OK. You’re not going to believe this but I actually made one of the (literally) thousands of things I’ve pinned on Pinterest. And you know what? It was fantastic. Nothing at all like my yarn ball fail.

I was in charge of making desserts for the rehearsal dinner at my sister’s last weekend. My go-to chocolate chip filled brownies were an obvious choice. Every likes them and no one would complain. But we had a big group coming and I wanted to make something else.

I procrastinated and ran out of time/was too lazy for a grocery store run, so I decided to use my rapidly blackening bananas to make a recipe from Pass the Sushi: banana bread with Nutella swirls (check out her site for a printable version of the recipe and way better pictures. Or check out Lemon and Anchovies, the original source of the recipe).

I tweaked the recipe a bit because:

1. I wanted Ellie to be able to eat it without worrying about her choking on nuts.
2. My sister hates coconut.
3. I am a chocolate fiend.

Here’s my version of the recipe:

Banana Bread with Nutella Swirls

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tbs cocoa powder
• 3/4 cups sugar
• 1 tspn baking soda
• 1/2 tspn salt
• 3 ripe, dark brown bananas
• 1/4 cup yogurt
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 6 tbs unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1 tspn vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup Nutella
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a loaf pan with nonstick spray (or butter and dust with flour).

In a large bowl, combine flour, cocoa, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the mashed banana with the yogurt, eggs, butter, and vanilla. Gently add the wet mixture into the dry mixture and stir about 10 times. The batter will be thick and lumpy. Fold in the chocolate chips.

In a microwave safe bowl, heat the Nutella for about 15 seconds, stir, and microwave for another 15 to make the Nutella smooth. Set aside.

Pour half of the batter into the prepared loaf pan. Spoon half of the Nutella over the batter-filled pan and, using a butter knife, swirl the Nutella.

Pour in the remaining batter and repeat the Nutella swirl with the remaining Nutella.

Bake for about 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, not including any hot melty Nutella goodness. Cool loaves completely. If using a metal pan, remove from pan after 20 minutes. If disposable pans, just allow the bread to cool in the pans.

Slice and serve.

When I tell you this bread is ridiculously moist and almost unbearably delicious, I am not kidding. In fact, it was so delicious it transformed my sister into some sort of weird goblin-like creature. It took me a little while to figure out who she looked like, but I think I got it pretty spot on.

Banana bread with Nutella swirls + my sister = Gollum from Lord of the Rings.

Am I right or am I right?

On a slightly unrelated note, would anyone be interested in reading more posts like this? Since I have an endless amount of pins I was considering making my attempts at them (both successes and failures) a running column. Let me know in the comments if this is something you’d be interested in seeing or if you could care less about my attempts at craftiness.

Gollum source

Did you know that August 10th is National S’more Day? Yeah, I didn’t either, but any excuse to eat chocolate is a good one in my book!

No dessert screams summertime more than s’mores. They automatically bring to mind the crackle and smell of a camp fire (and I almost start swatting away imaginary bugs).

I do get bored of the same old thing though. So I hunted around a little for new interpretations of an old classic. Here are some of the yummy treats I found (click the corresponding description below the picture for recipes!):

1 mini cups via A Wedding Story / 2 cake in a jar via How Sweet It Is/ 3 chocolate covered via Jen Loves Kev / 4 cupcakes via Ai Bake Cake / 5 cookie bars via Lovin’ From the Oven / 6 pie via The New York Times Magazine

My mouth was pretty much watering when I finished this essential “research,” so I decided I absolutely had to make some s’mores for Samantha’s post-camp snack (making one for myself too, obvi). I decided the quickest, coolest and easiest option would be the little chocolate dipped sandwiches. But I decided to do them my own way.

Ingredients:

• one graham cracker for each sandwich
• chocolate chips
• marshmallows
• olive oil
• sprinkles

Since it’s so insanely hot out, I was not about to turn on my oven. And forget about an open fire when I’m home alone with my little bean. Lord knows what trouble she’d get us into! Instead, I turned to the next best thing: my toaster oven.

I lined up the ingredients on the tray and baked them at 400°F for a few minutes—as soon as they started smelling roasty and toasty (those are technical terms), I checked on them. When I took them out, they looked like this:

The graham crackers were toasted, the chocolate chips were beginning to melt and the marshmallows were nice and browned. They smelled soooo delicious. Next step? Sandwiching them.

Not thinking (as usual) I grabbed a graham cracker with chocolate chips first and flipped it to put it on top of the marshmallow. Of course, all of my chocolate chips ended up all over the place. It would be smarter to flip the graham cracker with the single sticky ingredient that won’t fly all over the kitchen.

Once we were all sandwiched up, I put the tray in the fridge to cool.

Next up was dipping these yummies in some chocolate. Instead of using a double broiler, I put a couple of handfuls of chocolate chips in a microwave-safe bowl and threw them in the microwave for 45 seconds. If they’re not quite melted enough, keep putting them in for 30 second intervals. Just make sure you watch them carefully. You don’t want burnt chocolate!

Once they were melted enough, I stirred them until smooth (adding a little bit of olive oil to thin it out). Next, I did a combination of dipping my little sandwiches into the chocolate and spooning chocolate into any bare areas. If you’re going to add sprinkles like I did, you don’t have to worry about being all neat and tidy. The sprinkles are pretty and they hide the mess.

Pop them back in the fridge to let the chocolate cool and harden and you’re done! Yummy, toasty s’mores—without the heat.

And for the record, these tasty snacks are most definitely child approved.

Lately I’ve been trying desperately to curb my massive sweet tooth. I’m trying to cut back on my bad habits (hey chocolate!) and pump more fruits and veggies into my diet. Still, there’s no way I can cut out sweets completely. I would totally lose it and go on a binge reminiscent of that scene in Chocolat where the Comte de Reynaud ends up curled up in the front window of the chocolate shop with his face covered in chocolatey evidence (if you haven’t seen this movie, you must. Gypsy Johnny Depp. Chocolate. French village. Need I say more?!).

Instead, I’m trying to find sinfully delicious options that trick me into thinking I’m having a terrible treat when really, they’re pretty healthy.

Enter the banana-cocoa-peanut butter smoothie my friend Janine told me about. Pinterest is full of similar ideas (I also found this one that I want to try there). What I liked about the one Janine told me about was the addition of peanut butter. If you ask me, chocolate + peanut butter = heaven.

I played around with the recipe a bit and have finally gotten it down pretty well. Here’s what you do:

• 1 frozen banana (when mine start to turn black I peel them, put them into ziplock bags and throw them in the freezer for smoothies)
• 3/4 cup of almond milk
• 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
• 1/3 cup of peanut butter (I use Smucker’s Natural. It’s delicious)

Throw it all in the blender (I recommend putting the milk in before the cocoa or peanut butter to make sure everything mixes nicely) until smooth. You can either drink it immediately OR put it in the freezer for a few hours. I promise you it’s worth the wait.

If you want it a little soft and creamy (think chocolate peanut butter ice cream. Yuuuuuum!) put it in for 3 or 4 hours. If you want to try it as more of an Italian ice, leave it in overnight. If you decide it’s too hard for you, just let it sit out a bit. Honestly, you can’t go wrong. Any way that you eat this is ridiculously tasty.

Do you have any go-to recipes that trick you into thinking they’re sinfully delicious? Please share!!!

To me, the start of summer always means popsicles. Nice, cool, fruity bars of deliciousness. Since my daughter has started her end-of-school-year countdown (she is equal parts elated and dramatically depressed about it), summer is breathing down my neck (in case you were wondering, there are 15 school days left after today. Eeeeep!).

So what does one do when trying to face the fact that three months of little to no productivity are heading in your direction? Why get lost in the time warp that is Pinterest, of course, and waste a little more.

Here are some particularly delicious looking popsicle recipes I came across in my travels:

1 tropical smoothie :: 2 Samoa :: 3 strawberry :: 4 strawberry shortcake
5 fresh fruit in water :: 6 Cranberry Cherry

Do you have any favorite popsicle recipes? I’m always on the hunt for a good one!

Before I even start, let me apologize in advance for the crappy photos. All of the pink that was involved in the decor for this shower cast a pretty glow, but it wasn’t exactly optimal for an inexperienced camerawoman in a rush.

I’m working on my photography skills, but I wanted to give you a little peek into the shower I put together for my sister (with crafty help and lots of ideas from my friend Janine!).

We (and by we I mean Janine) blew up balloons in different shades of pink–have I mentioned my ombre obsession?!–and hung them in my bay window with black tulle. The night before I printed out “About to Pop” on card stock and strung it up with more black tulle. We parked my sister in front when it came time to open gifts.

Continuing with the pop theme, I made a little popcorn station for favors. There was four different kinds, including plain with the option of cinnamon sugar or southwestern spice sprinkled on top.

I also made an ombre crepe paper curtain as well as black glitter bottles and pink yarn-wrapped bottles to hold flowers. All of the projects were super easy. Check back tomorrow for DIYs (and next week I’ll have a post on a failed DIY for you!).

I found a recipe for yummy pink punch on Pinterest and since I was going with a pink and black theme (can you tell she’s having a girl?), I decided it was a must. Mine didn’t come out as pink, but it was most definitely delicious. Here’s the recipe from Styleberry:

Ingredients

• two- 2 liter bottles of Sprite or 7up, cold
• 1 can of Cran-Raspberry Juice Concentrate (found in the frozen foods section by the OJ from concentrate), thawed
• raspberry sherbet (I’ll use about 1/3 of a gallon)

Preparation

1. Refrigerate 7up/Sprite & thaw juice concentrate for several hours before the party.
2. About 10 minutes before guests arrive, mix juice concentrate & 7up/Sprite. Stir.
3. Scoop sherbet into the punch bowl & watch it get foamy & pretty!

I made two types of cupcakes: the first were regular chocolate cupcakes with icing that was varying shades of pink. To do that, all you have to do is separate your icing into as many parts as shades you’re going for and add varying amounts of food coloring. I knew I wanted three shades of pink, so I split my icing into three separate bowls. In one, I just did a drop or two of red food coloring. In the next I used three or four and in the last I added about five drops.

The second type of cupcakes were chocolate cherry. My sister loved this ice cream called Chocolate Cherry Cordial that Turkey Hill used to make. It was her absolute fave. I wanted to recreate the taste a little for her, so I hunted around for a recipe and settled on this one from Sandra Lee:

Ingredients:

• 1 (18.25-ounce) package butter-recipe chocolate cake mix
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/3 cups cranberry-cherry juice
• 1/2 cup cherry pie filling

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line 24 (2 1/2-inch) muffin cups with paper liners; set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, beat the cake mix, butter, eggs, and cranberry-cherry juice with an electric mixer on low for 30 seconds. Scrape down side of bowl. Beat for 2 minutes on medium. Spoon 2 tablespoons batter into each prepared muffin cup. Spoon 1 teaspoon cherry pie filling on batter in each cup and top with another 1 tablespoon cupcake batter.
3. Bake for 12 to 16 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the cupcakes comes out clean. Cool cupcakes in muffin cups on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Remove cupcakes from muffin cups and cool completely on wire rack.

I wanted the frosting on these to be pink as well, but for a little added cherry oomph, I colored it with maraschino cherry juice instead of food coloring.

Don’t you hate her? She’s 33 weeks pregnant, but you can only tell from certain angles. She was wearing a really cute floral sweatery thing from Forever21. I will most definitely be borrowing it.

I wore my color-block asymmetrical keyhole dress from Old Navy for the first time. Sooooo comfy. I’m most definitely going back to Old Navy to get a few maxi dresses for summer. They have so many cute ones!

We had a great time and my sister got lots of adorable things for her little muffin in the oven. Now she can lay back and concentrate on keeping that little lady in there a little longer!