Double Chocolate Chip & Orange Cookies

Everyone loves a good cookie.

This is a cookie that is intensely dark, rich, and fudgy. It borders on truffle territory. It’s brownie-like when it comes out of the oven, and cools with set edges and a soft middle. The flavor! It’s chocolatey-dark, semisweet, just right. A heap of orange zest gives it a bitter, citrusy edge.

I used Joy the Baker’s Double Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, added orange, and tweaked a few of the ingredients. I pressed my cookies down just so so they would come out of the oven with that traditional chocolate chip cookie texture— flat, chewy, crisp, soft, delicious.

I made a double batch of these last week. They’re all gone now, and with good reason.

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Jalapeño Cheddar Mac and Cheese

Do you remember the blue-and-yellow box? The Kraft one, the one that your parents opened up to make your favorite dinner— mac and cheese, of course. A pile of skinny macaroni and a packet of yellow cheesy powder.

That was one of my favorite dinners. A rare meal in our home, where every meal was prepared lovingly from scratch by my mom.

It was Kraft that taught me to love mac and cheese, but it was only after I tried a from-scratch recipe that I realized how good the stuff could be.

This, my friends, is real mac and cheese. It starts with a béchamel sauce and some large elbow macaroni. A good helping of cheese goes in the pot. A couple of roasted and diced jalapeños get thrown in. Everything is stirred together and placed under the broiler until browned. Crispy panko breadcrumb are toasted in a sauté pan until perfectly golden, and sprinkled on top just before serving.

Salted Chocolate Oat Tart for Two

It’s Monday again.

Last week was a long week. A seriously long week. Between exams and papers, I felt like I had minimal down time and was stretched thin. The weekend finally came. And somehow (so soon!) it’s Monday again. Another long day.

If you’ve had a long Monday, make this tart. It makes everything better.

This tart is luxuriously silky, smooth, and dark. It’s filled with a semisweet chocolate ganache. It’s encrusted with a salty sweet oat crust, made with plenty of butter and brown sugar.

Join me in celebrating hard work by making a this tart at the end of a long day.

We’ve worked hard. It’s been a long Monday. And when we’ve had a long day, we make salted chocolate oat tarts.

Avocado Pomegranate Salad with Cilantro-Lime Crema

Is it the weekend already? These last few days have gone by fast. When you’re crazy busy with school or work or whatever else, it’s easy to let the time fly by. I’ve been taking midterm exams and trying to catch up on readings. It feels like there is rarely any down time.

I think it might be time to hit pause. Do something fun for a change.

This weekend, I’ll be taking a break and treating myself to some healthy and delicious home-cooked food. You can bet that this will be on the list of dishes I make.

No-Knead Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

I thought I was over cinnamon rolls, I really did. I baked them all winter and spring and summer long— I thought they were out of my system. It turns out, they aren’t.

Though I had tried out just about every basic cinnamon roll recipe on the planet, I hadn’t tinkered with variations and flavors. Just as I was getting tired of cinnamon rolls, new recipes started popping up all over the internet. After reading everything from Joy the Baker’s Bonkers Awesome Pistachio, Orange, and Dark Chocolate Cinnamon Rolls recipe, to The Crepes of Wrath’s S’mores Cinnamon Rolls recipe, I realized there was a lot of baking territory left to explore. It was clear that cinnamon rolls and I just weren’t finished yet.

This recipe is my first variation on the usual cinnamon roll. It’s a crazy mashup of all things no-knead and this fall’s pumpkin spice trend.