Coffee and Cannolis

While preparing for my son's birthday party in June, I wanted to find recipes that I could make in advance to cut back on the amount of time the day of the party.  Searching for a fabulous Macaroni and Cheese recipe that could be frozen I came across this recipe on Smitten Kitchen.  I generally glance through comments, but I was reading these fully, and came across a few that froze it with good success.  This recipe feeds 12, so I intially tried a half batch.  Six servings is still big for 2 and a half people eating it (Ty was still just starting table foods at the time), I actually made 2 quarter batches essentially!  One I baked immediately, and another I froze for a week, thawed overnight and baked a few minutes longer than the "fresh" pasta. The fresh macaroni was fantastic.  Out of this world amazing, and I immediately declared it my new favorite, go-to baked macaroni and cheese dish.  Because it was that good, I was afraid of what the next week would yield,

I've been to fairs and amusement parks before, but until just a few years ago I'd never heard of Churros before.  It's not like I was living under a rock or anything, but I honestly think they're not very prominent in the mid-West.  That, or I have funnel cake vision at those places.  Which is very likely because now that I'm thinking about them, I'm craving a funnel cake something fierce! Once I learned what a Churro was I immediately knew I'd love them.  I love all things "cinnamon-sugar"!  Since I don't frequent fairs and amusement parks I've never really had many opportunities to be on the look-out.  So, what's any good baker supposed to do?  Make her (or his!) own of course.  Problem though... I need a new deep fryer and I'm holding out on buying one because, well, let's face it, fried foods are not good for you!  And, I hate cleaning out deep fryers as well!  So, I stumbled across the concept of oven baked churros.

I think I'm in love!  A few weeks ago on Josie's blog , she posted these fantastic looking twice baked potatoes with CHICKEN in the filling!  I love twice baked potatoes and am always looking for a way to jazz them up.  I'd never thought about putting any sort of meat in the filling.  Now that this door has been opened to me, I see a future full of fun twice baked potatoes in our house. Not only are the potatoes filling because of the addition of the chicken, the flavor was just fresh because of the fresh basil and lemon juice.  And of course the texture was phenomenal - creamy and cheesy - just like any good twice baked potato should be! While I saw the recipe on Josie's blog, she adapted it from Jessica's blog , which is the version I actually used.  While I'm sure these would be fantastic with the Ricotta Josie added, not only did I forget to buy it, but I don't know that Rob would have liked them as much. Twice Baked Potatoes take awhile, be

I'm not going to lie.  I never had any interest in making the highly praised, often talked about in the food/baking world NY Times Chocolate Chip Cookies.  However, a few weeks ago my best friend brought them to a Trivia Night we were attending, and I was immediately hooked.  I have dessert-willpower, so I only ate 2 cookies, but boy were those two cookies fantastic.  I immediately sought after an excuse to make these cookies. I had literally been reading about how fantastic these cookies were for years, but to me I figured chocolate chip is chocolate chip.  To be fair though, I never once actually looked at the recipe.  I cannot thank my friend enough, because I have the perfect go-to chocolate chip cookie now! The recipe calls for chilling the dough for at least 24 hours before baking.  As the dough sets and chills, it becomes drier and more crumbly. This helps the cookies to develop their flavor, as well as bake up evenly. I have never had a chocolate chip cookie bake up