Peach Crumble Waffles

Dessert for breakfast with fluffy waffles, peach pie topping, and a cinnamon oat crumble.

Over the years, I've made many different kinds of waffles - some of them were ones that I would all of a sudden be craving but had never had before. That is how these Peach Crumble Waffles were born. I was like, I want streusel on a waffle. I think I originally had set out to make blackberry crumble waffles but could not find any blackberry pie filling. I still would love to make it eventually. Basically, you could do any flavor of pie filling you can find: apple, cherry, blueberry, etc. Nick loves peaches though, so this ended up being a really good alternative to blackberries.

Take 5 Cheesecake

This rich cheesecake has a pretzel crust, a caramel sauce topping (and drizzle), and a chocolate peanut butter ganache topping!

I am so excited to finally get around to sharing this recipe (although I'm a few days late actually getting it up like I was supposed to. Sunday Sarah here backdating to Friday - whoops! This is the cake that I made for my sister-in-law's birthday in February 2020. She asked for a cheesecake and said her favorite candy bars were Take 5s. I had never heard of them or had one before, but I was able to find out that they are chocolate with pretzel, caramel, and peanut butter. I mean what's not to love?! So I adapted a Twix cheesecake recipe and replaced the graham crust for pretzel crust and added peanut butter to the ganache. This is definitely really high up there on favorite cheesecakes of all time list. It was SO good.

Spaghetti Squash Lasagna Boats

A low carb lasagna made with spaghetti squash!

This recipe was one I had to monkey with in order to get it to where we would all enjoy it. The original recipe utilized ricotta cheese and roasted the squash whole, there were some differences in amounts of different ingredients. None of us like lasagna, but we have tried a few different recipes and the one we like the most uses cottage cheese, which funny enough none of us like either. There is something about how cottage cheese cooks down though that makes for a great recipe. We started eating spaghetti squash when Nick was doing keto in 2019 and I actually was pleasantly surprised - although it will never replace pasta for me - it was still very delicious.

Prado's Flatbread Copycat

Check out the Mexicali and Blanca flatbread pizzas inspired by a restaurant in San Diego.

One of my favorite things to do (if you didn't know by now) is to come up with copycat recipes of foods in restaurants or that I've seen on the internet. This particular recipe is from a restaurant in San Diego called (The) Prado. My husband spent 2019 traveling to San Diego for work and he loves it. He actually lived there when he was really young for a few years and so it's a bit nostalgic for him too. One of his favorite foods he ate (outside of all the amazing Mexican food) was the Mexicali flatbread pizza at Prado. He sent me a picture of the menu and I immediately went to the Blanca flatbread pizza with goat cheese and spinach. As I have not had these pizzas and cannot speak to how close the recipes actually are...these are just loose copycat recipes that I made on what little information was given on the menu. Both were crazy delicious.

Caprese Tomato Salad

This salad is so addictive and perfect for a side or snack!

I can't remember who made this for a family dinner last year but it was either my mother-in-law or sister-in-law and Nick and I immediately wanted it ALL THE TIME. We started making it with lunch on the weekdays and eating it with naan (we just had it by itself at family dinner). It doesn't need to have naan but it's so good with little mini naans especially.

Copycat Chick-fil-A Cobb Salad

Sometimes you crave a cobb salad from Chick-fil-A, but it's a Sunday. Have no fear, make your own cobb salad copycat at home!

Chick-fil-A is one of the very few fast food places where I'll eat anything on the menu. I like the plain chicken sandwiches, the deluxe spicy and non-spicy, the grilled club, the wraps, and all of the salads. Every single salad is so good, but I especially love the cobb salad. Unfortunately, a lot of times that I am out and want a salad from Chick-fil-A is Sunday and as we all know, they are not open on Sunday. So when Sundays happen, you have to have a good copycat recipe in your arsenal!

Copycat Maggie's Pizza Burgers

Pizza and burgers together are a great combination - in addition to pizza toppings, this burger has fried mozzarella half moons too!

Occasionally, Nick will request we make a food he has eaten somewhere. It took forever, but we finally got around to making a copycat for a burger he had at a restaurant in upstate New York where we lived for 7 years. I had never been to the restaurant. I want to say he went for someone's retirement or promotion or PCS or something. I'm not sure. The problem is that when he told me how to make it, he didn't tel me the precise order of ingredients. So my pictures don't match what it should be in its final form. Also, my provolone had molded, so no provolone here. Follow the directions below and eventually I will get more accurate pictures of this fantastic burger!

Copycat Pickle Pizza

Calling all pickle lovers! This copycat pickle pizza is amazing with a white garlic sauce and lots of dill goodness!

Sometimes I find food pictures on Pinterest that are not linked to any website or recipe in any way shape or form. But I can be persistent and if I can't find the recipe, I'll try and find a description of what the food is. This particular recipe was one I had to come up with on my own. The pizza is a copycat of one you can find at Rhino's Pizzeria in Webster, New York and Rochester, New York. I am no where near New York (and we were still a few hours away when we did live in New York), so I hunted to see if there was a description of what was on the pizza. Their website says a white garlic pizza topped with mozzarella, dill pickles, and a dill weed sprinkle. I found a super amazing white garlic pizza sauce and it's killer and personally the reason why I think this is such a good recipe. I did not use a dill weed sprinkle because I did a thing of where I thought I had some, so I didn't pick any up at the store and then discovered in the middle of making it that I had no dill weed. Obviously that isn't a dealbreaker. If you love pickles, make this pizza. It's so awesome!

Chicken Fajita Bowls

You won't miss tortillas a bit when you enjoy chicken fajitas in a bowl.

I am thrilled to share this recipe today because it's one I whipped up myself. It's nothing super innovative, by any means, but I still enjoy it and it's definitely a nice change of pace for Taco Tuesdays. Plus it isn't a boring plain chicken fajita. I'm obsessed with cilantro lime rice and try and make it as often as I can as a side, but it was the perfect base for this "burrito" bowl.

For the first time in my life, I'm having to do a little bit of a diet. I went for a yearly check up and, unfortunately, my bad cholesterol is high and my good cholesterol is low. It does run in the family, so I am a little nervous that I may be trying to change and it won't do much good. But I'm still definitely shifting what I eat, exercising, and attempting to lose the last bit of my baby weight (can you still call it baby weight after 4 years? It's a stubborn 10 lb!). I did some research and I actually do eat a good bit of what helps lower bad and raise good cholesterols. I am tracking calorie intake and snacking less. AND I'm going to be eating less red meat and pork products and may try to learn how to cook salmon - something I've never done.

It's going to be a little hard since during my last two pregnancies I really gained an aversion to chicken. I rarely crave it anymore and sometimes I do get downright nauseated by the thought of eating it, even if I do actually enjoy many dishes. It's a mind over matter thing for sure. It is another reason I was so happy to come up with this recipe. I love burrito/fajita bowls and this is a fantastic recipe to have in my arsenal.

Air Fryer Hot Wings #SundaySupper

Get ready for the easiest and best wings you'll ever have with these air fried buffalo wings!

Hello, everyone! Who is getting ready for the Super Bowl next week? Unfortunately, my Vikings didn't make it, but that's okay. It was still a really wonderful end to a great season. Can we still talk about how they barely scraped by with that 61-yd touchdown by Diggs in the Saints game?! I'm hoping the Eagles demolish the Patriots because if they are good enough to beat the Vikings, they had better beat the lousy Patriots :P Along with watching the game and enjoying the awesome commercials comes the amazing game day food! So for Sunday Supper today, all of us are sharing EASY FOOTBALL FOOD IDEAS FOR GAME DAY.

I was incredibly excited to receive an air fryer for Christmas from my husband. I first got to test it out on New Year's Eve with this amazing hot wings recipe. I literally picked the recipe last minute and modified the crap out of it because I was craving buffalo wings! Spicy wings! I took a recipe from a blog and subbed Nashville Hot Chicken seasoning that I found at Kroger in for the creole seasoning and omitted cumin altogether. The end result was the crispy, amazing wings. I wanted to eat them all. My husband was over-the-moon, claiming they were the best wings ever, and he requested I make them regularly. If you don't have an air fryer, you can still use the recipe and just cook in your preferred method.

Copycat Applebee's All-In Brunch Burgers #FantasticalFoodFight

Welcome to another Food Fight! Fantastical Food Fight is a group of food bloggers who will get a theme or ingredient each month and make some sort of variation for it. It could be traditional or nontraditional and can be found in a cookbook, on a blog, or be a blogger's own creation! For more details, check out this page.

November's theme is FAST FOOD COPYCATS and I could not be more ready to see what my fellow food fighters have in store for today's theme. I personally consider a lot of restaurants fast food even though they may not be fast. So my copycat for today is a burger I've always wanted to get at Applebee's, but never do. I am a creature of habit and cannot NOT get my favorite: the quesadilla burger! I need to make a copycat for it soon, but I had to make this All-In Brunch Burger first.

I believe the onion and bacon is cooked into the burger patty, but I don't like that. I find that just means my burgers aren't going to cook as well because they'll be sticking to the pan and then the onions won't be cooked uniformly. So I chose to cook the onions with the hashbrowns and the bacon by itself. I also am unsure if you get a choice in whether your egg yolk is hard or overeasy. No one in my household likes overeasy (except me on the rare occasion), so I just did our eggs cooked all the way through. These were an absolutely magnificent burger. Matthew and Cami both claimed that it had definitely hit top 5 for them and Nick also claimed it was one of the best burgers he had ever eaten. I thought it was pretty freaking fantastic too.

Peach Blackberry Sangria #FantasticalFoodFight

Welcome to another Food Fight! Fantastical Food Fight is a group of food bloggers who will get a theme or ingredient each month and make some sort of variation for it. It could be traditional or nontraditional and can be found in a cookbook, on a blog, or be a blogger's own creation! For more details, check out this page.

It's time again for another Food Fight and this month's theme is RUM! Today is National Rum Day and that is how the theme was chosen. The Food Fighters were not given any particular type of dish so long as it contains rum or rum flavoring. I have to admit that I struggled a little with what I wanted to make because I don't have a lot of recipes saved with rum in them and I don't make a lot of food with rum. I did have a page from the September 2016 Food Network Magazine that was for a Mix and Match Sangria recipe. So the amounts of different ingredients are from that, but the choices were mine alone.

I have had sangria once and it was many years ago, right before I got pregnant with Mason. I had a peach sangria at TGIFriday's. It was so delicious and I hands-down knew I wanted peaches in this sangria paired with white wine and white rum. Nick wanted to do all berries, so I compromised with blackberries going into the mix as well. The recipe called for superfine sugar or light brown sugar and I used vanilla sugar that I had purchased for Kasekuchen. This is a pretty strong sangria and I personally would love to try it with a sweeter wine because I am not a dry wine aficionado. Maybe a tad less rum, although everyone else loved it. The peach and blackberry with lemon was delicious though!

The cups before the Sprite was added...

Beef Fajita Nachos

Who needs fajitas in a tortilla when you can have all the fixings on a bed of nachos!

I love beef fajitas and I love nachos. I took an older recipe from the archives that used steak for a steak fajita feel. I have always disliked how the steak falls off of the chips so easily though and decided...you know what...I'm using ground beef. I also diced the bell peppers and onion instead of slicing them into strips. These changes made the nachos so much easier to eat and I appreciated that so freaking much. I kept it simple and topped mine with just sour cream, but jalapenos, pico de gallo, and guacamole would all be awesome on top too.

Hazelnut Chip Ice Cream

This homemade ice cream is smooth, creamy, and wonderful!

I received an ice cream maker attachment for my mixer almost 3 years ago for my birthday. Admittedly, I don't use it as often as I should or as often as I'd like. I have been pretty intrigued by recipes that use coffee creamer lately because of the versatile flavors you can put into whatever you're making. I decided I wanted to take a base recipe for ice cream and sub in some coffee creamer. My first thought was to go with hazelnut because I love hazelnut creamer and I had some in my fridge. I subbed some of my milk with the creamer and the end result was wonderful. I loved how smooth and creamy this ice cream was...unreal, I tell you!

Pumpkin Pecan Salted Caramel Rolls

Salted caramel meets pumpkin meets pecans in this fabulous breakfast recipe

I took my mom's classic breakfast recipe and added pumpkin pie spice, pecans, and sea salt to the mix and it was absolutely the best decision ever. These caramel rolls - whether they are this version or the original - they don't last long at all. The bread dough is fluffy and oh my goodness gracious, fresh out of the oven, they are heavenly. Not too much longer and it will be peppermint time, so I'm trying to get all my pumpkin cravings sated.

I absolutely loved how the bottom of the pan looked before adding the rolls!

Halloween Swirled Sugar Cookies

You can find me on Knoxville Moms Blog today sharing this recipe for Halloween Swirled Sugar Cookies!

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Chocolate Cupcakes with Dulce de Leche Buttercream and Candied Bacon #Choctoberfest

Moist chocolate cupcakes with light and airy caramel frosting and a candied bacon garnish

I have been so excited to share these cupcakes because they were literally a labor of love. My eldest baby turned 9 earlier this year and he asked me to make him chocolate mint caramel bacon cupcakes for his birthday party with his friends. No, I'm not joking. I didn't think they would ALL work together, but I did figure that I could throw out the mint and come up with something.

I took an old tried and true chocolate cupcake recipe, altered a buttercream recipe that I loved, and made a batch of candied bacon. I thought they worked very well together. The cupcake portion is fluffy, moist, and so dang good. The caramel buttercream is made with dulce de leche and lighter than air. The candied bacon...really honestly I don't even need to talk about it at all. It's candied bacon.

They got huge compliments from all his friends and some of the parents too. I was really happy about it because one of my all-time favorite things to do is make someone their birthday cake. I like to make something that they will absolutely love. Unfortunately, my turd of a kid decided that he didn't want to eat them. I honestly cannot remember what the reason was now...it may have been because the bacon touched the frosting, but it was definitely something silly like that. LOL. Such a moody little guy.

And at the bottom of this post you will find more recipes from the #Choctoberfest bloggers! Tomorrow is the last day to enter the giveaway and the last day of #Choctoberfest 2016.

Eggplant Marinara

This fabulous sauce is unbelievable, hearty, and rich and the eggplant soaks up the flavors around it!

This marinara can be made with ground beef or without, so even though I have beef in mine, I tagged it with the meatless tag because it can be made without! I have been trying to convince the hubby and two eldest kiddos that eggplant can be good. I had a failed soggy fried eggplant sandwich recipe that the kids will never let me live down...ever. I am obsessed with eggplant parmesan and I'm still trying to find the perfect recipe for that. But if I make something with eggplant at this point, I have to make sure it tastes incredible and I did it!

I slow-simmered the sauce and made sure it was seasoned well. It was so delicious and my family didn't realize it was eggplant! Nick assumed it was zucchini, so I definitely was really excited about how I was able to trick them all into eating it and NOT complaining. If you want to hide it a little more discretely, you can easily puree the marinara (without the ground beef) with an immersion blender! I personally loved the texture of the eggplant.

RAGÚ Homestyle Faux Baked Roasted Garlic & Tomato Spaghetti #ad

Hello, Fantastical friends! I picked up a jar of the new RAGÚ® Homestyle pasta sauce to make a new recipe of baked spaghetti. I am so excited to be sharing this new recipe with y'all that I whipped up for my family in a jiffy the other night (Thursday night to be exact). I am definitely no stranger to baked spaghetti, but I thought the new pasta sauce with the promise of hugging the pasta needed a new (and better) recipe!

I definitely prefer a hearty spaghetti sauce, so it really was a no-brainer for me to test out the new RAGÚ® pasta sauce. One of my new favorite things to do is to throw roasted grape tomatoes into any pasta dish - whether that be spaghetti, alfredo, pesto, etc. Another new favorite of mine is to do faux baked casseroles. Basically, I will cook all my ingredients completely and throw them into a baking dish. Then I simply top whatever it is with cheese and put it under my broiler. It comes out looking and tasting like it's been baked and it is wonderful!!

The new RAGÚ® pasta sauce comes in five different flavors. I opted for the roasted garlic, but I also purchased the meat sauce as well. I will definitely be picking up the four cheese, mushroom, and traditional sauces soon too! All of them sound incredible and I love to try new pasta sauces out. Since roasted tomatoes have been my thing lately, I thought that I really needed to do roasted garlic as well. Everything roasted! I tossed my grape tomatoes with salt, pepper, basil, and olive oil to kind of match the flavorings of the sauce a little, so the tomatoes did not stand out so much or overpower the sauce. The sauce itself is rich, hearty, and so flavorful. It's definitely one of my all-time favorite sauces. The roasted garlic sauce is just plain good. The roasted tomatoes were the perfect compliment to the RAGÚ® Homestyle Thick and Hearty Roasted Garlic pasta sauce.

I love that RAGÚ® is calling their new line "Homestyle" and love even more that they say it is "simmered in tradition". Spaghetti has always been my most favorite meal. Growing up with a stepdad whose heritage was Italian meant we had a lot of Italian meals. A lot. But I never got sick of it. As I got older, I definitely tried my hardest to find a good homemade spaghetti sauce. I do have a few great recipes, but I admit that with three kids now, I am as busy as ever and prepared sauce is the way to go. I think that a homecooked meal doesn't always have to be from scratch and it certainly doesn't have to be a super complicated recipe. I think it's so important to just sit around the table with your family and enjoy each other's company over a meal made in your own kitchen. Those are the homestyle meals and it really does mean the world to your loved ones. 

I, myself, have made spaghetti a million times for my family. Probably more times than anything else I've ever made and my children (the oldest two - little guy doesn't talk to that extent quite yet) raved about how amazing it was and how it was the best spaghetti and meal they had ever had. They say that about a lot of foods I make, really, but I could tell this time was just a little different. I'm really glad that they enjoyed this recipe because I certainly did. A big shout out to RAGÚ® for sponsoring this post and inspiring me pass on my family traditions, not to mention, for making such a great product that not only tastes good, but has no artificial colors or flavoring. Y'all have to stop by the RAGÚ® recipe page and check out all the wonderful recipes there!

Biscoff Mug Cake

A single serving of cookie butter cake ready in a pinch - dreams do come true!

I was prepared to share a different biscoff recipe but decided to hold off and make it one more time to tweak it a tad more. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to share this little gem that I made to replace the other recipe. I hunted for the recipe that I had written down (I took a base mug cake recipe compared from a few different places and tweaked them to make this Biscoff version) and discovered that it was a post-it with no notes, just ingredients. So to be 100% sure that everything was good to go, I made it again. The first time, I swirled my Biscoff in. Today, I mixed it in with the wet ingredients. Both ways are fine. Both ways are tasty.

I'm still fairly new to Biscoff and have really loved the few recipes I've made using it so far. I think cinnamon and white chocolate go together with Biscoff very well, so that's why they ended up in this little mug cake. :) You will definitely have to adjust the cooking time according to your microwave. 50 seconds is a great place to start until you are able to get a good reading on how long it will take in your own microwave. Mine is a 1000-watt microwave and I did mine 60 seconds and then 20. It probably would've been fine at 60 but I did the extra to be certain.