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Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes & A Bridal Shower
Last weekend my sisters and I hosted a bridal shower for my soon-to-be sister-in-law, Abbey. Since it was a late afternoon, Sunday shower with impending bad weather, we kept the menu light and desserts simple. The theme was “From Miss to Mrs” and it turned out to be an adorable celebration!
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Cream Puffs (Pâte à Choux)
This is one of those recipes that I stumbled upon and automatically thought would be incredibly difficult and way out of my realm. But, once I really took time to read the recipe I found it was really very simple. Choux pastry is used to make cream puffs, eclairs and profiteroles. It’s a very light, dry pastry and usually offset by some sort of decadent cream-type filling. I used the traditional pastry cream to fill these and topped them with a liberal dollop of dark…
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Chocolate Buttercream Cake
I love chocolate cake. Good chocolate cake might be my very favorite thing, ever. So when I saw this recipe, I knew I had to try it. The first thing I noticed was that there were a LOT of ingredients, far more than any chocolate cake recipe I’ve ever tried before. I would strongly suggest pre-measuring your ingredients so they’ll be ready to add as you go along, and take the time to buy or cut the parchment circles for your cake pans. You’ll thank…
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Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies
I have to say that I had very low expectations for this recipe. It just didn’t really appeal to me at all for some reason. It wasn’t until my brother requested these for this birthday dessert that I finally broke down and made them. They are actually quite delicious. The chocolate chip cookie is firm but soft, and even the Oreo cookie softens up a little bit in the middle of the cookie. I will now humbly admit that I should’ve tried these years ago.…
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Cinnamon Swirl Bread
There are few things more rewarding in the kitchen than a successfully made bread recipe. Whether it’s your favorite pizza dough, cinnamon rolls, a buttery dinner roll or just a loaf of sandwich bread, there’s something about fresh bread that makes you feel like a rock star in the kitchen. I don’t know how many times I’ve made bread (it’s a lot) but even so, every time the yeast starts to do its thing, I do a little happy dance. The thing about bread, though,…
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Spicy Black Bean Veggie Burgers
I’m pretty sure I’m driving everyone in my life crazy right now. I’ve been on a meatless, vegetarian diet-kick for several weeks. I have my reasons, and I really don’t know where this new lifestyle will lead me. I’m not even sure if it is a lifestyle yet. Maybe it’s just a phase.
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Out and About: Road Trip to Omaha
This past week was a fun one for my little family. We opted for a stay-cation this year, and spent the week pretty close to home. We took our girls to Worlds of Fun, our local amusement park one day, spent a day lounging around and doing not much of anything, and then spent a couple of days road-tripping it. Destination: Omaha. Omaha is just about a 3-hour drive from our home near Kansas City, so it really made an ideal, quick road trip. Since…
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Black & White Monster Cookies
So, tonight we all got home really late because our lives are insane right now. I was all set to pull the “rotisserie chicken and vegetables” thing for dinner when my pitifully hayfevered-up seven year old begged me for mashed potatoes and gravy to eat with her chicken. She sounds so itchy and miserable that I couldn’t possibly say no to her, so there I was at 730pm whipping up a batch of mashed potatoes, all in the name of motherhood guilt or something. Yes,…
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Easy Hot Fudge Sauce
A lot of memories from my childhood are centered around food. I think that’s normal for a lot of people (right?) but I’d go so far as to say that 90% of my memories contain food somehow. Perhaps that’s because I’m the oldest of five kids, so mealtimes were always massive undertakings, but nonetheless, food conjures up a lot of nostalgia. For instance, my parents used to load all five kids into the minivan once a month for a trip to the grocery store. We’d…
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Peanut Butter Sheet Cake
When I worked at my previous job, I would occasionally ‘treat’ myself to a trip to a little bakery down the road from my office. They have a MAGNIFICENT, seasonal cranberry chicken salad on cranberry nut bread. Oh my goodness, it is the best thing ever, in fact it’s so good that I must find a recipe and replicate it. Soon. And then I’ll post it. But, even better, they also have a wonderful assortment of desserts to choose from. My favorite is a peanut…
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Caramel Pecan Apple Pie
So, you really can’t go wrong with apple pie. Am I right? Even bad apple pie is usually pretty tasty. Or maybe I’ve never had bad apple pie? Aaannnd, now that I say that, I’m envisioning really bad apple pie, so I guess I could theoretically imagine an apple pie so bad that it might not be worth the calories. But this one? For Pete’s sake, it’s covered in a crumb topping. And then. THEN. That crumb topping? It’s topped with toasted pecans and caramel…
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Slow Cooker Apple-Cinnamon Steel-Cut Oatmeal
If there’s one meal of the day that I’m really bad at, it’s breakfast. For one, I’m not a morning person at all. I like to sip on my coffee for at least an hour before I eat breakfast, but on weekday mornings, that’s just not an option. The first-grader has to eat breakfast just 20 minutes after she rolls out of bed, and she never, ever wants anything easy – she always wants pancakes, waffles, french toast…cereal is always frowned upon, as are toast,…
