Category Archives: Recipe Round-Ups

Friday Favorites: Chocolate Chips

Friday Favorites: Chocolate Chips

Of all the bits and bobs you can mix into baked goods, none can compete with semisweet chocolate chips. They’re small, eye-catching and good in everything. Even if you’re not much of a baker, you probably have a bag somewhere in your pantry right now.

Tomorrow, May 15th, is National Chocolate Chip Day (not to be confused with National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, August 4th). Celebrate by making one of these chocolate chip-centric treats, or just eating the morsels by the handful!

Friday Favorites: Chocolate Chips

“I Got Yolks” Chocolate Chip Cookies

You can’t celebrate chocolate chip day without cookies! These are made with all egg yolks so they’re super soft and rich.

Friday Favorites: Chocolate Chips

Crispy, Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies

These crunchy cookies are incredibly easy and so good, they’ve been known to convert avowed chewy cookie people.

Friday Favorites: Chocolate Chips

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

A recent update of an ooooold blog recipe, the flavor of these Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies is amped up with—you guessed it!—100% whole wheat flour.

Friday Favorites: Chocolate Chips

100% Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Muffins

Whole wheat flour also does wonders for these chocolate chip muffins!

Friday Favorites: Chocolate Chips

Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Scones

Oh yes, I did. These tender scones are made with chilled brown butter and packed to the gills with chocolate chips. Needless to say, they’re so good, it’s stupid.

Friday Favorites: Chocolate Chips

Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Bars

These ooey-gooey chocolate chip squares are filled with soft salted caramel! They’re super easy to make and always a hit, as all salted caramel chocolate chip things are.

Friday Favorites: Chocolate Chips

Chocolate Chip Cookie Crumb Cake

This is coffee cake for chocolate chip cookie people! No cinnamon—just chocolate chip sour cream cake and crunchy cookie crumbs.

Friday Favorites: Chocolate Chips

Basic Blondies

When I don’t have it in me to make cookies, I make blondies! These six ingredient bars are great on their own, but chocolate chips make them sing.

Friday Favorites: Chocolate Chips

One Big Chocolate Chip Cookie

If you love chocolate chip cookies and hate sharing, this is a great recipe to have in your back pocket.

Friday Favorites: Chocolate Chips

Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

And if you love sharing, this cake can’t be beat.

Have you made these or any of my other chocolate chip treats? Let me know in the comments or on social media!

Friday Favorites: Chocolate Chips

Friday Favorites: Everyday Cakes {Spring Edition}

Friday Favorites: Everyday Cakes {Spring Edition}Everyday Cakes are probably my favorite desserts to make and eat. I’m sure I’ve said that about at least one other category of dessert, but I promise it’s true.

Like their name implies, these are cakes that can be made any ol’ day with limited fuss. Theyre single layer, have short ingredient lists and can almost always be adapted to work with whatever you have on hand. They’re the sort of thing you can bake on the fly when you need to let out some stress after work, or want to make a cake on a Saturday afternoon but don’t want to deal with frosting and layering. Even better, they’re the kind of super-classy-but-still-low-maintenance dinner party dessert that will make you look like Ina Garten (hydrangeas optional, but recommended). Their versatility simply cannot be matched.

It will come as no surprise that I have tons of Everyday Cakes in my archives—too many for one post—so this is my spring Everyday Cake round-up. Five cakes that are far more than the sum of their parts. Try out one or two before summer’s here and it’s too hot to bake!Friday Favorites: Everyday Cakes {Spring Edition}Boterkoek {Dutch Butter Cake}

My friend, David, introduced me to this Dutch dessert a few years ago and it’s quickly become one of my favorite cakes of all time. With plenty of butter, bits of ginger strewn throughout and a signature golden lid, it might just become your favorite too!

Ginger not your thing? Feel free to leave it out, or make my almond variation.Friday Favorites: Everyday Cakes {Spring Edition}Flourless Almond Cake

The nectarines in this picture won’t be in season for a few more months, but don’t let that stop you from making this dreamy Flourless Almond Cake! It’s perfect for eating with your fingers as a mid-afternoon snack, but it can also be dressed up with berries or chocolate or whatever for post-vaccine get-togethers.Friday Favorites: Everyday Cakes {Spring Edition}Blueberry Torte

A torte is just a low maintenance cake by another name. This one is super easy to make, tender and buttery and chockablock with fresh blueberries.Friday Favorites: Everyday Cakes {Spring Edition}Mango Upside-Down Cake

Pineapple is the reigning queen of upside-down cakes, but I’d like to make a petition for this mango number to be a princess or a duchess or something. The combination of brown sugar cake and fresh mango baked in caramel is absolutely divine.Friday Favorites: Everyday Cakes {Spring Edition}Winning Hearts & Minds Cake

Everyone needs a good flourless chocolate cake recipe in their back pocket. This one is the slightest take on Molly Wizenberg-Choi’s gem of a recipe. I’ve made it approximately a thousand times—I’ve got the recipe memorized—and am still not over the crackly top and dense chocolaty middle. Consider my heart and mind won.

Have you made these or any of my other everyday cakes? Let me know in the comments or on social media!

Friday Favorites: Coconut

Friday Favorites: CoconutI realize that I can bake with coconut anytime of year, but there’s something about spring that makes me want to put it in everything. Between its chewy texture and sweet, tropical scent, I just can’t get enough. Coconut is delicious as a primary flavor, of course—looking at you, Coconut Truffles—but it’s also a structural powerhouse and can be molded and shaped into naturally gluten-free tart crusts and scooped into macaroons. Toasted and crisp or soft and light, it’s a great ingredient to have in your baking arsenal! Here are some of my favorite coconut recipes from the archives.Friday Favorites: CoconutChocolate Macaroon Thumbprints

I posted these simple cookies earlier this week, but they warrant another mention. Made with my naturally egg- and gluten-free Coconut Macaroon base, these are toasty on the outside, soft & light on the inside, and filled to the brim with dark chocolate ganache.Friday Favorites: CoconutFive Ingredient Chocolate Macaroon Tart

This tart is the inspiration behind the macaroon thumbprints! It’s one of my all-time most popular recipes and it’s easy to see why. Between the golden & grain-free coconut macaroon crust and rich chocolate filling, this simple dessert is almost impossible to resist. I posted a Lemon Meringue version of this recipe a couple of weeks ago—it’s not to be missed!Friday Favorites: CoconutCoconut Cupcakes

These cupcakes are just a miniature take on classic coconut cake. If you’re into buttery, coconut-scented cake, coconut buttercream and a thick layer of chewy coconut, you’ll love these.Friday Favorites: CoconutCoconut Pineapple Cake

I haven’t posted a classic coconut cake on here yet, but I have taken the basic formula and filled it with the brightest, tangiest pineapple filling and that’s delicious, too.Friday Favorites: CoconutCoconut Cream Pie

Find me a person who says they don’t like Coconut Cream Pie and I will do everything in my power to change their mind. And by “everything in my power,” I mean “make this creamy, wonderful pie,” and by “change their mind” I mean “I don’t actually care that much, I’m too busy eating pie.”

Have you made these or any of my other coconut recipes? Let me know in the comments or on social media! Happy Easter, y’all.

Friday Favorites: Red Velvet

Friday Favorites: Red VelvetI professed my love for red velvet earlier this week, and this round-up is the proof! Whether it’s cake, cookies or cookie cake, I am all about this ruby red chocolate-vanilla flavor. Just in time for Valentine’s Day weekend, here are a few of my red velvet favorites from the archives.Friday Favorites: Red VelvetRed Velvet Marble Cupcakes

I posted these cupcakes two days ago, and I am not over them. The red velvet-swirled sour cream cupcake, the plume of two-tone cream cheese frosting—I love it all. These are positively dreamy.Friday Favorites: Red VelvetRed Velvet Cake

You can’t beat a classic, and my red velvet cake is just that. Super moist, springy and perfectly red, this is the best of the best…unlike the photos. Did I take them in the dark?! Yikes. Looks like I need to replace those immediately, if not sooner. Friday Favorites: Red VelvetRed Velvet Cookies

These chewy Red Velvet Cookies were one of my first posts ever! The cream cheese frosting is swapped for white chocolate chips, but please trust me when I say the flavor is all there.Friday Favorites: Red VelvetRed Velvet Sandwich Cookies

I made these simple and stunning Red Velvet Sandwich Cookies a couple of Oscar Nights ago and haven’t stopped thinking about them since! They’re soft and chewy like the Red Velvet Cookies above, but instead of being studded with white chocolate chips, they’re sandwiched with a swipe of cream cheese frosting.Friday Favorites: Red VelvetRed Velvet Cookie Cake

Here I’ve taken that Red Velvet Cookie recipe, baked it in a cake pan and crowned it with cream cheese frosting. It’s a little underdone in the center for maximum cookie cake goodness!Friday Favorites: Red VelvetRed Velvet Cut-Out Cookies

Heck yes I made little red velvet cookie Oscars! I celebrate every Oscar Night with a red velvet baked good. If you’re not a total awards show weirdo though, you can cut these into hearts for Valentine’s Day.Friday Favorites: Red VelvetRed Velvet Cheesecake Thumbprints

Sparkly red velvet cookies with little wells of cheesecake baked in the centers? Sign me up!Friday Favorites: Red VelvetRed Velvet Cheesecake Bars

And speaking of red velvet cheesecake things, I made these Red Velvet Cheesecake Bars for a bake sale a few years ago and they were the first things to go! With a chewy red velvet blondie base and a thick layer of creamy cheesecake, they’re absolutely irresistible.

What’s your favorite way to eat red velvet? Have you made these or any of my other red velvet recipes? Let me know in the comments or on social media!

Friday Favorites: Red Velvet

Friday Favorites: Game Day II

Friday Favorites: Game DayI have made it clear over the years that I am a baseball and Olympics person, and very definitely not a football fan. Oh, I’ve tried. I grew up in Texas and was the co-captain of my high school dance team, so I attended 40+ games from the sidelines, and I never missed a Super Bowl for the first 22 years of my life. I can say with confidence that football is not for me.

That said, I most certainly like football food. In fact, today’s list of Super Bowl Sunday recipes is the second Game Day round-up I’ve compiled in the last five years. There are some of the usual meaty, cheesy, gooey suspects, and a couple of non-traditional options. You know, for keeping things interesting between commercial breaks.

I sincerely hope none of you are gathering for Super Bowl parties next weekend—I would like to be able to see my family sometime this year, okay?—but for all the things that will be different/less good about the big game, let’s not let the food be one of them.Friday Favorites: Game DayPuff Pastry Pigs in Blankets

Pigs in blankets are a classic football food. Here they’re wrapped in puff pastry (rough puff or frozen/thawed puff) and baked until super flaky and golden. Yum.Friday Favorites: Game DayPimento Cheese Tarte Soleil

You could just make Pimento Cheese for game day, but why pass up the chance to stack it with flaky pastry, twist it to sunny perfection and bake until bubbly?Friday Favorites: Game DayCreamy Avocado Salsa

Is it even game day if chips and salsa aren’t on the table? This Creamy Avocado Salsa has all the flavors of classic guacamole, but with a smooth and dreamy texture. Serve it by its lonesome or… Friday Favorites: Game DaySpicy Turkey Tacos

…drizzle it onto these Spicy Turkey Tacos! This thirty minute main is one of my go-to weeknight recipes. It’s easy, saucy and has a good kick to it from a DIY taco seasoning. If heat isn’t your thing, don’t fret; I’ve included a way to make these milder without sacrificing any flavor.Friday Favorites: Game DaySlow-Roasted Pulled Pork

Say goodbye to your favorite slow cooker pulled pork because once you try this, you’ll never want to go back. My Slow-Roasted Pulled Pork does require a little forethought, but it’s actually very simple to make. It’s dry brined ahead of time and then roasted low and slow until super tender. Pile it high on soft rolls with whatever sauce and crunchy vegetables you like, or use it as filling for enchiladas!

Oh, and did I mention there are crispy cracklings strewn throughout? Because there are crispy cracklings strewn throughout. So good, y’all.Friday Favorites: Game DayButternut Squash Chili {Vegan}

If meat’s not your thing, this vegan Butternut Squash Chili is a perfect option for you! It’s hearty and comforting and basically everything wonderful about game day food, just without the animal products.Friday Favorites: Game DaySuper Sprinkle Popcorn

I find that dessert is frequently overlooked on Super Bowl Sunday, and to that I say “not in my house!” Super Sprinkle Popcorn would also be a perfect way to end the big game. Coated in white chocolate and loaded with rainbow sprinkles and homemade Funfetti crumbs, this stuff is cute and delicious as all get out!Friday Favorites: Game DayMonster Carmelitas

I think this goes without saying, but no matter how much heavy food I’ve eaten during the game, I will always—always—have room for a gooey, peanut buttery Monster Carmelita.

Have you made any of these or any of my other game day favorites? What’s your favorite thing to serve on Super Bowl Sunday? Let me know in the comments or on social media!Friday Favorites: Game Day