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Soft Pretzels
I am in love with these. I want to marry them and buy a house on the beach with them, and grow old with them. They are soft, buttery, salty, chewy…completely conducive to and encouraging of addictive behaviors. Don’t even try to be well-behaved and take just “one bite” of these. I made the mistake of delivering these to some low-carb dieters and let’s just say they weren’t very happy with me. But, I make no apologies for these. They are quite possibly my favorite recipe…
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Mousse Caboose
My five year old is responsible for the name of this dessert. For some reason, she wouldn’t eat whipped cream OR pudding until about three months ago. (I know what you’re thinking…but yes, she IS my child.) The first time I made this for my family, I was careful to call it chocolate and vanilla mousse, because heaven forbid she believed it to be anything otherwise. She thought “mousse” was a funny name, so she quickly found a rhyming word and it became, forever, Mousse Caboose. When…
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Tropical Kahlua & Cream
It’s hot outside. And not just summer-in-the-Midwest-is-always-hot-and-humid-so-deal-with-it-hot, it’s REALLY hot. It’s so hot that just walking outside will take your breath away, getting in a car with leather seats will literally burn your legs, and swimming pool water feels like bath water. Blech. Needless to say, I have no desire to turn my oven on lately. In fact, we don’t want to do much of anything lately. I feel bad for those folks who have to work outside in this – it seems like cruel and unusual punishment. Since I…
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Red Velvet Cheesecake Cupcakes
Last weekend, a friend of mine asked me to make cupcakes for her son’s 2nd birthday party. The party was a nautical theme, and she did a fantastic job with her dessert table! It was the perfect theme for a hot summer day, and what two-year-old wouldn’t want to dive into all of this yumminess? I loved her use of bold colors and patterns paired with the whimsical decorations that pulled it all together. Her kids are going to have such fun memories of their…
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Sugar Cookie Bars
****I’m on Facebook! Click {here} to follow along, and Welcome!**** Last weekend I had big plans to make sugar cookies for a friend of mine, but I ran out of time. I made the dough but knew if I baked them that I wouldn’t have time to decorate them. Instead, I wrapped up the dough and froze it for future use. Well, turns out I couldn’t stand having cookie dough in my freezer. I wanted to use it. So I did. So there. There’s a…
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Caramel Cupcakes
Can I just tell you how hard it is to find a recipe for caramel cake? Not yellow cake with caramel frosting, a CARAMEL flavored CAKE? It’s difficult. Very, very difficult. So difficult that I spent 90 minutes sitting on my heiney saying mean things to my laptop when I couldn’t find what I wanted…90 minutes that should’ve been spent baking because my girls were in bed asleep and the house was quiet. Grrrr. The wasted 90 minutes eventually led to a midnight trip to the…
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Soft Breadsticks
Geez, I really seem to be all about the breads lately, don’t I? I wasn’t really planning to post these because they aren’t exactly the prettiest food I’ve ever made, but after I tried them I knew I couldn’t keep the recipe to myself. In fact, my husband requested that I make them two days in a row. Yep, that’s right. And I didn’t argue because I was secretly lamenting that he and the girls ate them all and didn’t leave any leftovers for me.…
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Funfetti Scotcharoos
I honestly can’t remember the first time I had scotcharoos. I know it was at least a decade ago. My mother-in-law sent them home with my husband and I’m pretty sure I ate the entire box of them before my husband even realized what was going on. They’re yumzos. Scotcharoos seem to be a pretty common Midwestern potluck/picnic/party food. I’ve had them prepared a gazillion different ways, cut into different shapes, sizes, some with too much chocolate, some with not enough, etc. etc. Of course, everyone’s…
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Ham & Cheese Pretzel Bites
I think I have a new favorite party food. Seriously, these are amazing. As usual, my husband was my taste-tester, and his review was, “Um, yeah – I could eat like, 500 of those.” And I have to agree. If I wasn’t saving them to serve at my brother’s graduation party, we might have polished off the whole tray. I just made them again to serve at our family 4th of July bash, and they went VERY quickly. They taste like the best soft-pretzel you’ve ever…
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Sandwich Rolls
I know I just posted hamburger buns a few weeks ago, but I had to post these too. These are completely different than the hamburger buns. They’re slightly sweet and not as dense, and would even make a really good dinner roll. The overwhelming consensus when I served these was that the rolls were the star of the meal. My five year old ate one plain, and my two year old kept asking for more. I made BBQ beef sandwiches, and when I asked my husband if…
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Zucchini Walnut Bread
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned our vegetable garden here before – we’ve lived in our house for just over three years now, and we had zero luck with our garden until this year. We decided, finally, to try raised beds and we’ve had some fantastic results this time around! I think raising the beds provides better drainage, and allowed us to start our beds earlier because the ground wasn’t as wet. We have six raised beds right now, but I have big plans to double…
