The center of all food and cake recipes

Alrighty, lovers. Here's part-two of my Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

I love seeing everyone make their New Year's resolutions list, setting new goals, and focusing on new lifestyle changes along the way. Improving oneself isn't always easy, and usually there's a habit or two to reprogram to make it all possible. The way I've found my way around this hurdle is by setting sub goals within the goals, and doing a dry-run before the new year begins.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Have you ever had one of those moments when you feel like your head is being squeezed in by two giant fists right above your ears? Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

So we have the WORST luck with cars. WORST EVER, people. We get in a lot of accidents - the real kicker is maybe 10% of those accidents are our fault. The rest are from other people backing into us without leaving notes, construction barriers flying into our Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

We're a family of three, but sometimes we just need to make something for dinner that's going to last a couple days. It certainly cuts down the crazy on busy weeks, and that hour or two it takes to make the large meal, saves a lot of dinner-time prep in the long run. Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

It's the beginning of a new week. What's on your plate?  Are we keeping everything balanced? Or are our plates overflowing with too much of a good thing? Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Ryan is training for his first marathon (St. George or SLC Marathons). He mapped out a training schedule, and has been really great at getting up each day to run before the sun comes up (even in the well-below freezing temperatures a couple weeks ago). Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

My toddler has a brand new trick, and it's pure evil I tell you. Sure, he has the most beautiful big blue eyes you've ever seen, and he says and does things that could melt your heart in less than a second. But when he does something bad, he seems to play all his crazy cards and milks it for all it's worth. Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

I'm a firm believer in green smoothies and getting in plenty of exercise.  I'm also a firm believer in the occasional juicy bacon-loaded cheeseburger. Maybe I'm just a little selfish, but I believe we can have both.  The only "diet" I've ever really been on is: Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

A few of you have noticed that I've put the "dessert" portion of my blogging on hold for a little bit. I've still tried to deliver at least 3 new dinner/lunch recipes for you to try during my hiatus, but I miss the sweets.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

I feel like every week should have a soup night. When Ryan and I were finishing up our undergraduate degrees, and during a great deal of law school, I felt like we were rocking that weekly soup night with a can opener and a couple cans of whatever soup was on sale that week at the grocery Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Easy weeknight dinners. They help me survive the crazy! This recipe was no exception. It's not the dump-five-cans-in-a-crockpot-and-call-it-good easy (even though I love those recipe sometimes). This dish requires a little attention, but if I can make it while unloading/loading the dishwasher, doing a dessert photo session, and entertaining a toddler... you've got this in the bag. Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Easiest Valentine's Day Dessert ever.  I know everyone's probably watching the Superbowl. Me? Not so much. But I do love how people can gather in the name of sports and eat delicious food together. I'm all for that. Go crazy, people. Get your queso and guacamole on like it's 1999, man.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Valentine's Day is just around the corner! In our home, we don't have a ton of decorations (heck, we usually just put up the ones we make from scrap paper and call it good), but MAN we sure love to bake up as many decadent little Valentine's Day sweets as possible. We don't eat all of them (even though we try, haha), but we sure love tasting them and then giving them away to dear friends and loved ones. That's what this holiday is all about, right? Celebrating love?  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

This entire week I've been sharing dessert after dessert to get you fine folks ready for Valentine's Day! If you need more ideas, I've been sharing a fun dessert idea daily on Instagram, and have even been giving a sneak peek at my kitchen at new and upcoming recipes for the blog. It's party, I'm tellin' ya.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. We've all probably had some version of this soup - and for good reason. It's killer! However, I think darling Karen  had honestly cracked the code to making this soup TOP NOTCH. Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

I feel like I'm always on the hunt for the perfect pasta dish; one that's not too time-consuming, doesn't use a bunch of expensive ingredients, and one that my husband and toddler's taste buds will both sing for joy upon the first bite. Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

I don't know about all you fine folks, but after all the amazing desserts and expensive fine dining Valentine's Day brings, the only thing I feel like eating is a big salad! Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

With spring right around the corner, my favorite way to celebrate is with a big plate loaded with as much colorful splendor as possible (mostly in veggie and fruit form). Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

As our Utah weather continues with it's usual schizophrenic tendencies, the choices I've made on "what's for dinner" have become a little more frustrating.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

I don't mean to be a debbie-downer, but how are those New-Years goals going? Are we keeping everything together? Or have we laxed a little bit? Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

It was the eve of Valentine's Day. Ryan and I had made it a tradition to have a toddler-free dinner on the 13th to celebrate, Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

We feel so lucky to live so close to (most of) our dear families! We're able to be present in case they need anything (emergency or non-emergency), we have the best free-and-always-willing babysitters around, and we're also able to celebrate life's big moments together as a family. Especially new little babies! Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

For major holidays, my parents-in-law have made it a delicious tradition to have at least 3-4 beautiful pies for us all to share. They did a thoughtful job each time choosing pies of different genres to fit everyone's tastes (cherry pie, chocolate pie, apple pie, banana cream pie, etc). With each family gathering, they learned quickly there was always one mouthwatering pie that seemed to disappear the fastest of all... Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

As much as I really love the warmer weather we've been having here in Utah (in February/March - it's been awesome!), I was hoping soup season hadn't come to a complete halt. Luckily, I opened up my window this morning to the fresh smell of a beautifully rainy morning - and it hasn't stopped since.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

I grew up about 45 minutes away from a small amusement park. In middle school, if we earned near-perfect attendance, had above a certain grade point average, or pledged to be drug-free or something, we were baited with a day-long trip to this magical place. An entire day away from school with the sole purpose of riding roller coasters that could make us puke our guts out? Only to refuel ourselves with cotton candy and hot dogs? We all thought we had gone straight to heaven. Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Missed posting yesterday. Normally I use Sundays as a lovely opportunity to schedule a sweet recipe for you fine folks, but last week was kind of rough. And then Sunday I woke up with a cold - with a full day of church meetings, teaching sharing time to our 160+ primary children, and trying out a new baked spinach tortellini recipe for dinner. Needless to say, after a heroic dose of Dayquil to get through the afternoon, by the time everything was finished, all I wanted to do was crash on the couch. Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

I'd like to introduce you to your new favorite cookie:  Sometimes you meet a cookie, fall in love with the dough, and before it even makes it way into the oven you know it's going to be epic.  Brown butter and I go way back, and it never ceases to amaze me. It's a sure-fire ingredient to make cookies and most desserts even more amazing. What a sneaky, but incredible, way it can completely transform something from tasting wonderful to tasting...   Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

I always thought that having my birthday was the greatest thing on the planet. My Mom made everything super special by serving up a warm breakfast, having presents waiting at the table to open before school, planning an incredible themed party (usually switched off every other year between a friend party and a family party), eating delicious cake, and making sure we felt extra special that day. Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!  The only way I remember my family celebrating this lovely holiday growing up was my Mom making us green pancakes. They were always light and fluffy, and filled our tummies for the rest of the afternoon. School was filled with anxious boys and girls waiting to see if everyone was wearing green. If not, they wouldn't waste any opportunity to pinch their latest victim! Some kids were extra sneaky and wore a green sticker somewhere on their hands to avoid getting pinched if they forgot their green attire.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

With the new daylight savings changes, I feel like dinnertime is feeling less like something-we-squeeze-in-right-before-bedtime, and more like something-we-do-to-fuel-up-for-some-last-minute-playtime-outside!   Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

This week in the lovely Beehive State of Utah we went to our local caucus meeting.  Now, before I married my sweet Ryan, I honestly had no idea what the heck a caucus was. It sounded like a kind of beetle to me. "Darned caucuses destroyed our tomatoes again!!" and "It sure is satisfying to hit those filthy caucuses with my car on the way to work!" or "Man, that mother-loving caucus is pillaging our pantry like he owns the joint."  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Happy Monday, everyone! I have some seriously mouthwatering goodness to share with y'all today. These cupcakes are off-the-hook, and the frosting was really what sealed the deal on these little beauties... Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

One of my favorite things to eat on the planet is a giant bowl of tortilla chips alongside some fresh salsa and a pile of guacamole. Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Sometimes we feel like our lives are soaked to the bone in complete monotony.  Every day follows the same sequence, same take-husband-to-the-train-to-go-to-work, same peanut butter sandwich for the toddler at lunch, same holy-smokes-my-pants-are-getting-tight, same walk up and down three flights of stairs to the apartment, same mess to clean up after the day, same laundry to clean and fold, same naptime battle, same stories to read at night, same everything.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

With a brand new month starting today, I thought it would be fun to get a head start on all the cute little Easter treats we love to enjoy in the lovely month of April.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Well, it's Friday, my friends. We made it! This week has sure been a crazy one, but one thing happened that makes me feel like spring can finally start whenever it wants to: Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Sometimes after a long meat-filled Sunday dinner, I like to keep the menu on Monday pretty simple. We usually use up the leftover meat from Sunday's dinner in our lunches or tie it into Monday's dinner somehow. I've learned that one of the easiest ways to serve up leftovers is to roll them up in a tortilla. Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

For a while, starting back in November, our little gym in our apartment complex was on the fritz. I would wake up early before the boys were even out of bed, get dressed, drag my feet to the "gym room" across the parking lot, turn on the light, step on the treadmill, only to find...  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Happy Monday, everyone! As you may have noticed, the blog got a little unplanned face-lift. I say "unplanned" because well, it was just that. Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

I remember the time Ryan and I were married for about 4 years, and always dreamed of the day we could live away from Utah for a while. We loved our families so much, but we desperately felt like we needed our own little lives. So when the law school applications went out, we sent them everywhere.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

So, I made these a long time ago, and never posted them. The SHAME, people. It was rude of me, and hopefully these mouthwatering pictures and sure-fire recipe will help you forgive me.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Sometimes you fall in love with a specific flavor combination, and it's hard to no think of using it in just about anything. Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

I feel like for the past few weeks, (even months!) have had something planned almost every night. And it's not like these activities are necessarily bad things, they just weren't things that involved all three of us together. This isn't a "brag because I'm so busy" party - trust me.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

If you were to ask my husband what my favorite food on the planet is, without batting an eye he would immediately respond: Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

When I started blogging a while ago, I had a recipe that took off like wildfire. It was the ever-decadent, always-deliciously satisfying Fresh Strawberry Yogurt Cake. Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

My Mom used to make enchiladas all the time.  I say that as if she doesn't make them anymore. She probably still does, but I'm just not around at dinnertime enough to know. When I was a little girl, I loved to watch her make enchiladas. Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Happy Sunday dear friends! I hope you're spending this beautiful day with your wonderful families and friends; soaking in every last second of the weekend before jumping back into the weekly crazy we all know is coming on Monday.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

We've made this a couple times in the past month, and were completely blown away by it the first time. I knew I had to make another batch right away to take a freaking picture of it before we ate it all in one sitting AGAIN. Yes. All in one sitting.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE

Guys. I have a serious weakness when it comes to these "little bite" treats.  Just one little bite.  Read More About This Recipe:  CLICK HERE