This week my favorite nearby winery, Clos LaChance, was having a sale on a bunch of their wines. Naturally, I felt the need to stop by the winery yesterday to nab a couple of bottles on my way to the gym. Can't let a sale of yummy local wine pass me by! Besides buying bottles of grenache and pinot noir, I also got a bottle of their sweet late harvest semillon nectar white wine with one thing in mind: dessert last night. I had a couple of ripe peaches hanging out in my fruit basket ready to be eaten, and had the brilliant idea of baking them with some of the nectar wine, sugar, and cinnamon - because I love to sprinkle cinnamon on nearly everything - then pairing them with vanilla frozen yogurt. Oh.my.gosh. It was SO DELICIOUS and such an easy dessert to make. First I sliced the ... [Read More]
dessert recipes
Banana Pumpkin Pie Bowl
Hi friends! Hope that your weekend has been great. Here are the highlights of my past couple of days: My Friday morning began with a quick hour hike with Harley at our favorite nearby park. The hike became a bit adventurous when we found ourselves in a standoff with a fox - and I must say, my dog looks a lot like a fox! We all stared at each other for awhile, and then the fox ran into the fields and crouched down. I wasn't sure if it was planning on attacking us or if it was just scared himself, but I didn't want to take any chances, so we turned around. I snapped a grainy pic of him with my phone: The park is crawling with ground squirrels that Harley has always been interested in, but ever since she caught one a few weeks ago and it squeaked for its life, she's OBSESSED. It's annoying ... [Read More]
Dark Chocolate Drizzled Strawberry Cheesecake Graham Cracker Mini Pies
Happy Easter! Hope that everyone had a great weekend and holiday. Boy, do I have a fun dessert recipe to share with you all... One of the best parts about California living for a foodie like myself is all of the local produce that's available. As you may recall, living in San Diego I frequently talked abut weekend Little Italy farmers' market trips. And now, living in a small town outside of San Jose, little farm stands are plentiful. I'm obviously loving it! The idea of a dessert featuring strawberries first entered my mind upon spotting cartons of the fruit at a market last week. Strawberries are one of my favorite fruits, and I can almost never resist getting them. My original thought was to do parfait cups with a cream cheese dip, drizzled chocolate, and graham cracker crumbs, but ... [Read More]
Chocolate Bark with Pistachios & Dried Cranberries
Hi friends! This Friday night in my household is totally relaxed. I am still under the weather with an upper respiratory thing, and my hubby had a tooth pulled earlier today, so we both felt like being couch potatoes. Our evening has consisted of me making us a dinner of homemade tomato soup, getting some fro yo, and now we're currently watching a college football game. Even Harley's joining in on the laziness and has been snoozing. Between a workout first thing this AM, work, a long walk with Harley, and physical therapy while feeling crappy, I think I've earned some chill time tonight! ;-) Before officially moving forward from the holidays, I want to share one final dessert I made during Christmastime - chocolate bark with pistachios and dried cranberries: I found the recipe on ... [Read More]
Crispy Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Treats
''Leave your drugs in the chemist's pot if you can heal the patient with food." - Hippocrates A work event today took me out of my home office and near the beach... and a Sprout's farmers market. I obviously had to make a stop there to see what foods caught my eye. Besides picking up some spirulina tablets (I just recently discussed algae here) and getting excited to find my favorite kind of apples, Macintosh, for the first time since I've lived in California, I spotted brown rice syrup and immediately knew what I'd use it for: This recipe is from Alicia Silverstone's book, The Kind Diet. I've played around with some of her meal recipes and haven't been crazy about any yet, but I really like the desserts I've made from the book. All of her recipes are vegan, but I always seem to sub a ... [Read More]
Pumpkin Muffins with Pumpkin Cream Cheese Frosting
Lately I've been borderline obsessed with eating pumpkin - everything from pumpkin smoothies, pancakes, and ice cream, to smearing pumpkin cream cheese or butter on my toast and sprinkling pumpkin pie spice on anything my heart desires. Pumpkin is such a quintessential fall-time flavor. The funny thing is that I never really liked it until last fall, and my how my taste buds have changed! Last week I was talking to my cousin Noelle, and she requested I come up with a pumpkin cupcake recipe with cream cheese frosting. Well, you don't have to ask me twice! ;-) In the midst of baking my pumpkin goodies, I decided that I wasn't really making cupcakes, but more so muffins. I then proceeded to get myself all confused in figuring out what the heck the real difference is between muffins and ... [Read More]