Chocolate Peanut Butter Crispy Cups
Four ingredients. No oven. Melt chocolate, stir in peanut butter and Rice Krispies, spoon into mini muffin moulds, top with candy, refrigerate two hours. That's the whole thing. These are the kind of treat you make when you want something to look like you made an effort without actually making…
Mini Meat Pies
These are Australian party pies made properly — shortcrust pastry bases filled with a thick, well-seasoned beef mince filling and topped with rounds of puff pastry that puff up golden in the oven. The filling is the part that matters. It needs to be genuinely thick and dry enough to…
One-Pot Rice Cooker Chicken Rice with Vegetables
Most rice cooker recipes tell you to cook the rice and the protein separately. This one doesn't. The chicken goes directly on top of the uncooked rice before the lid closes — and as the rice absorbs the cooking water, the chicken drippings and any marinade liquid soak down into…
Gluten-Free Blueberry Upside-Down Lemon Cake
This cake has two parts that need to go right. The first is the blueberry layer — packed as tightly as possible into the bottom of the pan so the batter doesn't seep underneath. The second is the inversion timing: exactly 15 minutes of cooling in the pan before it…
Italian Lemon Cream Cake (The One I Actually Kept)
I've tried at least a dozen lemon cream cake recipes over the last few years and thrown most of them away. Too sweet. Too dense. Filling that tasted like sweetened whipped cream with a splash of lemon as an afterthought. This Italian lemon cream cake is the one I kept…
Orange Creamsicle Mousse Dessert
Four ingredients. No baking. Ten minutes of actual work and then the fridge does the rest. This orange creamsicle mousse sets up into something creamy and light that tastes exactly like a Creamsicle — which is the whole point. Orange Jell-O dissolved in boiling water, then whisked together with Orange…
Hamburger Potato Casserole
This is the casserole that comes out of the oven bubbling and golden and makes everyone come to the kitchen to see what's going on. Ground beef and onion layered with thinly sliced potatoes, two layers of sharp cheddar, and a sauce made from cheddar soup and milk that soaks…
Raspberry Lemon Cupcakes with Raspberry Frosting
The first time I made these I didn't flour the raspberries before folding them in. Every single berry sank to the bottom and sat in a little pool of jam at the base of each cupcake. They tasted fine. They looked like a mistake. One teaspoon of flour tossed over…
