It has come to my attention that a gross oversight has occurred. Despite more than six years of blogging and 600 recipes, there are less than ten Nutella recipes on this site. I honestly don’t know how I let this happen, but rest assured I will be making up for it with plenty of new recipes featuring our favorite chocolate hazelnut spread coming your way soon. Until then though, here are my best Nutella bakes from my archives.
If there is one thing in the world more delicious than Nutella straight-up, it’s Nutella Buttercream. Everyone’s favorite chocolate hazelnut spread is whipped into an otherwise classic vanilla buttercream, then piled onto buttery yellow cupcakes.
Want big Nutella flavor without having to reinvent the wheel? Swirl it into your favorite brownie recipe! I used my tried and true Cocoa Brownies here, and the chocolate hazelnut fudginess is out of this world!
After baking my tail off for the final two months of the calendar year, I make a point of changing things up around here every January, leaning into more everyday foods and savory fare. I began this month with my tried and true formula for Crispy Chickpeas, and will be bringing you plenty of dinners and snacky things until February. There may be a cookie recipe in there too—I make and break the rules around here.
While weeknight meals aren’t my usual content, a person cannot live on cookies alone. Believe me, I have tried. As we settle into whatever fresh hell 2022 has for us, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite meals that can be made with minimal time and energy, but with plenty of delicious pay-off. Some are classics and some are masquerading as classy, but they’re all wonderful. These are my Easiest Weeknight Meals!
When people ask me for quick, easy, crowd-pleasing dinner ideas “Everyday Cassoulet” are always the first two words out of my mouth. A quick take on a slow-cooked French classic, this dish could not be easier—it’s just an assemblage of sausages, cherry tomatoes, white beans and aromatics that are roasted to comforting perfection. You can also make it vegan with meatless sausages or a couple of pounds of fresh mushrooms—love that versatility. Serve this up with a salad, a hunk of crusty bread or all by its lonesome. There’s no wrong way to Everyday Cassoulet.
This Mexican recipe is my absolute favorite chicken soup. It’s easy to make, with minimal knife work and no searing steps, and it simmers up in under an hour! Feel free to swap in your favorite vegetables to suit your particular tastes, but whatever you do, don’t skip the mint. It makes the whole thing.
Eggs?! On a list of weeknight dinners?! Hell yes—breakfast for dinner rules. I work evenings, so when I finally get home and make dinner for myself, it’s frequently some form of eggs with whatever I have in my fridge. They’re a cheap, delicious protein and nearly everyone has a preparation that they love. In the linked post, I go into detail about how to scramble, hard-boil, soft-boil, poach and fry eggs, so you can make them however you like. Get crackin’! (Pun absolutely intended.)
Baked Shrimp with Lemon & Garlic sounds fancy, but it’s dead easy and so good. I make it extra easy (and cut the cost!) by using raw frozen shrimp. The rest of the ingredients are kitchen staples, making this an absolute snap to make. While I’m recommending you make it for weeknights here, it’s also perfect for company.
I have made this recipe approximately 250 times over the last six years and it has never once disappointed. I mean, who doesn’t love tacos? This recipe for easy homemade taco seasoning and saucy, spicy turkey tacos is a staple in my personal chef and home-cooking repertoire. It takes half an hour start to finish and makes amazing leftovers.
I started making this mac & cheese while I was acting as craft services on student film sets approximately 147 years ago (2009). I learned how to make it on a sketchy hot plate that I bought at the K-Mart in Penn Station, but it works just as well in my home kitchen ☺️ Made with minimal ingredients, effort and time, this is my go-to recipe for creamy, comforting macaroni & cheese in minutes. Oh, and pro-tip: if you can’t get your hands on cream cheese right now, a scoop of full-fat sour cream works just as well.
I used to be shocked at the number of people I know that don’t know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich, but then I realized that maybe nobody ever taught them how to make one. If you are one of those people, this post is for you. Learn how to make classic grilled cheese low-and-slow, step-by-step, and pair it with a simple homemade tomato soup for maximum comfort and nostalgia. Once you’ve perfected the original, get fancy with my Awards Season favorite Pesto Mozzarella Grilled Cheese—yum!
What’s your favorite easy weeknight meal? Let me know in the comments or on social media!
This post almost didn’t happen because I am enjoying my time off, but I couldn’t resist finishing this dumpster-fire of a year with my annual countdown of the most-clicked recipes on my site. Thank you for all the support and for sharing your excitement for home-baking in 2021! I am looking forward to getting back in the kitchen in 2022, starting with my annual Savory January line-up next week.
This five ingredient tart is on my year-end list for the third time. Super simple and crowd-friendly, as most things filled to the brim with chocolate ganache are.
This is one of my oldest published recipes, but with plenty of molasses, spice and that rumpled blanket of icing, it’s easy to see why it’s on this list.
I certainly didn’t invent (or reinvent) French Apple Cake, but I make a damn good one. It makes me so happy that so many of you agree. It’s simple and satisfying—the perfect thing to make on New Year’s Day.
Happy New Year, dear readers! If you made any of my recipes this year, let me know in the comments or on social media.
Making sugar cookies is a classic Christmastime activity, but you can do so much more with them than just roll, cut, and blanket them with royal icing! From thumbprints to pinwheels to custom panes of candy stained glass, the versatility of this dough is endless. Make yourself a few batches and get your sugar cookie on this holiday season! Here’s some inspiration from my archives.
A Christmas staple! These buttery roll-out sugar cookies come with a time commitment, but they sure are fun to make (and eat!). All my sugar cookie knowledge is in that post, so click over and check it out!
Not up for giving bags of sugar-based concrete to the kids in your life? Paint your sugar cookies instead! Using a simple mixture of sweetened condensed milk and food coloring, you can make your sugar cookies as festive as you want with much less fuss. Finishing them with some basic icing is totally optional, but I think it makes them really cute.
Want to skip decorating altogether? Make Stained Glass Cookies! Cut out the center of the cookies before they go in the oven, then fill them with crushed hard candy. In just minutes, it’ll melt into a little candy stained glass window.
Here’s where things get interesting. The very same dough that makes for the best sugar cookies gets rolled into balls instead of sheets, then filled with little wells of festive icing! So cute, right?! Good luck eating just one.
Candy Cane Cookies use the same sugar cookie dough base with three adjustments: less baking powder, the addition of peppermint extract, and half the dough is dyed Christmas red! Oh, and they’re rolled and baked into *the* cutest candy canes you ever did see.
I spent years being intimidated by pinwheel cookies, but it turns out they’re kind of a snap to make! You need patience for the stacking and rolling, but after that they’re just an extra-festive slice and bake recipe.
What’s your favorite sugar cookie recipe? Let me know in the comments or on social media!
It’s apple season and I am here for it! They were littered everywhere when we were leaving Maine a couple of weeks ago, and it took everything in me not to scoop them up and bring them home to bake! While I wouldn’t trust apples growing in NYC parks (much less on the ground), I definitely trust the ones at the markets! Whether they’re tucked into a pie, folded into a buttery cake batter, or rolled up in yeast dough, baking with apples is one surefire way to get in the seasonal spirit! Here are a few of my favorite apple recipes from the archives.
This recipe is from the first few weeks of this blog’s existence, but I remade it last year (she needed some Glamourshots), and I’m here to tell you: it’s SO delicious. Sweet and tart and perfectly spiced, this is one to make when cranberries start showing up in a few weeks!
I love pie, but the ease of galettes wins me over every time! Here apples and ripe pears are nestled into a rustic free form pie crust. It’s a perfect autumnal dessert if I’ve ever had one!
Want the flavors of apple pie for breakfast? Make yourself some Apple Pie Cinnamon Rolls! These were my second post ever, and having remade them for a photoshoot recently, I can confirm that they still make all my apple pie breakfast dreams come true.
I love turnovers! They’re like pop tarts for grown ups. This apple version is made with my go-to rough puff pastry and folded on the bias for the flakiest little triangles of apple goodness you’ve ever had.
This is easily the most popular recipe on this blog, and for good reason. Its pure, buttery cake base and chunks of soft apple have no pie spices to detract from their balance of flavors. I clearly love apple pie things, but this simple favorite is something really special.
What’s your favorite way to bake with apples? Let me know in the comments or on social media!