit, can be pretty entertaining. I get genuinely excited about the game (even if I don’t understand all of it sometimes), and it’s a lot of fun! The thing I look forward to most about Super Bowl Sunday, though, is the food. Obviously!
baked chocolate donuts!
When my sisters and I were really little, our mom worked for a short time at a donut shop. She would go to work in the afternoon when my dad would get home from work, and my sisters and I were always asleep by the time she’d get home late that night. As if by magic (so it seemed to my little kid brain), every Sunday there would be a pink bakery box on the kitchen table when we woke in the morning, with a donut inside for each of us!
Lindsey’s favorite was always the raised donut with pink frosting. Jessie got an apple crumb donut without fail. My donut of choice? Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and those little rainbow nonpareils on top. Always and forever.
salad jar shenanigans (happy blogiversary!)
Today marks one year since my first blog post!! My one year blogiversary. Can you tell I’m excited?!
I’ve come a long way as a blogger in the last year. I started this site to share my recipes and all the fun stuff I create in my kitchen, and it’s been a total learning experience for sure. Of course, not everything came out perfect on the first try, and some recipes I’ve tested and then held back from the blog because I wasn’t fully satisfied with them. I’ve pushed the boundaries of my creativity and had a blast doing it. I hope you have enjoyed reading everything, and I hope you’ve been inspired by my creations! Here’s to another awesome year of pretty, tasty food. I have lots of ideas for 2014, and I hope you’ll enjoy what my brain dreams up.
It’s a new year, and in that relatively small window from January 1st through, say, February 13th, most people have at least a partial goal in mind to lose weight/eat healthier/get more active, or any combination of the three. Whether I verbalize it or not, I usually have some plan in mind to be a better version of myself as the year begins. Those aspirations are so easily shattered, especially once Valentine’s Day rolls around and every store is chock-full of heart-shaped, chocolate-coated everything. Basically, I have zero willpower when it comes to sugar.
Even if I can’t lose 20 pounds or run a marathon by the time this year is out, I can make little changes. Working in a bakery as I do, I’m not only constantly surrounded by sugary, fatty temptation (it’s mostly organic, so there’s that, anyhow), but I also don’t have a scheduled lunch break. I’m free to sit down and eat something whenever I have the time but more often than not, I simply don’t make the time. I feel much more productive in my work if I can just keep going straight through my 8 hour shift without much distraction. If I sit down and eat something for lunch, I have a hard time getting back to the same head space I was in before. It majorly derails my concentration, and ain’t nobody got time for that.
Continue reading “salad jar shenanigans (happy blogiversary!)”
hello, 2014!
The beginning of a new year usually means people are throwing on their running shoes, buying gym memberships, and searching Pinterest for healthy new recipes. What am I doing? I’m daydreaming about how I can re-create a gorgeous cheesecake dessert that I ate during my NYE trip to Vegas. Clearly I’m not like most people. If you happen to fit into the former description rather … Continue reading hello, 2014!
champagne truffles
Man, what a year 2013 has been. I can’t recall a more roller coaster year in recent memory.
I hope y’all can look back on 2013 with at least a little fondness. It had its ups and downs for me, that’s for sure. New friends were gained, old friends were reconnected with, my family grew closer, and there were definitely tears shed and moments of sadness and despair but all’s well that ends well, I guess. If I look back at the past 10 years or so, even-numbered years always seem to treat me better. So, let’s hope that 2014 is a good one!
merry christmas!
I hope all of you lovely readers of mine are having the best Christmas possible, and are surrounded by family, friends and loved ones! Thank you all for reading my little blog and keeping up to date on my little food adventures. Have a great holiday! :) Amanda Continue reading merry christmas!
white christmas cake
The Christmas season is always my favorite part of the year. The lights, ornaments, decorations, food, music, family time, the tree, the movies and of course snow. Sadly I never get snow on Christmas here in AZ, but it doesn’t stop me from wishing for it!
roasted pistachio ice cream
Several weeks back, Local First Arizona hosted their 4th annual Fall Fest in downtown Phoenix. It was a wonderful day filled with local food vendors and craftspeople from around the valley. My friend Dusty joined me, and together we got to sample lots of great local food and check out plenty of other awesomeness (like some amazing handmade, vegan and organic soap from Strawberry Hedgehog!). One of the food samples that stood out to me was the pistachio gelato from Grateful Spoon. Up until then, the only pistachio ice cream of any type I’d ever had was the passable version from Ben & Jerry’s. Grateful Spoon’s gelato was thick and rich, with none of the overabundance of almond flavoring so often added to pistachio products. It was chock full of little bits of roasted pistachios, so their flavor was front and center. I knew after I tasted it that I wanted to make my own at home!
pistachio snowball cookies
One thing I always associate with Christmas is almond extract. More specifically, almond extract flavoring some old fashioned spritz cookies that my mom would make with her awesomely vintage cookie press. Have you ever seen one of these things? They’re pretty rad. Of course you can buy newer, less sturdy options, but my mom’s was the real deal with all metal parts. It belonged to my grandma when my mom was just a little kid in St. Louis.
Every Christmas season, my mom would grab the cookie press from its ragged cardboard box and she and my sisters and I would make red and green spritz cookies flavored with almond extract. Even if we halved the batch, it’d still make what seemed like a mountain of cookies! We’d be snacking on green Christmas trees and red (well, pink) wreaths well into the new year.
While those spritz cookies hold a nostalgic place in my heart, I think it’s high time I graduated to a more sophisticated sort of Christmas cookie. Enter the pistachio snowball cookie!
oven + apron 