Recipes

Appetizers | Breads & Muffins | Breakfast & Brunch | Desserts | Drinks
Main Dishes | Salads | Sauces & Condiments | Side Dishes | Snacks | Soups

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Appetizers

Bacon Wrapped Sweet & Sour Meatballs
I unabashedly still love bacon, especially when it’s paired with something sweet. The combination of the bacon with the pineapple-based sweet and sour sauce is what had me popping several of these little meatballs right before dinner the other day.

Holiday Cheese Log with Cranberries & Pecans
Feta, cream cheese, Swiss cheese and honey, rolled in dried cranberries and pecans. It’s a combo that’s super tangy and a little bit sweet. And it made me abandon my prior judgment against cheese logs!

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Breads & Muffins

Banana Berry Muffins
As someone who tends to prefer muffins that are nearly like cupcakes I was not expecting to enjoy these “healthier” muffins as much as I did. Between the bananas, berries and orange juice they’re loaded with flavor.

Cornbread Muffins
Everyone likes their cornbread a little bit different. For me, the best kind is on the sweet side and definitely not dry. This recipe, from a box of corn meal, is just that. It comes together so fast that I actually made a second batch while the first was in the oven.

Cranberry Nut Bread
This is a cake-like quick bread, bursting with tart cranberries. At least the way I made it. I assumed the recipe used the entire bag of cranberries, whole. Turns out the Ocean Spray folks actually suggest you use less than the entire bag of berries and to chop them. Oh well!

Honey Oatmeal Bread
The whole wheat flour and oats make the bread hearty, with a texture that is actually lighter than I’d expected. The gentle sweetness from the honey gives the bread great flavor on its own, but I’ve been topping it with a little honey cinnamon butter anyway.

White Whole Wheat Walnut Bread
If you love to bake bread, have at this one – you’ll absolutely love the nutty flavor and texture. It’s a perfect accompaniment for a cheese plate or with jam or some honey butter. It’s easy enough for bread-baking novices too!

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Breakfast & Brunch

Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes
Is there anything better than sleeping in on a Saturday morning and waking up to a stack of fluffy, buttermilk pancakes, fresh off of the griddle, dripping with maple syrup and butter? We all owe a huge debt of gratitude to whomever invented cake for breakfast.

Crab, Scallion & Tomato Quiche
This Crab, Scallion & Tomato Quiche ranks among the top three recipes I’ve tried on this blog. It features a generous amount of lump crab meat and the flavor is further enhanced by the Old Bay-seasoned custard.

Sausage Breakfast Casserole
The hot sausage and pepper jack cheese give the casserole a little kick of heat without being overly spicy. With the custard soaked into cubes of country bread the dish is very much like a savory bread pudding, or strata.

Sour Cream Pecan Coffee Cake
If I didn’t already know that today’s Sour Cream Pecan Coffee Cake recipe came from a box of dark brown sugar I probably could have guessed it. It has very pronounced brown sugar flavor and, with the help of the sour cream in the mix, the texture is melt-in-your mouth.

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Desserts

Baileys Irish Cream Ice Cream
A rich, vanilla custard base with a shot of Baileys for good measure. Since the Baileys goes in after the cooking process there is alcohol, so this isn’t really one for the kids. But it’s just as well, because that means more for you!

Chewy Jumbo Chocolate Chip Cookies
It wasn’t without trepidation that I decided to try out the Chewy Jumbo Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from inside the Land O Lakes Butter box. I thought they were terrific – soft, chewy, buttery with lightly crisp edges.

Chocolate Chip Rugelach
This recipe uses a prepared chocolate filling rather than nuts, jam or other traditional fillings – but the end result was delightful nonetheless. In lieu of glaze, as some rugelach recipes call for, the chocolate chips added a nice amount of sweetness to the dough.

Chocolate Fudge Layer Cake
This cake is incredibly moist and chocolate-forward, if that’s a real term. It’s actually Ghirardelli’s Grand Fudge Cake and Chocolate Buttercream Frosting recipes, along with a layer of raspberry preserves for the filling.

Classic Apple Pie
Pillsbury calls this recipe the “Perfect Apple Pie”. I’ll say this, it was absolutely everything I look for and enjoy in an apple pie: the apples were sweet and tart, just enough sugar and spice and a flaky pie crust.

Classic Pecan Pie
It takes all of five minutes to combine the filling ingredients, pour them into a pie shell and pop the pie in the oven. After that, you get an hour of olfactory enjoyment as the pecans and sugar slowly but surely caramelize away.

Classic Pumpkin Pie with Maple Cream
For me, it’s just not Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie. I’d say that Libby’s pumpkin pie is my favorite recipe out there – but there’s a distinct possibility that it might be the only pumpkin pie I’ve ever eaten.

Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies
These days we food-types like to jazz up our chocolate chip cookes with bacon, Jacques Torres disks and sea salt. Those are tasty variations, but I don’t know anyone who would dare pass up a big plate of the good ol’ Toll House original. It’s a true American icon.

Coffee Fudge Brownies
If only I’d had this brownie recipe back when I was in college. Staying up late to finish a paper or cram for an exam would have been – quite literally – a piece of cake. Make no mistake: these Coffee Fudge Brownies pack a jolt!

Cookies and Cream Cheesecake
It’s pretty straightforward – your typical tangy cheesecake, studded with Oreo cookies. My toddler thought it was ice cream. And she’s right, it’s very much like eating Oreo ice cream. Especially when you enjoy it cold, right out of the fridge.

Gingerbread Biscotti with Apricots
Most of the biscotti I’ve had in the past have been tasty but not especially noteworthy on their own. But these spices within these Gingerbread Biscotti, along with the fresh ginger and dried apricots mixed in, have wonderful flavor all on their own.

Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Chunk Cookies
I find oatmeal cookies with dried cranberries and white chocolate chunks especially irresistible. This recipe makes a good number of cookies which makes it possible to save a few to have around the house and still have enough left over to freeze and share later.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Oatmeal raisin cookies really deserve more of the spotlight. What’s not to love? The oatmeal gives them that great nutty flavor and texture and the raisins appear at just the right time to provide a spark of chewy sweetness.

Peanut Butter Bars
With peanut butter in both the crust and the filling – along with a pretty impressive amount of sugar – these bars are for serious peanut butter lovers. As you might imagine they’re incredibly rich and decadent with a nice crumbly texture. And sweet.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookie & Gelato Sliders
Peanut butter oatmeal cookies sandwiched slider-style with rich, decadent chocolate gelato. As you can see by the glistening gelato in the photos, this is a dessert you’ll want to consume promptly. I’m sure it won’t be a problem.

Pecan Praline Cookies
No eggs, no leavening agents – these cookies owe their rich flavor and light texture largely to good ol’ butter and brown sugar, much like a traditional New Orleans praline.

Pumpkin Spice Cake
The cake is beyond moist and the pumpkin and spice flavors are just right. You can see in the photos that the cream cheese frosting has a bit of an orangish hue as well – that’s because there’s pumpkin mixed in there as well.

Roll-Out Sugar Cookies
Until I sat down to decorate these sugar cookies last weekend I’d forgotten how relaxing and enjoyable punching shapes out of dough and creating little royal icing designs can be. True to their name, these cookies are indeed sugary. Buttery too. Works for me!

The Best Fudge Brownies Ever
The folks at King Arthur Flour call these their “Best Fudge Brownies Ever”. Pretty big talk, don’t you think? As one who enjoys a good brownie I was definitely game to bake up a batch and see for myself. Did they live up to all the hype?

Toffee
Making toffee is incredibly easy. You just heat a few basic ingredients – butter and sugar, for the most part – to a hard boil, spread it out on a pan, wait for it to cool and harden and break it up into rich, decadent little pieces.

Toffee Almond Shortbread
Shortbread is rich and sweet enough on its own, and this one with the toffee bits was no exception. But the chocolate makes it just a little bit more special and I think it looks especially nice with the star shapes.

Valentine Heart Cookies
Conversation heart-inspired cookies, with one subtle little twist – these are actually made with animal cracker dough. The difference? They’ve got a lot more crunch to them as well as a hint of spice from dashes of nutmeg and mace.

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Drinks

Margaritas
Everyone has their preference when it comes to the refreshing cocktail: frozen or on the rocks. I tried a margarita recipe I found on a bottle of Triple Sec both frozen and on the rocks (yes, I am willing to sample multiple drinks for your benefit) and I determined my true margarita preference: sweet.
¡Salud!

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Main Dishes

Broccoli Cheese Pasta Casserole
I’d describe this casserole as “mac & cheese with broccoli”. Steamed broccoli is tossed with spiral-y fusilli pasta in a creamy cheddar cheese sauce, topped with Parmesan and baked to bubbly deliciousness.

Carnitas Soft Tacos
This carnitas recipe calls for braising pork with onions, garlic and green chiles in chicken broth. While you give up the crispy strands that slow-cooking in lard yields, you still get very moist, flavorful chunks of pork that taste wonderful in a soft taco.

Chili
Everyone in my house thoroughly enjoyed this chili. There was a good amount of heat without it being overly spicy (no lip burning here), a hint of sweetness from the ketchup and – best of all – it came together in under an hour.

Crispy Fried Shrimp
Start to finish, it took me less than 30 minutes (including peeling!) to make a pound of these shrimp. They’re incredibly simple – you just bread them in panko and drop them in hot oil for about a minute. What a fabulous crunch!

Fettucine Carbonara
The first time I made this I didn’t know the heat from the just-boiled noodles actually cooks the eggs in the sauce. They don’t just stay raw. It’s such a fabulously creamy and savory sauce and is the perfect complement for the salty pancetta.

Garlic-Lime Cornish Game Hens
When I found a recipe for what sounded like a zesty, flavorful garlic-lime chicken marinade on the side of a garlic powder bottle, I immediately nixed the boneless, skinless chicken breasts it called for in favor of Cornish Game hens.

Grilled Steak Tabbouleh Salad
Aside from the overnight marinade it was a relatively quick, flavorful dish to put together. I was enticed by the fact that the steak would be set atop fresh and zesty tabbouleh, rather than greens, as it seemed a bit more substantial than some other salads.

Herb-Crusted Roast Chicken
Ina Garten (aka, the Barefoot Contessa) roasts a chicken every Friday night for her husband Jeffrey when he makes the long drive out to their home in the Hamptons. How homey and inviting that sounds!

Red Beans and Rice
We had a little taste of Mardi Gras at our house as I tried out this recipe from a package of dried beans. Hearty and flavorful, with a good amount of heat from the Andouille sausage, it might be more “inspired by” the traditional recipe rather than strictly authentic.

Rosemary Roasted Turkey
It may be the symbol of Thanksgiving, but the pursuit of a juicy roasted turkey is also the bane of many a cook’s existence. This recipe, from the outside of an organic turkey package, is for a straightforward herb-roasted bird and is quite tasty.

Shrimp with Orzo
I’ve found that few dishes transport, freeze or reheat as well as baked pasta. This recipe comes from inside the wrapper of a can of crushed tomatoes. I couldn’t get enough of that salty, creamy feta on top! It worked so well with the shrimp, spinach and tomatoes.

Spinach-Bacon Macaroni & Cheese
Rich, golden spinach-bacon macaroni and cheese is kind of like having a little angel and a little devil on each shoulder. It’s decadent for sure, but the spinach relieves just a touch of the guilt. This was a rather simple recipe, but the flavors were anything but basic.

Spinach-Pesto Lasagna
This recipe uses no-boil noodles so it was actually easy to prepare on a weeknight. The pesto is prominent throughout the lasagna layers and full of flavor, plus there’s a fair amount of spinach in there so you can feel good about getting your veggies in.

Teriyaki Burgers
Teriyaki burgers. Sweet onions. Spicy mayo. Hawaiian rolls. Pineapple. Is your mouth watering yet? This is my kind of burger: medium-rare, grass-fed, eighty-five percent lean beef bathed in homemade teriyaki marinade.

Three-Layer Lasagna
A classic recipe from Barilla, with layers of sweet Italian sausage, and ricotta, mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. It’s a somewhat cheesier version than what I grew up with, but I like it. A dish that’s as enjoyable to make as it is to eat – it freezes well too!

Whole Grain Spaghetti with Cherry Tomatoes and Pecorino Romano
Each flavor in this dish complemented the others so well, from the gentle sweetness of the onions and tomatoes to the nuttiness of the pasta to the salty bite of the hard cheese. It’s a recipe for onion lovers and haters alike.

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Salads

Caesar Salad with Sugar Snap Peas
It had never before occurred to me to add snap peas – or, really, any vegetable – to a Caesar salad. But it was a fantastic addition. I should have known that something sweet and crunchy would be a terrific complement to something garlicky like a Caesar dressing.

Chilled Dill Carrot Salad
The salad is incredibly simple – the carrots are sliced, blanched, tossed in a dill-red wine vinaigrette and chilled to blend the flavors. Even if you can’t find the multicolor carrots in your area this still would make a great healthy side dish with the conventional variety.

Spinach Pear Salad
Baby spinach leaves, along with rosemary and parsley, are tossed in a red wine vinaigrette and topped with fresh sliced pears, toasted pecans and crumbled blue cheese. The inclusion of the herbs is a bit unexpected and works really well here.

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Sauces & Condiments

Basil Pesto
Even though I had to shell out the big bucks (not really, like five) for a big pack of organic basil it was all worth it to blend up my own fresh pesto. It’s so versatile, adding intense herby, garlicky flavor to everything from panini to pasta.

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Side Dishes

Bacon, Sour Cream & Chive Mashed Potatoes
Swanson’s calls these potatoes their “Ultimate Mashed Potatoes” and it’s no overstatement. They incorporate cream, sour cream and butter, along with crumbled bacon and chopped fresh chives. They’re over-the-top amazing!

Cranberry Sauce
Cranberries, sugar and water – that’s all you need to make traditional cranberry sauce. Yet while it may be the simplest dish on your Thanksgiving table, it’s definitely no wallflower. Just look at that gorgeous color!

Green Bean Casserole
It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving at my house without Green Bean Casserole. To be fair, is this the best vegetable side dish I’ve ever had? No, not really. But it’s loaded with tradition and nostalgia – and on Thanksgiving, that counts for a whole lot.

Green Beans with Feta and Dill
With the salty bite of the fresh feta on top, this was a dish that not only presented well on a serving plate but it had such great flavor. The refrigerated leftovers, having had the chance to absorb all of the flavors for hours, were even better.

Vanilla Glazed Baby Carrots
If the carrots of my childhood had been prepared with a sweet vanilla glaze like these ones, you can be sure I would have eaten them much more willingly than I did! Even with the glaze, the natural sweetness of the carrots still shines through.

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Snacks

Cocoa Rice Krispies Football Treats
This concoction of marshmallows, peanut butter and rice cereal is the absolute stickiest I have ever encountered in my life. Oh but they taste really good, you should definitely make them. Just get ready for sticky.

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Soups

Creamy Broccoli Soup
Carrots and celery add to the fresh flavor. There’s no heavy cream involved here, but there is a bit of butter. Embrace it – the gentle buttery-ness is what really makes the soup especially savory and appealing.

Matzo Ball Soup
I have to confess, I was initially a bit intimidated by matzo balls. You hear all the horror stories of really bad ones – thick, dense, spongy. I am incredibly proud to report that I actually made tasty matzo balls that float!

Quick Fiesta Chicken Soup
Here’s an incredibly quick, easy and tasty recipe that comes from a carton of chicken broth. I suppose it’s called “Fiesta” as it’s similar to a Mexican chicken tortilla soup, with the zing of lime juice in the broth along with the flavors of jalapeño, cilantro and avocado.

Split Pea Soup with Ham
You go in for the first spoonful and your tastebuds are surprised to be hit with rich, earthy, smoky flavors with a hint of sweetness – the result of having been simmered with smoked ham hocks for upwards of four hours.

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