Best Ever Baked Italian Meatballs We’re mad for meatballs in my family. Whether the meatballs are coated in butter chicken sauce, honey garlic sauce, grape jelly and bbq sauce, or spaghetti sauce, they disappear from the dinner table almost instantly. Somehow I hadn’t yet shared my recipe for classic Italian baked meatballs — better late than never, I suppose! As the name suggests, Italian meatballs are seasoned with Italian seasoning (usually a mixture of dried herbs like basil, thyme, oregano, and rosemary) as well as fresh garlic and onion....

Chocolate Chip S’mores Cookie Bars This s’mores chocolate chip cookie bars recipe is actually a spinoff from a recipe in my first cookbook, Peanut Butter Comfort, on pages 79-81. It’s an incredibly easy recipe, takes advantage of some baking shortcuts, and the way I count things, only has four key ingredients. This s’mores cookie bar recipe is as easy as unwrapping a few pre-made convenience items, pressing them into a pan, and baking....

comment icon 113 more comments The original recipe is from these Spicy Pork Bowls on Bon Appetit, and I can’t remember who shared it first on our team Slack #potluck channel, but it got passed around and loved and eventually printed and grease-stained, and now just the pork itself has become a staple in my kitchen. Keeping this post quick today because what’s there to show you, really? You shake up 5 ingredients in a jar....

Don’t miss my other Air Fryer recipes, like Air fryer chicken wings, Air Fryer Tofu and Air Fryer Baked Potato. Let’s be honest, my husband gets just as excited as my kids do when I make these delicious Air Fryer Chicken Nuggets. The air fryer allows the breading to get that crispy coating we all love and they only take a few minutes to cook. Let me teach you how to use an air fryer and you’ll be hooked!...

Every month I put together a post detailing the income and traffic from the previous month. In these reports I also include tips about the things that Lindsay and I are learning about growing a food blog. Our hope with these reports is that you can learn something new and apply it to your own blog. We started this journey back in August 2011. None of this happened overnight. Growing a blog to the point of creating a decent income is a lot of work....

Cheesy Jalapeño Bread Recipe Say hello to mindlessly easy comfort food that’s guaranteed to be a hit. It’s ready in less than 30 minutes with extremely minimal effort on your part. The best kind of recipe. Set the bread out at a party, event, game day celebration, or as a weeknight side for your family and you’ll look like a superstar. It’s super cheesy from both mozzarella and cream cheese, there’s bacon which makes everything better, a touch of garlic to add flavor, and sliced jalapeño peppers for some slight heat....

You may have seen this recipe coming. I mean, come on. Chocolate and peanut butter. I had to. The vanilla glazed donuts, i.e. Krispy Kreme donuts And the cinnamon bun with cream cheese frosting donuts, i.e. Cinnabons in donut form, were lovely but. The combination of chocolate and peanut butter will always hold a special place in my heart. And these have been holding a special place in my heart and in my stomach the past few days....

comment icon 43 more comments And by like, I mean love. And by love, I mean become obsessed with to the point where I’ve now eaten a half a loaf of sourdough as the “side” to this recipe. This is a situation where we have some really good things (feta, garlic, shrimp, tomato sauce) in a hot bubbling pan together, and we could totally stop there. You ‘re not into bread?...

The Best Basic Crepe Recipe Classic crepes have such an elegant vibe to them — at least I think so! They’re little bundles of French indulgence made right from the comfort of your own home. Although this recipe uses basic ingredients, the homemade crepes are buttery, thin, delicate, with ever-so crisp edges, and have a tiny touch of sweetness to them. Crepes can be filled with just about anything under the sun, ranging from chocolate and peanut butter to fruity jams or fresh fruit with a dusting of confectioners’ sugar....

These twice baked sweet potatoes have the creamy, sweet, and perfectly spiced flavor of sweet potato casserole — minus the huge quantity of food! They’re a great weeknight side dish, or make them for Sunday family dinner. Or, feel free to serve them with your holiday turkey or ham for your fancier and more formal holiday celebrations at Thanksgiving or Christmas. I like that it’s served in the sweet potato skins so it feels like everyone “gets their own” portion....

comment icon 271 more comments Chocolate cake on the loooooose! This weekend I was gifted with a super-fun birthday surprise: Bjork whisked me away to Austin for a weekend of TACOS! And other things. But honestly, mostly tacos. We packed in about twenty minutes – and by packed, I mean we ripped into my box of summer clothes that was still sealed up tight in the basement, washed, unwashed, wrinkled, ill-fitting, out-of-date, you know how it is, and tossed everything into a bag....

Moist Buttermilk Banana Bread Are there enough B’s in that title for you? I can think of more. Brown sugar, beautiful, bouncy, beyond good. Anytime you take the tenderizing and fluffing effects of buttermilk, combined with the richness, nuttiness, and depth of browned butter, add sweet ripe bananas, cinnamon, vanilla, and brown sugar, the results won’t be bad. In fact, you’ll be happy when your bananas start to turn brown! Although I would not change a thing about my go-to Banana Bread with Vanilla Browned Butter Glaze, I had some leftover buttermilk after making some Carrot Cake Loaves and it had bread-making written all over it....

comment icon 50 more comments Okay, if you are a resident Twin Citizen and you’ve wandered down bustling Grand Avenue in St. Paul and found yourself drawn in by those bright swoopy pinky-red neon letters that say “Cafe Latte,” then you surely have met and fallen deeply, madly, wholly in love with their turtle cake. It is a thing of glory. That is the story here. An intensely rich chocolatey cake, cascading with caramel, and jeweled with huge pecans....

Mine? Busy. But not too busy for a sentimental trip down memory lane. Grab the Kleenex box. Time for Day 28 of the Challenge – Something/Someone That I Miss Something/Someone That I Miss I miss my Grandma. She has been gone about 10 years now. I will try to paint a picture with words of this woman for you since I have no digital photographs of her. She was at her peak, about 5’0′ tall and by the time she was 90 when she died, probably about 4’8″....

These chocolate chip banana oatmeal cookies are my holy grail of desserts rolled in one. They have the flavor of banana bread, the chewy texture of oatmeal cookies, and the soft and gooey factor of chocolate chip cookies. They’re soft, chewy, moist, and not at all cakey, which can be a problem when baking with bananas. Cookies that taste like little banana cakes instead of cookies are not my idea of cookies, and thankfully these are all cookie, zero cake....

We met at our usual hangout. We were majorly overdue for a chitchat session. It had been far too long since our last meetup. Two months! We caught up on each others’ lives and Marla’s been quite the busy lady. She went to FoodBuzz and she’s a finalist in the Alexia French Fry competition. Please vote for her here. She went to Colorado, was just presenting at en event in L....

It’s zucchini season and if you make one dessert with zucchini this year, this is the one. Ironically, if you couldn’t see the green flecks, you’d hardly even know zucchini was included. Chocolate chips are woven throughout the cake and chocolate ganache is poured over the top. What your tastebuds tell you that you’re eating is super soft yellow bakery cake with chocolate galore. The ganache is so easy to make and comes together in about 1 minute in the microwave....

Easy, Soft Peanut Butter Cookies I am no stranger to peanut butter and peanut butter cookies. I even wrote an entire cookbook, Peanut Butter Comfort, dedicated to exclusively to peanut butter recipes! I have a ton of different types of peanut butter cookies on my site. However, I’ve never made peanut butter cookies with pudding mix. It really helps keep the cookies so soft and chewy. It gives them a Softbatch-style texture....

Easy Irish Cupcakes Recipe When it comes to impressive St. Patrick’s Day desserts, look no further than these Guinness cupcakes with Baileys frosting! Despite their looks, they’re not too sweet. However, they are definitely rich! The chocolate cupcake batter is spiked with Guinness beer. After baking and cooling, the cupcakes are spiked with chocolate ganache that has a hint of Jameson Irish whiskey in it. Finally, the cupcakes are frosted with a silky smooth buttercream that will be right up your alley if you like Baileys since there’s a bit of Baileys in the frosting....

Case in point the Curried Ginger & Raisin lentils were made with all on-hand ingredients And so were the Microwave Blueberry Banana Oat Cakes And so were the Microwave Chocolate Peanut Butter & Oat Snack Bars Speaking of Chocolate, when I was going through my cupboards I realized I have quite a stash. And this is just a fraction of it. I did do a post about what my on-hand cupboard and pantry staple items are, and yes, chocolate is clearly a key item....