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!
Category: Dessert
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.
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!
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!
crunchy little peppermint meringues
What do you think of when you think of Christmas time? I think of my mom’s homemade cranberry bread, twinkly little lights around the windows, Mickey’s Christmas Carol on TV, and Nat King Cole singing “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”.
I also think of all things peppermint. There’s no better time of the year to break out the peppermint extract! Any other time of year, and you’ll just look like a weirdo. Since it’s December, you’re safe for the time being.
minty chocolate puppy chow
I think it was during a classroom Christmas party in the 3rd grade, that I first ate puppy chow.
No, not that kind of puppy chow! I mean the kind usually made with Chex cereal, chocolate, peanut butter, and powdered sugar!
Its a really tasty snack that only seems to pop up around Christmas time, and when I first heard of it as a wee little kid, I was ultimately confused. I thought that this kid in my class had actually brought in dog food to share with the class. Silly me!
s’mores creme brulee
I love s’mores. You might remember those little s’mores bars? They were impossible to stop eating.
This s’mores creme brulee was pretty much as good as those s’mores bars. It’s amazing! I made a version of this about 7 or 8 years ago and I always wanted to revisit it.
oven + apron 