Admittedly, making chocolate bark is becoming a bit of a thing around here. It started with Halloween candy bark, then Christmas bark in a bunch of varieties, Easter candy bark and here we are today with conversation heart chocolate bark just in time for Valentine’s Day! If you need a last minute treat for your kids to bring along to school or you want to whip up something sweet for your co-workers, this is the ticket! Here’s the thing though – chocolate bark is so easy to make. Seriously! If you can boil water, you can make bark. The key is to melt the chocolate over a double boiler. I don’t have an “official” double boiler so I use a stock pot with water and then a heat-safe glass mixing bowl sitting on top of the stock pot and it works great. (Check out my “Behind the Blog” Instagram Stories highlights to see what I mean!) I made my bark with dark chocolate with a white chocolate swirl, but you can really use any chocolate you like. Other than that it’s just conversation hearts and pink heart sprinkles, which also aren’t strictly necessary if you can’t find any. Personally I just love bark, because people find it to be such a novelty and it’s easy enough that if you don’t prefer to bake or you have kids you want to have help you with sprinkling the toppings, you’re good to go. Give it a try!
Desserts
When we were kids there was something about the official Christmas cookie baking day that my mom and our good family friend used to co-host every year that was absolutely magical. As an adult my holiday baking tends to happen here and there in waves throughout the season versus on one specific day, but as a kid I looked forward to cookie day all year long. The peanut butter blossoms were my favorite to make then and they still are today! I was always in charge of unwrapping the Hershey kisses, rolling the dough balls in sugar and then smushing the chocolate kisses on just right. These cookies always show up on cookie trays this time of year, but I’m going to go so far as to tell you that these are the best peanut butter blossoms you’ve ever eaten, so if you need the best peanut butter blossom recipe to add to your cookie repertoire, you’ve come to the right spot! Keep scrolling because I am also linking up below to a handful of my best blogging friends and some of their favorite Christmas cookie recipes, too, so be sure to pop over and give them all a little love.
Fall in Upstate New York is effectively synonymous with apple season. On weekends you’ll find the local apple orchards packed full of people filling baskets with their freshly picked bounty and the local cider mill with lines a mile long waiting for fresh cider and donuts. We get really crazy about the change in seasons around here and apples definitely take center stage in fall. I love these chocolate dipped apples on a stick as really fun seasonal treat that doesn’t require hours of peeling, coring and rolling of dough. If you have kids, let them pick out and sprinkle on their own toppings! I like a mix of mini chocolate chips, granola, shaved coconut and almonds, but you can switch out the toppings for whatever your crew will most enjoy.
Do you guys know that sherbet party punch that shows up a lot at baby and bridal showers? It’s usually served up in a big punch bowl and is made with things like fruit punch and 7UP® with scoops of sherbet floating on top. The idea is that it’s delicious, non-alcoholic and you get little bits of sherbet with each sip. It’s frothy, super summery and really refreshingly fun! Have you ever had it before? It is seriously some kind of delicious and I love that it’s such a simple concept, but sure enough you’ll always look over mid-party to find an empty punch bowl. Kids love it because it’s sweet and tasty. Adults love it because it somehow makes you feel like a kid again. That’s entirely what inspired these party punch sherbet floats! When I’m having friends over, whether it be for a dinner party or evening spent on the back patio, I love serving up something fun and slightly unexpected. Then you can keep everything else simple and they’ll still experience a taste of that wow factor that makes them feel a little special, and that’s my favorite thing in the entire world. Today I’m teaming up with 7UP to share how I made these easy but totally wow-worthy floats! (Be sure to scroll down for the step-by-step recipe video, too!)
Over the weekend I made a whirlwind 62 hour trip to Round Top, Texas and back. I’ve been working on a couple of really huge projects behind the scenes, I haven’t washed my hair in at least three days (dry shampoo, I love you), and my feet are still slightly swollen from traveling and lack of sleep over the last week. All of this to say, these peanut butter and jelly ice cream sandwiches are delicious and exactly what you need when you’re exhausted and missing a few of the usually prominent bones on the tops of your feet. An instant pick-me-up! To keep things simple, you can use a cookie mix here. To keep things delicious, I highly suggest making the strawberry jam homemade. Then just smash cookies and ice cream together and eat them right away, or wrap them and stash them in the freezer where they’ll keep for a few days.
This easy sugar cookie fruit pizza makes a simple and delicious 4th of July dessert or the perfect addition to any summer party menu! Easily change the flavors by changing out the berries for any other combination you prefer.
After Christmas, my favorite holiday is easily the 4th of July. There’s just nothing more festive to me than fireworks and the general summer-inspired glee that comes along with celebrating the 4th. Even now as an adult, the grand finale of any fireworks display makes me clap with excitement, because basically I am a five year old kid on the inside. This year I’m excited about hanging red, white and blue bunting along our front porch for the first time, and I’m also excited about these ice cream cones. Nothing is quite as American as red, white and blue sprinkle dipped 4th of July ice cream cones, am I right? These are such a fun way to serve up even just a simple scoop or two of vanilla ice cream, and you can prep the cones the day before. All you need are sugar cones, white chocolate and all the cool sprinkles you can find. Stay tuned for more fun 4th of July ideas! It’s about to get mighty patriotic about these parts.
When I started making chocolate bark (first Halloween candy bark and then Christmas chocolate bark), I was pretty sure I’d started something I wasn’t going to be able quit. Fast forward a few months, dump bags of my favorite Cadbury Mini Eggs on every store shelf and, well, I was right! This, friends, is Easter candy bark.
Hey, friends, it’s my birthday week! On Saturday (which, yes, is April Fools’ Day) I’ll be turning 34. (That happened fast!) That day will also mark the 28th year that my mother has made me the same birthday cake. As she tells it, my sixth birthday was the first time I had a party with some of my little friends from school and she wanted to make a really special cake. She knew I loved strawberries so she decided to make a strawberry poke cake, since apparently poke cakes were all the rage back in the 80s. Who knew? Since then she’s made me this cake every single year, even when I haven’t lived in the same city, even if it’s a week before or a few weeks after my actual birthday.
At our favorite Irish pub here in town, they serve an Irish coffee that is the stuff that warms the soul on a cold winter day. Dark, rich coffee steaming hot with big splashes of whiskey and Irish cream. Topped with whipped cream and a little dusting of cinnamon, it’s basically dessert meets cocktail meets some kind of heaven. Is Ireland heaven after all? It may just be, friends, it may just be.
Friends, it’s St. Patrick’s Day week! In addition to making this super cute DIY sequin shamrock shirt to sport the requisite green come Friday, you should also probably consider eating an overload of Lucky Charms. Because it seems like everyone else is doing it, so why not us? In all seriousness though, I kind of love this trend of adding Lucky Charms to basically any and everything to create the most festive of St. Patrick’s Day desserts and treats. Sometimes you just need a little bit of childhood nostalgia in your life and these recipes will give your day just the right kind of whimsy. Scroll through for seventeen of the best Lucky Charms recipes – from ice cream to cookies, from donuts to cannoli! Don’t forget to pin ’em to save them for later.
I started taking French in fifth grade, and I’m fairly certain it was right around that same time I first heard tales of le chocolat chaud from my French teacher. Hyped as a thick, decadent mug of melted chocolate, it was when I was sixteen and sitting at a little café in Paris that I first truly understood …