Baking with Blondie

Spring striped yellow and white cake, frosted in a soft and sweet Almond Cream Cheese Frosting, and speckled just like a beautiful Easter Egg - such a perfect dessert for Easter or any Spring celebration!  Easter is only a couple days away! My family celebrates it in countless ways, most of them purely spiritual, but I do love myself a fun Easter egg hunt. Each year, my family has a tradition of having a little backyard Easter Egg hunt for the grandkids on my side of the family. We have 6 grandkids (one more on the way from my big sister), so each year I feel like it grows into more of a celebration together - and lots more eggs to hide! 

Broccoli, bacon, sunflower seeds, craisins - all the amazing ingredients you need to make everyone's new favorite side dish or salad!  I'm not even kidding when I say it will be everyone's new favorite. I knew right away that when I made this salad, it would immediately be tucked away into our make-this-as-much-as-possible stash. The prep is super simple, and the only cooking needed is crisping up that bacon. I've learned that laying all the bacon slices on a cookie sheet, and baking them for about 10-20 minutes on 400 degrees (turning once), you get the most perfectly crisp bacon without any effort at all. But before we get too distracted by the yummy bacon, let's dive into the rest of this amazing salad.

Perfectly cooked chicken, tender veggies, and soft tortellini in a flavorful creamy soup - easy enough for a weeknight meal, and delicious enough to keep on repeat in your meal rotation for months to come!  As many of you noticed (and emailed/messaged me about, lots! Sorry!), I have been MIA for a while (since last May/June). For anyone wondering if taking a little break after having a baby is a good idea, the answer is a resounding Y.E.S. Especially from blogging and all that comes along with it...

Oh hey there, friends! It's been a while, eh? I thought I'd break the silence with something that is not necessarily a go-to easy dinner recipe, but something I have made pretty often for our little guys. I don't often do posts like this, but figured it would be super helpful to those who are in the same boat!  Homemade baby food is super easy to make, and saves A TON of money for our little family. I'll share with you all the tricks I've learned along the way (after doing this method through both my two little boy's puree-feeding stages!), and even a step-by-step tutorial on how to get from those lovely whole veggies, to small lovely cubes of veggie puree; as easy to serve up as opening a jar of baby food (except for a fraction of the cost). 

Happy Monday, everyone! We're all at the beginning of a brand new week. These last few weeks of May for us are jam-packed with everything I don't want to have to deal with next month when the baby comes. I've crammed it all into May, and left June completely wide open in case this little guy comes early, or I need to slow things down again...

I have been making cupcakes and frosting since as long as I can remember, but my love for baking these little cupcake beauties didn't really start until my husband was in law school and I had more time to play around with the flavors. I fell hard for the cupcake, and love making them to this day almost every weekend for cake/cupcake orders.  I rarely, though, share my recipes. Why? I like to keep the mystery alive in my baking! I like to have the magical recipe that works every time, that makes people's mouths water, and keeps them coming back for more. However... 

I remember the first time I had spaghetti squash. It was after my Grandma June's funeral viewing, and it had been quite the long day. We stumbled over to my grandma's empty house afterwards, and were pretty exhausted. I remember thinking just how hungry we were, and how I wished we would have packed more things to munch on afterwards. When we walked through the door to my grandma's house, a lovely smell filled our senses. My sister, the paleo-tastic queen, had made a spaghetti squash turkey lasagna bake for everyone to enjoy for dinner. It smelled amazing, and although I had sworn off spaghetti squash altogether, I filled my plate and took my first bite. Although she didn't include the cheesy layer like I did in this recipe below, hers tasted just awesome. I was sold on spaghetti squash forever, and knew right then I would need to recreate this heavenly dish at home for my boys someday. 

Posts will probably sneak down to only two a week here on Baking with Blondie for a while - we are only about 8 weeks away from baby time! My pregnancies (well, the first and only prior to this one) have been super mild in the first trimester, but SUPER insane the last trimester. So things will definitely slow down, but I promise I'm still here, still trying new recipes for this little food blog of mine!  Easy dinner recipes have been my middle name throughout this entire pregnancy. I love being able to enjoy something quick and easy, without having to be in the kitchen standing for too long. Meals like this one have been my complete go-to sanity, and my family eats them up quickly, so I'd say we've found something we're going to stick to for now. 

Guys. I did it.  I made fish.  I HATE HATE HATE HATE fish. With a passion.  But decided to make it for a good reason; the best reason, in fact: my husband's favorite food on the planet is fish. Whenever we go out to eat, he'll order something with fish in it. He LOVES fish. And I never ever cook it because, well, it's fish. It smells like fish. It looks like fish. It tastes like fish. And this preggo Momma can't handle it.  But I decided to brave the unknown. Ryan helped me make the sauce, and I braved the fish. Something awesome happened...

I'm not usually a fan at all of lemon in pasta. Countless of recipes have been tried where lemon is the star of the pasta dish or the chicken dish, and after trying the recipe, there was always what I felt was too much lemon. It was completely overpowering, and I would have to spend the next 10 minutes or so trying to figure out how to bring everything back in balance. I bomb recipes all the time, and figuring out how to save it is just part of the game at dinnertime!  This recipe, however, has completely changed my mind. I wanted to give lemon pasta one more go, and was happily proven wrong! THIS IS AMAZING STUFF, folks. Let's jump right in, shall we?