: Life is hard. God is good. We need each other.
These chewy almond bars are made with ingredients you have on hand, are so easy to make in a pinch, are deceptively delicious and look pretty on a cookie tray!
Do you have that recipe that you fall back on when you’re in a pinch? That recipe that you turn to when your husband reminds you on Saturday night that you’re scheduled to bring treats to church in the morning? The one that you pull out when you’ve forgotten that the bake sale is tomorrow?
Yeah. This is that recipe for me.
This oatmeal breakfast cake is dense and satisfying. Use quick-cooking oats and they’ll dissolve into the batter, use old-fashioned oats for more texture. We like it best with chocolate chips, but it’d be delish with your favorite fruit baked in, too!
I just walked in the door from an impromptu trip to Nashville, TN (I live in Minnesota, remember).
This is the fourth year that my eldest son has participated in a week long service oriented mission team. In past years, they’ve served in Louisiana, South Carolina and Indiana– and this year they are in Nashville.
The group’s focus is threefold:
A week before the trip was scheduled to begin, the lady who has always done all of their meal planning and preparation had to have emergency surgery. Since my college roommate and dear friend is one of the leaders of the trip, we were chatting about it and I mentioned that I couldn’t come for the whole week, but could come down and feed them the first few days, and get meals prepped for the rest of the week.
So that’s what I did.
Easy, healthy chocolate mousse recipe that starts with a can of coconut cream. Fluffy, creamy and decadent. A dollop of cream tops it perfectly!
Would you like to hear a funny story about chocolate mousse?
One Christmas I decided to get fancy with dessert. Not only did I want to wow everyone with a decadent chocolate mousse, but I had visions of piping it into dishes like a pastry chef.
I made the mousse the day before Christmas, and I must say…it was outstanding. Just as rich and decadent, light and fluffy as you might imagine. Because I wanted to pipe it out, I decided to store the mousse directly in the Ziploc bags I’d be using instead of piping bags, which I did not have.
Fast forward to dessert time. Taking my bags out of the fridge, I thought they felt a bit heavy. All of the air that I had painstakingly incorporated into this fluffy dessert was gone and I was left with bags of a dense, fudge-like substance. Not to be deterred, I set about my piping.
I remember going to Chi-Chi’s Mexican restaurant when I was a kid. Every once in a while my parents would treat us to a dessert and we would each get a spoon to dig in to the shared order of fried ice cream. The novelty factor was certainly part of the enjoyment. Ice cream that is fried in hot oil?! But it was the perfect mix of crunchy and creamy, hot and cold, spicy and sweet that was the real homerun.
Most homemade fried ice cream recipes involve rolling individually frozen balls of vanilla ice cream into crushed cornflakes. Some of the more authentic ones actually fry the balls in hot oil. I’ll bet they are delicious, albeit time consuming.
I didn’t set out to develop a recipe for fried ice cream, it was a child of necessity. (Well, not necessity…want). You might call it “the lazy person’s fried ice cream.” I call it
We’re into that time of year for summer camps and family road trips. In fact, this week we’re at the annual Midwest Family Camp we attend in Indiana. I am always looking for ideas for road trip snacks that travel well. Every time we go somewhere, I get online and search, hoping that I’ll see something that will really “wow” my family. I don’t know that we’ve hit “wow”, but we have settled into some standards that have come to be expected.
I will say, that along with these make-ahead snacks, we also each have our go-to convenience store snacks that we pick up along the way. Mine is Cheddar Cheese Combos. The only time I ever eat them is on road trips, I’ve never once purchased them aside from on trips. But when I travel I crave them.
The biggest criteria when it comes to road trip snacks are neatness, sturdiness and no strong smell.
Easy. Frugal. Versatile. Freezer friendly. Delicious. These easy cookies are made with sweetened condensed milk and are the perfect blank slate for customizing.
Most cookie recipes are not difficult, but this one somehow manages to be even simpler somehow. And since no one wants to use half a can of sweetened condensed milk, it makes a pretty large batch of cookies. A batch large enough that I usually end up freezing half the dough for later.
No complaints about that from me.
Cookie dough in the freezer to pull out on a chilly day?
Yes please!
Made at their simplest, they are a buttery vanilla treat. But being the blank slate that they are, the recipe lends itself to customization.