Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread

Pull-apart bread was all the rave a month or so ago so I'm actually a little slow to jump on this particular bandwagon, but hey better late than never right?

I was hemming and hawing about making this and putting it off because I really didn't have an occasion to make it and I didn't want to make it just for me and the hubby because...well we'd probably eat it all and our bootcamp classes would all be for nothing.

Then sauce day came, the day where my in-laws all get together and we spend the day cleaning, cutting and cooking tomatoes. Making huge vats of sauce and then jarring them so we have sauce to last the year. I thought perfect, I'll make this bread for breakfast that morning.

Low-Fat Lemon Loaf

Whenever summertime rolls around I find myself craving fresh, summery ingredients and lemons are by far one my favorite summertime ingredients. I love lemons as they are in all of their mouth puckering glory, but I also love them in dessert and the sweet little tang they give off. Lemons make even the heaviest of desserts seem light and guilt free and to me that's a beautiful thing.

This cake is dense and rich but actually very low in calories since I omitted butter and multiple eggs and replaced them with part-skim ricotta. I have found that using ricotta, yogurt or applesauce in baking is a great way to cut down on fat and calories but not skimp on taste. I choose to use ricotta in this recipe because of how well ricotta pairs with lemon and the rich texture ricotta provides.

It's a easy to make, one bowl recipe that is perfect for a light, summer dessert.

Puppy Chow

Puppy chow, muddy buddies...call it whatever you'd like, this stuff is delicious and seriously addicting. I remember as a kid seeing the recipe on the box of Chex cereal wondering why my mother never thought to make this for me. Chocolate, nutella and confectioners sugar coating wonderfully crunchy cereal? A kid could only dream and now that I have my own house and my own kitchen I make this whenever we are having company over and I always get the same reaction....people just love this stuff!

If you've never had, you must stop everything you're doing, run to the nearest supermarket and make this immediately. I promise you won't regret it. Share it amongst friends or keep it all for yourself, that part I'll let you decide.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl Ice Cream

Nothing beats ice cream on a hot  summer day and lately the past few days have been scorchers. If I'm being really honest I don't need hot weather as an excuse to eat ice cream, I will eat it in the dead of the winter in the middle of a snowstorm. Pair it with a brownie and some whipped cream and I'm in heaven and homemade ice cream to boot? Now we're talking.

If you were to do a search on ice cream recipes I'm willing to bet that you'll find hundreds if not thousands of variations. When I got my ice cream maker a few years ago I got right to work to find the perfect ice cream recipe of all. It took a little tweaking but I managed to come up with one that is simply amazing. It is loosely based on Chef Richard Blais's chocolate ice cream recipe from Top Chef from the episode when he made the Banana Scallops and Banana Guacamole but I altered it based on other recipes I found and made it a little more waistline friendly so I wouldn't feel so guilty going back for seconds!

Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

Chocolate and peanut butter are one of the greatest pairings ever. Nothing beats the sweet and salty combo and the perfection of the two when combined. Peanut butter cups are pretty much the holy grail of the pairing, the duo at it's best and one of my favorite desserts. One of the downsides this treat is it often has ingredients that are not the best for you, hydrogenated oil, high fructose corn syrup are all things we should eliminate from our diet, but I'll tell you, it's still hard to stay away from these things despite the doctor's warnings.

So what's a girl to do but make them herself? I have been contemplating this idea for some time but couldn't quite figure out how to make them and then I found a solution online that made perfect sense. Make them in cupcake liners! How genius is that? It's the perfect size, you get the classic ridged edges and it makes clean up a breeze.

Can you just taste them now? They're so easy you can practically make them in your sleep.

Sweet Potato Cake

Ever buy something and then as time goes by you forget to use it, or just don't want to do the same old thing again? I bought sweet potatoes about a week ago, they're one of my favorite veggies, my husband - not so much. He prefers the run of the mill Idaho, Yukon and Red New potatoes. So after hemming and hawing about what to make with the sweet potatoes I decided I wanted to make a dessert, but I couldn't find the kind of recipe I was looking for. I wanted to make a cake or a bread and nothing was quite what I wanted.  The solution? I made one up, worked on the fly and if I do say so myself, it came out quite delicious.

The recipe was simple and if you happen to have boiled sweet potatoes on hand, can be made in less than 10 minutes.

Chocolate & Oat Cookie Bars

This is yet another one of my favorite treats from my childhood. It isn't quite a cookie or a blondie...it's almost as though you took the two and combined them to get this amazing treat. There's only a few ingredients and you can make this in a pinch since most of the ingredients are always on hand at home for most people.

It's always a crowd pleaser and the kind of dessert you definitely want to make for company because if you have them at home you will eat them!

Chocolate Covered Cannoli Stuffed Strawberries

Chocolate Covered Cannoli Stuffed Strawberries....

Yes you read that correctly, and yes it is just as drool-worthy as it sounds. A couple of weeks ago on vacation a woman I met said she had these as the favor for her wedding and now she makes them herself when she wants to bring something to a gathering. She said they were a big hit - hello?? How could they not be?! It's like saying the sky is blue. Chocolate covered strawberries are delicious enough, but to add cannoli cream inside them, now we're talking down right drool-worthy.

And I haven't even told you the best part.....they are so easy to make, slightly time consuming but very easy. Now here is my slight disclaimer, I bought cannoli cream from an Italian supermarket, had I made the cannoli cream it would have been slightly more challenging but not by much. I had a ton of running around to do the day before Father's Day and I just didn't have the time and to be honest I haven't found a homemade cannoli cream recipe that I love (if anyone has one, I would love a suggestion!). As another bonus it was actually a bit more economical to buy the premade cannoli cream, which is always a plus.

Chocolate Crescent Pockets

In celebration of Valentine's Day Food Network put on an hour long special consisting of chefs preparing their favorite chocolate dish.  Now I will be the first to admit that Paula Deen's recipes always look delicious and I would be willing to put money on that fact that they taste better than they look, but her recipes are always chock full of butter and shortening and things that I try to use minimally.  So typically when I bake something of Paula Deen's I tend to start by cutting the butter in half.  On this show, however Paula wrapped mini chocolate bars and Hershey Kisses inside puff pastry sealed it up brushed it with a bit of egg wash and baked them in the oven until they were pockets of gooey amazing chocolate goodness.  She then paired them with homemade chocolate ganache and fresh whipped cream.  AMAZING. My husband and I were drooling at the TV so I decided that since he was taking the reigns this Valentine's Day for dinner I would take charge of dessert.

I decided to change up the recipe a bit (something I am always guilty of) and swapped out the puff pastry for crescent rolls and added some Nutella to the mix, after all Nutella makes everything taste better!