Yummy, EASY mini puff pastry cinnamon rolls made in a mini-muffin tin! These shortcut cinnamon rolls are perfect for a small dessert or snack for a baby shower or Mother's Day brunch. They have all the flavor of cinnamon rolls in flaky crust with no yeast, rising, or kneading.
What's it called when it's definitely baking in that we turn the oven on, but very low effort?
That's what I think of every time I use frozen puff pastry.
...Super yummy easy chocolate mousse! This is my favorite chocolate mousse recipe in that it is totally foolproof, works BEST when made in advance, and is an easy gluten free dessert for dinner parties and guests. Chocolate mousse is definitely the at-home dessert we need more of!
For Valentine's Day! Or for your weekend, you do you.
A few nights ago Jay and I were ignoring each other on our devices before we fell asleep, as you do, and all of a sudden he was all "what should we do for Valentine's Day?" I probably replied "I want to keep reading stop talking to me," but honestly we don't always do anything for Valentine's Day. We definitely don't exchange gifts, but we've done flowers and fun dates and cooked fun food together over the years. Valentine's Day falls at a time of year where I'm travelling a lot on the weekends, and now that we have Beck we'd rather relax and enjoy family time with no work (the 7 days a week is getting awful), so I'm hopeful that's what we'll do this weekend leading up to the day.
...This gluten free chocolate cake is a BLENDER CAKE that has just a few ingredients and comes together in under an hour! It's totally foolproof and doesn't taste like it's trying to be healthy at all. Instead, think "is it a brownie, is it a cookie, do I care because it's covered in chocolate ganache frosting?"
It's here, it's here! ....Valentine's Day? To be clear, we celebrate very minimally on V-day, maybe make a big fancy meal, although we technically celebrate our dating anniversary on Valentine's Day - TEN YEARS, where did the time go.
Oh, I know, the time went into the pandemic vortex like the rest of my soul.
...For the countdown to Christmas, a super easy no bake chocolate pie recipe! This pie has the best chocolate mousse ever as a filling, a par-baked pie crust, and keeps perfectly in the fridge for several days. I love all kinds of chocolate pies at the holidays (this chocolate chess pie is another huge hit!), and this one is a huge favorite!
Welp. Christmas time is here.
I'm sure everyone in the world is thinking and talking about and writing the same "what a strange holiday" lines, and it's true, everything is strange. It seems like lots of people are kind of used to the strange at this point; we know nothing will be like it is normally but that doesn't stop us from wanting it, at least not for me.
The endless back and forth of hard decisions with no clear answer, hurt feelings, fake news, and on and on and on is getting to us as a culture, and some of the best "answers" I've heard for how Christmas will go down this year is somewhere along the lines of "the same but way less."
This no bake chocolate pie recipe is 100% "the same but way less." It's a really, really good recipe for chocolate pie, and it's really, really easy. There's nothing to do besides bake a pre-made pie crust, whip some cream, add chocolate, and chill while it chills.
I couldn't help myself.
...These chewy cookies are just like subway white chocolate macadamia cookies but so much better! I add almond extract for some extra special bakery taste that complements the white chocolate chips so well. And, yes, if you find Funfetti chocolate chips like I did you should 100% use them in this recipe.
First full week of December, we made it!
Let's talk about productive procrastination:
...This brown butter blondies recipe is the best ever! With a gooey, nutty center, crackly crust, and chocolate slightly melted and swirled into the batter, you won't find a better potluck dessert recipe! These easy blondies are super rich making them the perfect small dessert. The recipe is from food52 and we can't get enough!
I have great news for introverts.
...This is the easiest strawberry pie with no jello! Just 5 ingredients, a little bit of sugar, and this is the easy, rustic, foolproof pie you've been waiting for.
Here's a story.
(you're like, we hate food blogger stories)
...This recipe for pumpkin blondies is similar to the best ever brown butter blondies that we love so much, with added pumpkin and fall spices for an easy fall twist on this delicious dessert! We make these pumpkin blondies in advance - they keep great in the fridge for about a week or in the freezer for even longer.
Got you some seasonal ish, right here.
I am having a season of easy blondies recipes. Since Beck has been old enough to vaguely care about helping in the kitchen I find that I enjoy baking more and more BUT, baking tends to take a lot of time, and Beck's attention span is approximately 47 seconds.
So I'm always on the hunt for quick dessert recipes - things that don't have a ton of ingredients or use a mixer, that sort of thing. Like my absolute favorite brownies: those are worth her attention.
Cue: Brown Butter Pumpkin Blondies.
...I am not gluten free. But! A lot of people are, and all of the kinds of people in this world should be allowed to eat cake. Yummy cake. Intentional cake. Cake with chocolate chips on top of it that are slightly melted like icing.
This recipe came to me via Instagram; someone that I hadn't heard of before posted the recipe and it included almond flour which I HAPPENED to have a bag of in my freezer, among other gluten free ingredients that need a home.
...OMG OMG OMG.
I have for you today the Best One-Bowl Brownies Ever and just trust me when I say that you absolutely definitely want to make these this weekend and twice per week for ever and ever, amen.
...We are starting with dessert first, today.
Because it's Valentine's week!
Now, to be incredibly clear, I don't give a hoot about V-day. I fully get that it's a fabricated holiday to get us to buy chocolate and cards and flowers and makes single people feel bad and moms of elementary schoolers annoyed.
Oh shit. This is my first year as a school mom. Do I have to DO something for Beck's class? This is literally the first time I am considering this.
I just started hating Valentine's Day, fun real life train of thought for you there (not fabricated, ugh, wish it was). But also, I don't hate nice dinners. I don't hate cooking for people I love year round, and I definitely don't hate making lovely desserts. This gooey chocolate cake ticks a lot of boxes for me, the main one being that it is RIDICULOUSLY delicious and insanely simple.
...Five days until Christmas! I'm not usually a huge baker, but this year I'm allll about it. Dying to make a massive cookie plate with 87 items, that sort of thing. I've made a few new recipes in the last two weeks just to "check" aka have cookies all month, and this is one of the recipes that I'm absolutely making again this week.
It's regular sugar cookies. Advertised as chewy, super easy to make, and a really perfect plain incarnation of a sugar cookie, in the best possible way. I think that fancy cookies have a place, but at Christmas I want things that taste regular, if that makes any sense at all.
I found this recipe on Add a Pinch, and used the dough as a base for the cookies. The recipe calls for rolling the dough into balls then baking that way (like snickerdoodles!), but I rolled the dough into logs instead, then sliced them over the course of a few days when I wanted fresh cookies. It worked perfectly and was easier than rolling the cookies individually into balls, although the result of that method looks a little bit fancier.
...This is of many things currently in my freezer that I'm trying SUPER hard to not eat until after the baby is born, easier said than done. I've been trying to make a thing or two each week to put in the freezer before the baby is born. Mostly I've done sauces to use in quick meals, I froze a bit of slow cooker pork for tacos, and some oatmeal-heavy breakfast-meets-dessert stuff is high on the list for the sake of not just eating a half loaf of bread each morning AND because oatmeal is supposed to be great for lactation but I don't usually run for bowls of straight oatmeal so. Cookies instead! 
This particular inspiration came from the fact that I had some frozen blueberries leftover from my sister's inlaw's yard this summer (riddle me that). Part of all this freezer cooking is that we are using up stuff that was already languishing, so I used something from the freezer to make something for the freezer, which is pretty much like saving for retirement, right? Tres meta.
This recipe came straight from Sally's Baking Addiction, and I doubled it and added chocolate chips because chocolate is probably definitely important for lactation.
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They're balls, but it felt tacky to use that in the title because of all of the jokes I'd invariably make.
But! For your Monday! Here's our treat-because-its-Monday meets healthy-because-weekend-recovery. It's perfect for any way you're feeling. Our weekend was fiiiine food-wise save for some extra bites of Beck's pizza and overindulgence of the booze on the part of the non-pregos. We went on a quick long weekend vacation with my family and it was great to get away, do very little, and let Beck have some time with her aunts.
Today we're back at it, working and unpacking and cleaning (omg the dogs alone in the house all weekend so much hair), and these little bites of happiness are calling my name. I took the recipe directly from Pinch of Yum, one of my (and everyone else's) favorite food blogs. The recipe takes five minutes, is no-bake, is customizeable, and works every single time, all criteria I have for recipes because obviously. The ingredients combine to taste somewhat like cookie dough, and and the base of oatmeal + peanut butter + coconut is hearty without being super heavy like a cookie made with butter and oil. They're also gluten free and dairy free but don't scream I'M A HEALTH FOOD, which I love.
Make these today and have them for the entire week, is pretty much all you need to know.
...Dessert for breakfast! Breakfast for dessert! Reese's cup flavored everything! 
Should have led with Reese's cup flavored everything.
Happy Monday! We're starting with chocolate. And why not, really? There is a perception that chocolate is always unhealthy, but I think it's more that when cocoa powder is served with sugar + fat + carbs we run into issues. This has those things, certainly, but it also has chia seeds, peanut butter, honey instead of sugar (still acts like sugar, though, don't be totally fooled), and dairy that can be lower in fat if you choose. You can also sub the milk + cream for coconut milk and/or almond milk if you're dairy-free, so lots of options here!
The point is more that things called pudding can definitely be good for breakfast or snacks or dessert. Chia pudding in particular is so easy to make, and I don't know many people who dislike the chocolate+peanut butter combination, seriously. I love making a big batch like this while something else is cooking (because it takes all of 5 minutes), then keeping it in the fridge for several days to grab when we need something fast. This version has slightly more liquid than other variations for a creamier effect, and I DID throw some peanut butter cups on top for a visual (and because they are delicious, obviously) and to up the dessert-factor of these. Maybe leave them off if you make this for breakfast, maybe don't.
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I'm 32 today. It's extraordinarily anticlimactic because when there are toddlers you realize how little you matter in the world besides staying alive to feed people and tidy up after them, but somehow that feels very important. 
My theme for 32 is heightened anxiety over untimely death, it's very soothing.
I think it's because my life is so good, honestly. I'm terrified of not being here for it, and then I realize that consuming my thoughts with things like that is really a waste of the being here time, and around and around we go. I don't let it consume me, necessarily, but I'm often tearful at just how lucky even the most mundane moments of my life are. Beck begins nearly every sentence with a whine, Jay and I both work too hard at the wrong times, bills come out of nowhere, school debt (and all of the other debt) is relentless, I'm not anywhere close to comfortable with the state of our government, but somehow it works, it works well, and I'm grateful for it. ...
I mean, come on. All of the free things, which means that pudding for breakfast is totally acceptable whether you're on a diet or not. 
When I was reading about Whole30 and the philosophy (a ton that I disagree with), there is a note that it isn't recommended to eat chia pudding because it can make you think of real pudding and THAT IS SO BAD and on and on. So I presented this to Jay, who'd been asking for chia pudding, and he rolled his eyes and we made chia pudding.
Great story, right? So, while this isn't on the hoity-toity list of recommended Whole30 foods, it is totally compliant with all of the actual rules and delicious to boot. You can also make this with sweetened versions of any of the ingredients, which...wouldn't be gross, hence why some people feel the need to detox from sugar. Because it's good. We enjoyed this without added sugar, though, thanks to some fresh fruit and raisins which add sweetness without sugar to the final dish.
...
Tis the season to make a pie so delicious you may or may not consume 2 pieces in twelve hours just to be sure it was that good. 
It was, promise.
Ok so this pie. Vague origin story. I actually didn't know what a chocolate chess pie WAS, but this local grocery/bakery that we frequent makes them around the holidays and they always looked really enticing in pretty bakery boxes. Then I ended up with a few extra pie crusts after Thanksgiving (my apple pies didn't require a top crust because I didn't have as many apples as I thought, long story), and I knew I needed a new Christmas pie. Enter: Chocolate Chess.
The first step was to determine what that actually was, which is an important step in learning to cook something. Ha. I learned that this is a flourless pie (the filling, not the pie crust), super chocolate-y, almost pudding-like on the inside, with a sugar crust on the outside that forms naturally during the baking process. ...
We aren't really cocktail people, I'll be honest. 
Jay likes vodka mixed with....Le Croix, mostly, which I guess is technically a cocktail, but it's very rarely that we drink some kind of a specialty mixed drink at home or restaurants. Mainly because they're complicated (at home) and expensive (out), and we're lazy and cheap. Full disclosure.
But! That doesn't mean we aren't fully into all the holiday-spiced stuff that is available right now - flavorings, combinations, amped up classic cocktails, I know you've seen them. We've had a few at restaurants that are truly delicious, and I wanted to make a simple version at home to complement a drink setup at a holiday party. I think offering too much liquor is a recipe for disaster (just our friends?), but that having beer + wine + one cocktail at an event is lovely and charming without being too expensive or too much work.
So that's what we're doing! A take on a regular Moscow Mule with ginger simple syrup and soda instead of ginger beer. The garnishes are distinctly holiday, but the recipe can be used year round, DUH. The simple syrup takes all of 5 minutes to make, and gets more delicious the longer it hangs out with the spices in the fridge. So, make now, serve at every weekend until January 4, give or take.
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Tis the season, whether we like it or not. 
I can't believe it's officially "the holidays." I guess it comes with Halloween, or the first day of fall, or the months that end in brrrr, but now that Thanksgiving is LESS THAN 2 WEEKS AWAY, it's high time we get cracking on our meal planning, right?
I'm not a big dessert-maker; there are many in my family that can out-bake me by a million. Mac and cheese is my family meal go-to, but I wanted to try out a few easy shortcuts for pie this year. The first is pie crust in a food processor. I'm a massive fan of not exerting any effort when it comes to baking, and wanted something between store-bought pie crust and anything involving a pastry cutter.
So here it is! This version is made in the food processor with all butter and one recipe makes 2 crusts. So, you can make one pie with a top and bottom crust, or 2 pies that don't need a top. The crust can be made in advance and kept in the fridge for a few days, or made wayyyyy in advance and frozen until you need it. Easy + versatile + butter. I win.
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