Best of 2018

Another year, come and gone.

Which means, it’s time to rehash and review the best recipes of 2018! (And if you want to take a trip down memory lane, you can check out the most popular posts from 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009 (phew).

This post is always a fun one to make, as often times the most popular posts will surprise even me! It’s also interesting to see just how differently things perform on the blog versus on Instagram.

2018 was a year of growth… literally. I feel like my posts grew longer and my standards grew higher, which led to fewer published posts than any previous year. But what do they say, quality over quantity, right? I find myself testing and retesting recipes more, reshooting dishes more often because the first batch of photos just doesn’t meet my standards. Am I getting pickier with age? It sure seems so. And yet, I feel like this year’s batch of recipes include some of my best yet.

I’m excited for what 2019 has in store, including a brand new look for this little blog of mine (now you know how I spend my Christmas vacation, lol). I’m full of delicious ideas, in fact I’ve already shot a few recipes for January that I know you’ll just love! I’m also planning some non-food posts including a look back at our trip to Portugal this past fall (one of my favorite places I’ve ever traveled) as well as lots more free downloads and printables for your enjoyment! I’ve also made it a personal goal to me better about sending out my newsletter regularly (so if you’re not subscribed, definitely get on board as I plan to send out some exclusive content and recipes that only email subscribers will receive!)

Lofty goals, sure, but I’m ever so optimistic about the year to come!

(Also, because I don’t mention it here often enough, if you have’t yet joined our facebook group you’re really missing out! It’s becoming a tight-knit community, not to mention a valuable resource and for anyone looking for cooking tips and recipe inspiration. Join us, won’t you?)

2018 by the numbers:

• Posts published: 77
• Comments received: 1,209
• Words written: 68,581
• Photos taken: 16,493
• Most popular: Soy Sauce Noodles from 2015 is still going strong!
• Most commented: Ultimate Chocolate Cake with Fudge Frosting (79 comments)
• Most liked: Nutella Brownie Mousse Cake (8,173 likes!)
• Most pinned: Soft Amaretti Cookies (1.6k repins)

Without further adieu, here are most popular posts from 2018 (be sure to click through to see all of them, including your favorites from this year, from all time, and the most popular images from Instagram!)

Your Favorites From This Year

These are the most popular posts published in 2018, based on total pageviews. I limited this group to only posts published this year, since total views across all posts is usually quite different (see the next category if you’re curious about that!)

1. Ultimate Chocolate Cake with Fudge Frosting / 2. Blue Moon Milk / 3. Out of This World Cocoa Brownies / 4. Soft Amaretti Cookies / 5. Blueberry Mousse Cakes with Mirror Glaze / 6. Homemade Elderberry Syrup / 7. Crunchy Peanut Butter and Chocolate Tart / 8. Cheesy Chicken Parmesan Pasta Bake / 9. Puff Pancakes

(more…)

from Love and Olive Oil http://bit.ly/2s2ieoV

12 Easy Dutch Oven Recipes

Homemade Hot Drink Mixes: 3 Ways

Homemade hot drink mixes make a perfect holiday gift, in 3 delicious flavors including sakura matcha latte, salted vanilla hot cocoa, and unicorn white hot chocolate. Just add hot milk!

If you’re looking for a cute and clever homemade gift idea, these sweet drink mixes are just the ticket! Packaged in cute glass jars with colorful gift tags (free printable download at the bottom of this post!) they’ll warm the hearts (and stomachs) of anyone lucky enough to receive them.

For these adorable and giftable drink mixes, I took 3 of my most popular drink recipes (including the infamous unicorn hot chocolate as well as my sakura matcha latte and salted vanilla hot chocolate) and remade them as powdered drink mixes that are super easy to make (the hardest part is tracking down the various powders and jars) and perfect for gifting!

As easy as the mixes themselves are to make, they are even easier to turn into a delightful hot beverage: just add hot milk! You can even use almond, soy, or coconut milks… whatever your heart desires (do note the unicorn mix does have milk powder in it so it is not dairy free).

Personally I like to mix the powder with about 1 ounce of the hot milk first (you’ll make something like a thin paste), and then whisk in the remaining milk. This keeps the mix from getting clumpy (this is especially helpful for the salted vanilla cocoa, the others dissolve quite a bit more easily).

For iced versions, you can also pour over ice (I love me an iced matcha in the summer), or even blend it up with some ice or vanilla ice cream (hello frozen hot chocolate!)

The unicorn hot chocolate was perhaps the trickiest recipe to convert to powdered form, since it originally called for pink gel food coloring as well as white chocolate syrup.

I played with a few different options for the powdered coloring, including powdered food color (which is oh so messy and hard to come by in pink), as well as ground beet powder and raspberry powder. But what ultimately gave me the best color was powdered dragonfruit. It does make for a slightly speckled appearance, but the cotton candy pink is exactly what I was going for. The quantity in the recipe is so minimal that it really doesn’t affect the flavor of the drink at all (the same was true for the beet powder, thankfully, and you could certainly substitute that if you prefer, it just results in more of a light red color vs a cotton candy pink).

(more…)

from Love and Olive Oil https://ift.tt/2SbECaV

Sweet Potato Hash Browns

Veggie Dippers with Yogurt Dill Sauce

Chewy Molasses Chocolate Chip Cookies

Robustly flavored and delightfully chewy, these sugar-coated molasses cookies are studded with finely shaved chocolate for a unique twist on a classic holiday cookie.

When you can’t decide between a richly spiced molasses cookie and a classic chocolate chip, this recipe is for you! These cookies are so simple to whip up, with an intense gingerbread flavor and delightfully soft chew, they’ll be your new go-to holiday recipe for years to come!

Ok, so these really shouldn’t be called chocolate chip cookies, but chocolate fleck cookies or shaved chocolate cookies just doesn’t have the same ring to it. They are first and foremost a chewy molasses cookie… with some finely grated chocolate mixed in.

Ideally you want to grate the chocolate with a cheese grater, or shave flakes off the bar using a sharp knife (don’t chop… shave). These thin flakes of chocolate will almost melt into the cookie as it bakes, giving it a rich depth of flavor without interrupting the chewy goodness.

It’s the same way I infused extra chocolate into my salt and pepper sable cookies: again, the texture of the cookie is best when uninterrupted by chips.

(more…)

from Love and Olive Oil https://ift.tt/2CgOivp

Best Christmas Cookie Recipes

Our list of best Christmas cookie recipes has something for everyone, from soft gingerbread cookies to buckeyes with a healthy spin!

Are you looking for the best Christmas cookie recipes for your cookie tray? If you know Alex and me, you know we’re into healthy cookie recipes…or really, healthier cookies! Here are our top 5 best Christmas cookie recipes that we think would be perfect for your Christmas cookie tray! They all have a healthier spin…but you’d never know it!

Related: Eat these cookies with our Gingerbread hot chocolate!

What’s a healthy cookie? Or…healthier cookie

So what’s a healthy cookie? Honestly, we wish there were a better word than healthy. Because cookies in themselves are not healthy! Alex and I like to use a few strategies for making healthy– that is, healthier cookie recipes! Here’s our approach:

• Use nutrient dense real food ingredients. We love incorporating nutrient dense ingredients to counteract the typical loads of butter, white flour and refined sugar. Almond butter, peanut butter, oats, almond flour, and maple syrup all make appearances in our best Christmas cookie recipes.
• Amp the flavor. We use spices and natural flavors to bring in big flavor, instead of relying just on sugar. For example, there are abundant chai spices in our snowball cookies, or lots of gingerbread spices and molasses in our soft gingerbread cookies.
• Use just enough sugar. For every Christmas cookie recipe we make, we adjust the sugar content so that it tastes amazing: not too sweet, but just right.

And even though they’re healthier, we hope you’ll find all our best Christmas cookie recipes are just plain delicious. Here are our top favorites:

Soft Gingerbread Cookies

First up in our best Christmas cookie recipes: these soft gingerbread cookies! Growing up, my family used to take my sister and me to a holiday display at Christmas, a life-sized department store window display filled with animated characters. My sister and I would wait in expectation for the very end so we could have huge, soft gingerbread cookies. Ever since then I’ve been on a quest for perfect soft gingerbread cookies: spicy, soft, and gooey. And I think we’ve found it! In this healthier version of gingerbread, we’ve used almond butter to stand in for much of the butter, and thrown in some wheat flour a few extra nutrients. A bit of applesauce helps keep them soft. And this gingerbread cookie recipe is finished with turbinado sugar instead of icing, which is a more natural sugar (plus, it’s much easier than icing!).

Pecan Butter Millionaire Bars

These pecan butter millionaire bars have 3 layers: shortbread, caramelized maple pecans, and chocolate! This easy vegan dessert recipe couldn’t be tastier. For our version, we’ve transformed millionaire bars into a vegan dessert that’s a bit lighter than the original. The shortbread layer is simply flour, coconut oil, and maple syrup. And instead of a caramel layer, it’s got caramelized pecans! Nutrient rich pecans are caramelized on the stovetop with a bit of maple syrup in a skillet, then blended in a food processor into a pecan butter. The maple pecan butter filling is so tasty, and much more nutrient dense than the typical caramel. And then of course, top with semi sweet chocolate! It’s an incredibly crowd pleasing dessert and one of our best Christmas cookie recipes!

Chai Spice Almond Snowball Cookies

These almond snowball cookies are spiced Christmas cookies with a twist: they’re naturally gluten free, made with almond flour and cozy chai spices! This rich chai spice cookie that got rave reviews from friends and family, and now many readers! The cardamom is the star of the show here; it’s what gives chai spice its familiar zing! We’ve used coconut sugar an alternative sweetener that’s a bit lower on the glycemic scale; you can feel free to substitute brown or white sugar.

These chai spice almond snowball cookies are made using almond flour (ground almonds), which we like to use in our naturally gluten free desserts. Some grocery stories carry both almond flour and almond meal, so make sure to look for almond flour. Almond flour is ground finer and made from blanched almonds, which have no skins (almond meal is courser and made from almonds with skins). Even though they’re made entirely of almonds, these cookies are light and crumbly: undoubtedly one of our best Christmas cookie recipes!

Perfect Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

OK, so homemade peanut butter cups aren’t really cookies…but hear us out! These peanut butter cups are so delicious, and homemade candies and goodies are what the holidays are all about! They’d be perfect on a cookie tray or as handmade Christmas treats. How to make perfect homemade peanut butter cups? Basically, take tempered chocolate and let it harden around a peanut butter filling in a mini muffin tin. For our filling, we added maple syrup to peanut butter and a tiny bit of powdered sugar. Then to bring in a complexity, we added some allspice and vanilla extract. After he tasted these, Alex exclaimed: “It’s even better than Reese’s and Justin’s peanut butter cups!” Want to see if you agree? Head over to the recipe to see why it’s one of our best Christmas cookie recipes.

Healthy Peanut Butter Buckeye Balls Recipe

This healthy peanut butter buckeye balls recipe takes the classic chocolate peanut butter buckeyes and adds a healthy twist!  Buckeyes weren’t a big part of my childhood growing up in Minnesota, but they’re certainly the rage here in Indiana around the holidays. Essentially peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate, they’re little bites of heaven. Any other buckeye fans out there? Instead of the traditional butter and sugar, in this healthy buckeye balls recipe we’ve substituted Medjool dates. Medjool dates are large, chewy and sweet dates that are used to make natural sweets like Larabars and raw brownies. Add a little peanut butter, and voila — instant buckeye filling! Dipped in a little chocolate, these little bites taste very similar to the original, but without the butter and refined sugar. They’re certainly not a health food, but they’re more natural than most of the treats out there this time of year!

We hope you enjoy our best Christmas cookie recipes! Here are a few more resources from around the web:

• 81 Festive Christmas Cookie Recipes | Bon Appetit
• 25 Best Holiday Cookies Recipes | Two Peas and Their Pod

A Couple Cooks - Healthy, Whole Food, Vegetarian Recipes

from A Couple Cooks https://ift.tt/2zUv0dK

Raspberry Amaretti Cookies

My favorite soft amaretti cookies get a bright and fruity twist with the addition of freeze-dried raspberries.

Almond and raspberry make for a perfect pairing, these luscious little cookies are proof of that. The punch of vibrant raspberry flavor comes from ground up freeze-dried raspberries, which offer an intense flavor without adding any extra moisture.

In follow up to last week’s soft amaretti cookie recipe, I thought I’d offer up this unique variation: raspberry amaretti!

It’s basically the exact same recipe with the addition of ground up freeze-dried raspberries.

But that one little change makes a huge difference. I honestly can’t decide if I love the originals better or this bright and fruity variation (I’ll have one of each, please… don’t make me decide).

In fact, these turned out so well I’m tempted to try more variations. Blueberry, maybe? Or what about a chocolate version? Maybe I’ll work on that one for next year!

Sure, they look a little bit like smoldering meteors from mars (or ready to hatch dinosaur eggs), but taste a heck of a lot better (I assume, I’ve never actually tasted a smoldering meteor).

(more…)

from Love and Olive Oil https://ift.tt/2SIYy4L

Roasted Tomato White Cheddar Mac and Cheese

Nutella Brownie Mousse Cake with Milk Chocolate Mirror Glaze

Pillowy milk chocolate and Nutella mousse surrounds a rich cocoa brownie slathered with creamy Nutella. If that’s not impressive enough, the whole thing is enrobed in a gorgeous milk chocolate mirror glaze and decorated with an edible gold splatter.

This stunner of a cake is sure to impress your friends and family this holiday season, and with some well-planned time management, is really much easier than you might think.

I’ve been wanting to make a chocolate mirror glaze ever since I made those blueberry mirror glazed cakes this past summer (can you blame me for wanting to mirror-glaze everything? Too pretty!)

As it turns out, you can easily make milk chocolate or dark chocolate mirror glaze simply by swapping out the white chocolate. Everything else about the recipe is identical, as is the process.

While I normally say, when it comes to chocolate, go dark or go home, in this case milk chocolate is the star (and I wouldn’t have it any other way). Paired with Nutella, it makes for a uniquely sweet dessert with layers of contrasting textures and complimentary flavors.

Just look at those luscious layers, each one good on its own, but great in combination.

A rich cocoa brownie slathered with a layer of creamy Nutella.

A light and airy milk chocolate Nutella mousse. If there were such thing as a Nutella cloud, this is what it’d taste like.

And finally, a stunning milk chocolate mirror glaze to finish it off, complete with gold splatter detail and milk chocolate flakes around the edges.

(more…)

from Love and Olive Oil https://ift.tt/2B8pjZe

Perfect Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

Homemade Gingerbread Hot Chocolate

White Cheddar Gougères with Apple Butter

Like fluffy, cheesy clouds with crispy toasted cheese bottoms, these savory white cheddar cheese puffs make a perfect party appetizer! They’re easier to prepare than you might think, and freeze beautifully for a perfect make-ahead party snack.

These cheesy little puffs will perk up any party! Serve piled on a platter with bowls of homemade apple butter or tomato peach jam for a sweet and savory combination you’ll simply adore.

When it comes to party appetizers, cheese is king.

But instead of setting out a boring old cheese plate, why not make something a little more… unique?

These white cheddar gougères (if I ever spell that right on the first try, accent and all, it will be a miracle) are like a savory little puff of pastry heaven. While cheese puffs are traditionally made with Gruyère, Comté or Emmentaler cheese (more accents, oh dear), we opted instead for the accent-less but no less delicious sharp white cheddar.

Just be careful, these puffs are so light and airy and flavorful you might find you’ve just devoured half a dozen of them without a second thought.

Cheese puffs are lovely served with a lightly spiced apple butter (for the same reason that cheddar crusts for apple pies are so popular, the flavor combination is simply smashing). If you wanted to go a more savory route you could serve them with a bowl of homemade marinara sauce or even something like a sour cream dip.

I mean, when it comes to dip options, why stop at one?

(more…)

from Love and Olive Oil https://ift.tt/2zJDXq2

Gingerbread Oatmeal Pancakes

Raspberry Braided Bread Recipe

Soft Amaretti Cookies

Soft amaretti cookies are quite unlike their crispy cousins, so don’t get the two confused. With a chewy exterior and a soft, marzipan-like middle, they’re a treat for almond lovers everywhere.

Amaretti morbidi is what they’re known in Italy, morbidi meaning ‘soft’ in Italian (not morbid, I promise these are anything but). They’re naturally gluten-free, made with little more than almond flour, sugar and egg white with a splash of almond extract to amp up the almond flavor.

This is a recipe originally posted back in 2013, and one of my all-time favorites, based on a cookie I enjoyed during our honeymoon in Italy. Not to be confused with the crunchy amaretti croccanti you buy by the bag (might I suggest making your next pumpkin pie with those?) these soft amaretti are chewy on the outside and almost marzipan-like in the middle. In other words, simply divine.

While the old recipe always got rave reviews, I’d gotten a few comments over the years noting that the cookies spread much more than the photo, and, if you know me, you know that I am very bothered by recipes that don’t behave as they should.

Being that it’s one of my favorite cookie recipes I figured it was time for an update (and while most bloggers would just update the old post, I’m a sentimental sap and want to keep my old photos and words preserved for posterity. Google probably won’t like the fact that I’m publishing this update as an entirely new post, but, whatever.)

So I set out to figure out the mystery of the spreading cookies.

(more…)

from Love and Olive Oil https://ift.tt/2DVJ6hM