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Brownie Bites
Last week I was fortunate enough to be asked to participate in the studio launch party for Melissa Rieke Photography and Melissa & Beth at their fabulous new facility, RStudio. I provided a smattering of desserts for the event and have been eager to share the recipes with you all. The Whoopie Pies from my last post were one of the many items on the menu, and I’ll have another three or four coming soon. You’ll notice that the photos in these upcoming posts are courtesy…
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Whoopie Pies
I did a lot of baking this past week. I think I made eight different recipes in five days. In fact, right now I’m working on this blog post in an effort to ignore the mess I made in my kitchen. It’s not pretty. I even promised my family that I would host Sunday dinner this week to force myself to get it cleaned up…so far it’s not working. Sigh. Since I had so much baking to do, I had to make sure that some…
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Jalapeno Cheddar Cornbread
Last Sunday, while my family was gathered at my parent’s house for our weekly Sunday dinner, I asked my Dad if he had any tomatoes left in the garden. He said he’d check, and then disappeared for a while. He came back with a handful of tomatoes and a couple of GROCERY SACKS FULL of jalapenos. Not being one to ever turn down garden-fresh produce, I happily took a sack of them home. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with…
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Peach Cobbler
Well, I’m back! I’ve been “offline” for about 3 weeks now. My husband and I took a wonderful, relaxing and much-need vacation to Puerto Morelos, Mexico a couple of weeks ago. And while I missed my girls terribly, we still had a great time. For the first time in nearly six years, we got to enjoy just being a couple again. No dirty diapers, spilled apple juice or Dora the Explorer wake up calls. We ate, drank, laid by the pool, played in the waves…
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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…
