baby shower diaper cake

 

How cute is this? This is my first diaper cake!  I've always seen them at baby showers but never really knew that you can actually make them yourself. My husband and I are hosting a baby shower for my sister and brother-in-law in Atlanta today. They are doing a safari/jungle theme in their nursery, so they wanted a similar theme for their shower and that is where I got the inspiration for this lovely diaper cake.

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sweet potato pie

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I took a little trip to Austin, Texas. We had the most amazing "pecan pie" from Salt Lick BBQ. Except it wasn't quite a pecan pie. We thought of it more as a sweet potato pie with candied pecans on it. It was irresistibly delicious! This slice of heaven inspired me to whip up my own when I got home. I did some research and came across a sweet potato pie recipe from Alton Brown. This recipe was pretty similar to the one we had in Austin with the pecans on top.

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almond cake

I've had this recipe bookmarked forever.  There is just something about almonds that I just can't resist, now put it in a cake, now I'm in heaven. And a slice of this is pure heaven! It's everything you expect from a recipe from Chez Panisse. It's moist and dense yet fragrant and delicious.

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super bowl chili with cheese biscuits

We are ready for game time tonight. I've been cooking up this chili for 24 hours in the slow cooker. I saved some smoked chili peppers from last fall's Hampstead Farms CSA, which was perfect for this recipe. And the ground beef is from my Randle Farms meat share. Now, we just have to wait for our guests to show up, so we can chow down. We're serving the chili with some cheese biscuits, (recipe here).

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peanut butter chocolate chip cookies

Who doesn't love peanut butter and chocolate together? These are so addictive. I admit I rarely make peanut butter cookies because I prefer peanut butter in its pure form, but after making these I would definitely be baking them more often.

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strawberry cupcake

I've been on the hunt for the perfect, from-scratch strawberry cupcake that resembles the strawberry cake from Wynlakes Country Club. But its been hard and they don't look like anything like it. So I decided to try out Paula Deen's Simply Delicious Strawberry Cake recipe, which uses cake mix and instant jello mix. I have never in my life made a cake with instant jello mix in it. There is always a first. All in all, the cake turned out delicious and it was exactly like the one served at our country club. Next time I'll use this recipe but probably make the batter from scratch rather than using a mix.

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vanilla butter cookies

After some snickerdoodles and orange spritz, I wanted something plain and simple. These buttery vanilla cookies are exactly what I was looking for. These are best right out of the oven, I think I ate a dozen of them.

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snickerdoodles

Who doesn't love some cinnamon goodness around this time of the year? Between the apple cider and gingerbread cookies, cinnamon has a place in all our hearts for the holidays. Martha Stewart's snickerdoodles are light and soft, you can't resist having only one.

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orange spritz cookies

What a crazy past couple of months! I've been neglecting my poor little blog due to life. And life I mean: graduate school, family, friends, holidays, and most exciting of all expecting a little one. Yes! We will go from two to three May next year! Now, that I am well into my second trimester and feeling much better, along with my winter break from school, I can once again focus on creating yummy goodies in the kitchen. With a week until Christmas, I scrambled together some buttery cookies to send out to friends. The first are these lovely orange spritz! 

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thomas keller's chocolate chip cookies

Chef Keller is really amazing. He really is! He can even make a chocolate chip cookie better than what you knew a chocolate cookie can be. If you don't believe me, you'll have to make a batch of these cookies yourself. The key to this cookie is using high quality chocolate and chopping the chocolate into shavings. It gives the cookie a cleaner look, as well as evenly distributes the yummy bursts of chocolate goodness.

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baked kale chips

Last year I saw some blogs all posting baked kale chips and I was intrigued. It's been on my list of things to make since then. But kale is not exactly one of the usual things on my grocery list and I don't purposely go out to buy. Luckily for me, my CSA from Hampstead Farms had kale in it this week (including a slew of vegetables I don't usually eat). So when I was presented with this opportunity, I dug up those recipes and whipped up some yummy, crisp kale chips!

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sweet potato biscuits with fig preserves

It's fall!! And that means sweet potatoes galore from Hampstead Farms. I'm starting to run out of ideas to use sweet potatoes. I even went as far as putting them into light, flaky biscuits. If you love biscuits, which is my latest obsession (if you have noticed from here, here, and here), you must try these! 

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