Beyond the Box: Baking from Scratch

This is perfection. It is refreshingly cool on a hot afternoon, bright and cheerful on a rainy day, and you already know how much I love cream cheese. Introducing the Key Lime Cheesecake!  Guaranteed to make your day a little bit better. (I can't actually back that guarantee with anything except maybe a befuddled apology, but I'm pretty confident that this can't make your day worse.) 

Summer is here! And that means camping! And campfires! And campfires mean s'mores!   I'm so excited about honest-to-goodness s'mores!  I know that for just about everything I share here, I gush how much I love it, but it's true.  Why would I share recipes with you that I don't love?  I can't trick you like that, it's just too mean!  And I know you don't need a recipe for s'mores, but my love of s'mores has led me to develop and sample several s'mores spinoffs that can be made sans campfire.  Of course, the original is the best, with the marshmallow toasted over glowing coals of an outdoor fire slowly burning out in the night.  But I crave gooey marshmallow and chocolatey goodness far more often than I have time to find a fire pit, gather wood, start a fire, and let it burn down to prime 'mallow roasting temps.   This is a fancy alternative nearly as delicious as the real thing, and you can serve it to guests without them feeling like they...

Ah, Banana Bread...  It's one of those recipes that everyone seems to have, and yet they're all just a little different.  One thing they seem to have in common is, thankfully, bananas.  (If your banana bread recipe has no bananas, throw it out.  But first show it to me, because I don't believe you.)  This recipe has bananas and is lovely.  Try it!

I'm baaaaaack!  And today I'm bringing something a little more unusual but just as fun and delicious as ever!  In honor of Earth Day today, these cookies are a little bit greener than usual and a little bit healthier than they look.   Healthy cookies?!  Well, I won't go so far as to say that they're actually healthy  but by replacing the butter in the frosting with avocados, they're far healthier than they could have been.  And the green won't stain your teeth, making people wonder if you're a swamp creature in disguise!

Spring is here, and the weather is warming up! I got pretty toasty yesterday working in the yard, so I decided to make something cold to enjoy on a warm afternoon.  I'm really excited to share today's post with you because it's something I've been wanting to do for a long time, and it really goes with my "Beyond the Box" theme, replacing pre-made ingredients with a little DIY.   This is one of those recipes that when I saw the picture on Pinterest, I said, "Oh, that looks awesome!" but when I clicked through to actually read the recipe I thought, "Seriously? I can do better."

Oh gosh, it's been almost two weeks since I last posted! My deepest apologies!  Spring has sprung and things have been busy around here, cleaning out flower beds, trimming back some plants and planting others.  So that's my excuse for being absent. That, and I got sucked into The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt  on Netflix, which I thought was hilariously fantastic.  I've still been in the kitchen whipping up some tasty treats, though, and thinking what to make next to share with you. Today's recipe was a test (that is, I hadn't made it before trying it here to share with all of you), but let me tell you, it was also a wild success.  One of my friends had a request for me to find and try a cheesecake recipe that she could eat.  She has some dietary restrictions and needed a gluten-free cheesecake.  And, even keeping in mind my mini gluten rant from the french bread recipe  a couple weeks ago, most cheesecake is already mostly gluten-free:  j...

Happy Pi Day, everyone!  For those unaware, today is Pi Day (March 14, or 3.14), and this year is a very special Pi day, as we get two more digits:  3.1415.  In honor of Pi Day and at the risk of being slightly cliche, we are making Blueberry Hand Pies.  Yum!  And, like the number pi going on and on and on, this recipe is a doozy!