I love cinnamon rolls but hate working with yeast. When I saw Ina Garten make these I was struck at what an easy concept it was. I altered her recipe a little for what worked for me. These are fantastic and make your house smell wonderful.

ingredients:
1 stick of butter, room temperature
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup pecans, chopped (optional)
1 package (17.3 ounces,/2 sheets) frozen puff pastry, defrosted

filling ingredients:
2 tablespoons buter, melted and cooled
2/3 cup brown sugar
3 teaspoons cinnamon
1 cup raisins (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place a standard muffin tin on a sheet pan lined with parchment or a silpat. This is in case the rolls bubble over. No one wants a messy oven. Blech.

In the bowl of a electric mixer, combine the butter and 1/2 cup brown sugar. Place one tablespoon of the mixture into each of the muffin cups. Distribute the mixture evenly amongst the 12 cups. Add the pecans if you plan to use them. (My Kid is allergic so I left them out).

Lightly flour a cutting board. Unfold one of the puff pastry stheets, carefully. Brush the whole sheets with HALF of the melted butter. Sprinkle with 1/3 (that’s half) of your brown sugar filling, then sprinkle 1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon (that’s also half, in case you are paying attention). You can add the half cup of raisins, I actually like these rolls just fine without them, but I’m sure that’s just me.

Starting with the side closest to you, roll the pastry up – I like to make sure it’s tight but not extremely tight. You just don’t want it to come loose. Think jelly roll.

Trim the ends and then cut the roll into 6 pieces. Place each roll spiral side up, in a muffin cup. Smoosh it down into the butter mixture.

Repeat with your second sheet of pastry and leftover ingredients.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, be careful not to burn your beautiful puff pastry. Cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then quickly turn it out onto a silpat or a wire rack. The last thing you need is for these to stick in your pan!

The are SO GOOD warm, and so much easier than making a yeast dough. They’d be perfect for a Sunday brunch.

This is an easy recipe where you just mix it all together…I promise you, you will LOVE these. They don’t taste sweet-potatoey at all, more like a lovely, moist, little spice cake. They came to me in a dream. Seriously. I wondered, if pumpkin cupcakes worked, these wouldn’t be that far off. They turned out better than the pumpkin ones, then again…the marshmallow topper is KEY.

ingredients:
1-1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter melted, cooled
2 large eggs – beaten
1 cup roasted sweet potatoes
1 teaspoon maple syrup
3 TB orange juice

If you haven’t already done so – roast two sweet potatoes (prick them with a fork) on a baking sheet in a 350 degree oven for one hour. When they come out the skin will peel off easily and they can be mashed – you don’t even need a food processor. Set aside 1 cup for later.

Preheat the oven to 350. Prep your cupcake pan with liners and set aside. In a medium sized bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, white sugar, butter and add the eggs. Add the dry ingredients and whisk until smooth. Stir in the sweet potatoes, syrup and orange juice.

Divide batter evenly among the cups, it should fill 12 easily about 2/3 full. Bake for approx 20-25 mins depending on your oven. Let cool on a wire rack.

Now for the topping so it’s just like REAL sweet potatoes! No involved frosting here (although I have a recipe for that if you like) no, I was going for more of the traditional sweet potato side dish look – by simply topping it with a roasted marshmallow. But how?

Take 2-3 marshmallows and put them in a microwave safe glass dish. Microwave for just 20 seconds. They should come out nice and puffy. Using an offset spatula I carefully lifted one whole puffy marshmallow on top of the cupcake. I did that for each, then put them on a baking sheet, and broiled until the tops were just bruleed.

Lovely. Toasty. Delish.

I always try to buy broccolini when I see it. It’s more tender, flavorful and not so…stinky. Just my opinion. And since the Baby will ONLY eat broccoli stalks, this is a good way to trick him into eating what is mostly…stalk.

ingredients:
1/2 a pound broccolini
2 TB olive oil
salt
1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1 tablespoon lemon zest
1/4 cup water

Wash and dry your broccolini. Zest your lemon, just the yellow parts – a microplane is GREAT for this.

In a pan, heat the olive oil on medium high. Saute the broccolini until is softens just a bit, then add a pinch of salt and the pepper. Sprinkle the lemon zest on top. Add the water to the pan and cover. Steam for about 5-7 minutes and they are ready to eat.

I saw my kids playing with play-doh and realized that if I just dyed cookie dough, we could make cookies without all the mess of icing, sprinkles, etc. I am crazy about cleanliness, so when it comes to scattered messes, I wasn’t in the mood to clean up. This became the best option where the kids could be creative and have a great snack in the end. With no mess!!

ingredients:
cookie dough
gel dye

I made up a batch of plain old cookie dough (Martha Stewart’s Cookies book page 241) and then split the dough into 5 portions. Depending on how many different colors you want, if you only want a few, go with smaller portions.

The problem with doing a big amount, like 5, is that you have to wash the bowl in between each color change. Yikes. Time consuming. Anyway, take each portion and put it back into your mixing bowl, add a bit of gel dye and turn the mixer up to medium high, to really incorporate it.

Gel dyes are the best. I don’t care for powders and HATE liquids. Gels seem to have the perfect spot on color and give off very bright effects. Once you’ve got all your portions colored, wrap them in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge.

Once you’re ready to go, flour up a cutting board and roll out your dough. It’s amazing how you can really get colors working together once they are all laid out in front of you. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes, until the cookies are just done.

The Kid saw my fire truck and was appalled that I didn’t make a ladder OR a hose so he made his own. Did a 5 year old just school me on design? Apparently, YES.

The Baby was smarter than us. He realized that if he just kicked back and let us do all the work, he’d STILL get to eat cookies anyway. All in all, the kids really had fun with this and it was a great way to end boredom on a rainy day!

My friend Darlene has been going on a lot of caketastings for her wedding. I even made her a notepad to help her along in her selection process – however when she happened upon a white velvet cupcake, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It sounded like it’d be delicious. So I altered my red velvet recipe and changed some measurements and came up with a darn good tasting cupcake. Most red velvet’s call for a flour or a cream cheese frosting – no way. So I put together a little mascarpone frosting to go with it. It paired itself pretty nicely…

cupcake ingredients:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1-1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk (read on to find out how to make your own)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 TB white vinegar

mascarpone frosting ingredients:
16 ounces mascarpone cheese
1 cup powdered sugar
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ cups heavy whipping cream

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Prep a cupcake pan with liners.

Sift the flour and salt together and set aside. If I don’t have buttermilk on hand, I simply make my own by combining just under a 1/2 cup of milk with 3 teaspoons of lemon juice. Once you’ve done that, set aside.

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well. On low, slowly alternate the flour with the buttermilk beginning and ending with the flour.

Now dissolve the baking soda in the vinegar. Sounds weird but trust me on this. Carefully stir it into the batter. You will get a lovely velvet-y batter. Pour into prepped cupcake pans, about 1/2 full.

Bake for 20-25 minutes depending on your oven, or until toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean. Cool on wire racks and start your frosting…

To make the frosting, in a medium bowl combine mascarpone cheese, sugar, salt and vanilla. Stir together until smooth, and set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer beat whipping cream until stiff peaks form – don’t overdo it, the last thing you want is for it to curdle. Then fold the whipped cream, into the mascarpone mixture until combined. If you get it just right, you will get a nice sweet fluffy frosting.

I decorated these with edible pearls – the kids LOVED this cupcake and I think they will be asking for it again soon.

This couldn’t be simpler. Get one of those giant bars of chocolate from Trader Joe’s, or higher quality chocolate from somewhere else if you have more money. I do not.

Place a saucepan of water on the stove, place a metal mixing bowl on top, careful not to touch the water. Get the bottom pot to boil and voila – you have a homemade double boiler!

Get your chocolate into small chunks and put them in the top bowl. The melting will begin almost immediately. It doesn’t take long to get a nice smooth melt going – then just start dipping! Pretzels. Strawberries. Cake. It’s all good.

This is from the Martha Stewart Cookie book, it’s a great recipe, but a little on the bland side. I added a few things and also dipped them in chocolate. everything is better in chocolate.

ingredients:
1/4 cup Valrhona cocoa powder
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
3 Tablespoons boiling water
1/2 cup butter (1 stick) softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
2 cups all purpose flour

1 large egg yolk + 2 teaspoons water
coarse sanding sugar for sprinkling
1/2 pound melted chocolate

Stir the cocoa and the espresso powder into the hot water in a small bowl. Mix well.

In an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar. Mix in vanilla and salt, then add in the egg. Then add the chocolate mixture. The smell is terrific.

Carefully and slowly, add the flour. You’ll notice it pull away from the mixing bowl, that’s when it’s ready. Take it out and form a disk, cover in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for about half and hour.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Divide the dough into 24 equal parts. Roll them into balls and then back and forth until you get a long rope, about 14 inches long is good. Now take the ends and twist it into a pretzel shape.

I made a bunch for Valentine’s Day and just made the bottom more pointed than round. Place the formed pretzels on a silpat lined cookie sheet. Those are the best because there is no sticking at all. I put about 6 on one sheet pan.

Whisk the egg yolk and water in a small bowl and brush the tops of the pretzels. Sprinkle with sanding sugar. The coarser the better because it will really look like salt. Bake the cookies about 30 minutes. It takes a while, but you are trying to get the dough to dry itself out. Let them cool on wire racks.

You don’t have to dip them in chocolate, but it certainly helps. So if you want to skip this step, you are done. Otherwise, while they are cooking, melt the chocolate in a double boiler, take the cookies and dip the backs of them in the melted chocolate. Turn them on their ‘front’ to cool. These are cute and fun for kids to help you make too!

Yes, there is an exclamation point at the end of it – because that’s how I feel when I think about frozen blended drinks. Exclamation pointy! This is not a recipe, because quite frankly you are just pouring stuff into a spinning ice cream maker. But let me tell you, the options are endless!

I make this for the kids with orange juice or pink lemonade:

But for me? That’s a different story. Coke is tasty – but SLUSHEE Coke is even better. Better than that? CHERRY COKE. Now you don’t have to go to 7-11 to get your fix, just make it at home!

Start with of can of Coke for each person you are serving – but I think the max should be 3 for a standard ice cream maker.

Then just pour into your prepped ice cream maker. This goes rather quickly. 20 minutes later you have tasty icy goodness, mmm mmmm.

I make a lot of Burger Bites. Of course the selling point on these things is the perfectly shaped ‘bun’ which is a nice looking Nilla Wafer. As you can imagine I end up with a ton of crappy looking wafers that just ain’t gonna cut it. This recipe is a different way to get rid of my extra Nilla wafers.

ingredients:
2-1/2 cups Nilla Wafers (crushed)
1/4 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch of salt
1 cup milk
1 egg
3 TB honey
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and prep a mini muffin pan with liners. Start by crushing up the nilla wafers. I use a freezer bag and a baking pin and go to town. I’m sure there are much more civilized ways but frankly, I’m a stress case and need to get my aggressions out somehow.

Mix the crumbs with the flour and baking powder, cinnamon and salt.

Add the milk, and stir in the egg. Then add the honey and the vanilla. That’s it! one bowl could life be easier??

Now carefully spoon the batter into the prepped liners. I use teaspoons. For these liners I like to fill them almost to the top so that they puff over. In a regular liner I’d just go about 2/3s of the way.

Bake for 10-12 minutes depending on your oven, cool on a wire rack.

I made a whipped cream frosting and topped it with a banana slice as an ode to the other usage for Nilla Wafers…banana pudding. Consider this only for show, as I hate bananas – however the kids loved it!