Easy to make sandwiches have always been my favorite. I would always throw them in my daughter’s lunch because she liked them and it made things easier for me. I’d rarely even cut the bread! I’d just fold the bread over because that’s how fast I needed lunches to be made.

This retro concept of fluffernutter is originally a New England thing that originated in Massachusetts. Its popularity only grew from there because marshmallow is way better than using jam or honey. You might think fluff would have too much sugar but jelly and honey are basically the same. In my opinion marshmallow creme is the epic pairing with peanut butter.

How to make a Fluffernutter

Why I Love This Recipe

I never get tired of pumpkin anything, and when fall finally arrives, I break out all the pumpkin puree! First up? This pumpkin chocolate chip bread recipe. It’s usually one of the first pumpkin baked goods I make every year.

• It’s my no fail tried and true pumpkin bread recipe with chocolate chips
• The bread has the best moist texture with the best flavor from all the fall spices.
• You don’t even need a mixer – just stir and pour into the pan.
• If you love chocolate chip banana bread or chocolate chip zucchini bread you’re going to LOVE this recipe!

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread Ingredients

• Vegetable Oil: I like using oil in quick bread recipes so it’s easier to stir and keeps the bread moist. You can substitute canola oil or use melted butter for a richer filling.
• Pumpkin Puree: Be sure to use canned pumpkin, not pumpkin pie filling
• Pumpkin Pie Spice: Make your own homemade Pumpkin Spice if you don’t have it. The spice is where all the “pumpkin” flavor comes from so it’s an integral part of the recipe. Pumpkin on its own doesn’t have much flavor at all.
• Baking Soda: Unlike many quick bread recipes, I use baking soda to make mine. Combined with the acid in the buttermilk, the baking soda makes the bread nice and soft.
• Buttermilk: If you don’t have buttermilk, make your own by adding 1/2 teaspoon of vinegar to measuring cup then filling it the rest of the way with milk.
• The recipe is written and tested extensively with all-purpose flour, but you can also use half and half of all-purpose flour and whole wheat or white whole wheat flour, or make gluten free bread with GF AP 1:1 Flour..
• Chocolate Chips: Use your favorite kind: milk chocolate chips, semi-sweet, or even dark chocolate chips.
• Instead of chocolate chips, substitute cinnamon chips, white chocolate chips, or butterscotch chips.
• Nuts: You can also add nuts and do ½ cup chopped nuts like walnuts or pecans along with ½ cup of chocolate chips. Or, omit the chocolate chips and make pumpkin nut bread with 1 cup chopped nuts mixed into the batter.

How to make Pumpkin Banana Bread

1. It’s easy to stir this with a whisk, a spatula, or a wooden spoon. You can use a hand mixer if it’s easier. Always mash your bananas before adding them to the pumpkin mixture, and it will be a little lumpy.
2. The final batter will be slightly lumpy but similar to cake batter.

Apple Butter is expensive and it’s so easy to make it at home. It’s great paired with so many recipes (sweet and savory). Applesauce is not cooked as long as apple butter, which has a deeper dark color from the caramelization that happens while the apples cook. It’s also pureed and then reduced even more until it’s thickened and spreadable so it has a more concentrated apple flavor, whereas applesauce is thinner and less flavorful. Also, Apple Butter has no actual butter in it – it gets its name because it’s thick like spreadable butter.

• Just 6 easy ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen
• Using the slow cooker makes it cook itself – while it takes time, it’s inactive time.
• You don’t have to peel the apples!
• It tastes like fall in a bite and makes your house smell like the ‘ber months!

Crockpot Apple Butter Ingredients

• Apples: Sweeter apples like fuji, gala, Honeycrisp, Golden Delicious red delicious, or similar work well for apple butter. You need about 3 pounds apples. I leave my skins on the apples but you can peel them if you prefer.
• Sugar: This recipe uses both Granulated Sugar and Brown Sugar for sweetness and flavor.
• Cinnamon: Ground cinnamon is a MUST in any apple butter recipe!

How to make Apple Butter in the Crockpot

1. Be sure to slice the apples all the same size so they cook evenly.
2. Be sure to coat the apples evenly with the sugar mixture.
3. The apples will be fork tender when they’re ready to puree.
4. It becomes apple butter after a second cook, when it’s thick like baby food and dark golden in color.

Chewy Sugar Cookie Ingredients

• Butter: This is the backbone of any sugar cookie recipe. Always use real stick butter, not anything imitation.
• Sugar: To make a chewy cookie, it needs to spread a little more than a soft one, so this recipe uses granulated sugar, which reacts with the butter to spread more than if you used brown sugar or powdered sugar.
• Egg and Egg Yolk: The extra egg yolk adds chew to the cookies.
• Leavening: Where my soft cookies use cream of tartar to activate the baking soda and make the cookies puffy, these use baking soda and baking powder so they spread and stay soft enough to eat, but don’t stay cakey.
• Extract: Classic sugar cookies are made with vanilla extract, but you can also flavor these as you want using a bit of almond extract (or use lemon or anything you like).

Drop sugar cookies are a go-to recipe for the easiest soft sugar cookies. These cookies are an all-time favorite because they’re so soft and chewy with the perfect frosting. While I love a cutout sugar cookie I also value my time so a drop cookie is where my mind is at 99% of the time. I absolutely love that these don’t need rolling or chilling either! This is my go-to soft cookie recipe I’ve been making for over 10 years (for every holiday, as sugar cookie bars, and even as grinch cookies!)

Sugar Cookie Ingredients

• Butter: a good sugar cookie uses real butter. Butter-flavored shortening is okay, but to get that traditional sugar cookie flavor, you need butter. Use unsalted butter to control the amount of salt. If you’re using salted butter, reduce the amount of salt in the recipe by 1/4 teaspoon.
• Sugar: this drop cookie recipe uses granulated sugar, unlike my cutout sugar cookie recipe, which uses powdered.
• Egg and Egg Yolk: 2 eggs was too much egg, but one egg made them a little too cakey, so I added an egg yolk to add a bit more chew to these soft cookies.
• Leavening: the combination of baking soda and cream of tartar create a pillowy soft cookie without it being cakey.

How to Make Soft Sugar Cookies

1. The butter and sugar should be light and fluffy after creaming.
2. It will be pale yellow and almost like cake batter before you add the flour.
3. Once the flour is mixed in the cookie dough is easy to handle and scoop. I like using a 2-tablespoon cookie scoop but you can use bigger or smaller. For perfectly round cookies, roll the dough balls between your palms to smooth.
4. Mix up the creamy frosting while the cookies are cooling.

Other Easy Cookie Recipes

• Make chocolate chip sugar cookies by adding 1 cup of chocolate chips to the batter and skipping the frosting.
• Make M&M Sugar Cookies by adding 1 cup of M&Ms to the batter, skip the frosting.
• Add 1 cup of sprinkles to the batter to make a sprinkle cookie (omit frosting).
• Roll the cookies in sugar or cinnamon sugar (reminiscent of snickerdoodles) and skip the frosting.
• Flavor your frosting with lemon juice or a bit of cocoa to make a new flavor!

Strawberry Shortcake Bar Ingredients

• Use your favorite brand of cake mix. I prefer yellow or white cake mix for this recipe.
• You’ll need softened unsalted butter (but if you only have salted, that’s okay, it will work just fine).
• Pure vanilla extract is the best, and you could add some almond extract for extra flavor.
• Heavy Whipping Cream is needed for the stable whipped cream frosting, no substitutions. The frosting needs the extra fat from the “heavy” cream to whip up perfectly.
• Cream Cheese that it is room temperature to avoid lumps. Cream cheese is what helps stabilize the frosting without using gelatin.
• Fresh Strawberries: Hull and slice them to layer on top. You can also use a mixture of fresh berries (blueberries, raspberries, etc, in addition to strawberries).

A galette is basically fruit on top of a pastry. It’s similar to a pie but doesn’t have a top crust or a lot of other added ingredients. Galettes can even be savory! A pear galette is like a rustic pear pie or apple pie, but free form instead of rigid, so it’s easy to make (and easy to serve). This pear galette has caramel in every bite, is spiced just right with pears that are perfectly cooked.

I tested this recipe a few different ways: with thin pears and with cooked pears. Many years ago I had a pear pie at a friend’s house and I couldn’t swallow it because the pears were too crunchy. This is why I par-cook my pears for pear pie, but a galette is more rustic and thinner than pie, which is why slicing works best for this recipe.

Ingredients in Pear Galette

• Pie crust: Choose your favorite crust from the store. Having a premade crust saves so much time. Or use my homemade all butter pie crust!
• Pears: You’ll need about two ripe pears – use your favorite pears, like Bartlett or Bosc pears.
• Lemon juice: Cuts the sweetness and adds a freshness.
• Brown sugar: Adds sweetness to the recipe. Pack it tightly when you’re measuring it. 
• Cinnamon and Ground nutmeg: The two together are the perfect fall spices.
• Salted caramel, plus more for garnish: You can never have too much caramel.
• Egg wash: For the edges of the crust. 

How to make Pear Galette

1. Stirring or whisking the spices and brown sugar together before adding the pears makes it much easier to evenly coat them.
2. Make sure the pears are fully coated.
3. You can arrange your pear slices in a design or just pile them in the center, but it’s important to leave a 2-inch border to fold over.
4. Once folded over, it’s important to brush with egg wash.

I love an easy dip recipe and when I can make it into a cheesecake dip it’s even better. This creamy dip is ready in minutes with just 7 ingredients and it’s safe to eat raw. There are no eggs or flour. I’ve tested cookie dough dip with strawberries, apple slices, pretzels, cookies, and a spoon, and they’re all delicious.