Homemade Blue Cheese Dressing
Bottled blue cheese dressing is never quite right — it's too thin, the blue cheese flavor is too mild, and it has a background taste that's hard to place but definitely there. This version takes ten minutes, uses one bowl, and is noticeably better. The base is mayo, sour cream,…
CPK BBQ Chicken Salad (Copycat)
I've made a lot of versions of this salad trying to get it right, and the two things that most copycat recipes miss are the jicama and the way the dressing works. It's not one dressing — it's ranch tossed through the base and BBQ sauce drizzled on top separately.…
Raspberry Filled Chocolate Bites
Four ingredients. No oven. The freezer does everything after about fifteen minutes of actual work. These are the bites I make when I want something that feels like a treat but is genuinely made from real things — raspberries, chia seeds, honey, dark chocolate. That's the whole list. The technique…
Holy Cow Cake
Devil's food cake. Poked full of holes while it's still warm. Soaked with sweetened condensed milk and caramel until the whole thing is dense and gooey and barely resembles the cake it started as. Then hot fudge, toffee bits, and a full layer of whipped topping. It's a lot. This…
Funeral Potatoes
This is my go-to casserole for feeding a crowd. Cheesy hash browns with a buttered cornflake crust, baked until golden and bubbling. It's called funeral potatoes because it's the dish that shows up at every church potluck and post-funeral gathering across the intermountain West — and there's a reason it…
Coleslaw Pasta Salad
I know it sounds like two separate side dishes that got confused about their lane. Coleslaw and pasta salad in the same bowl. But it works — and once you've made it you understand why it's been showing up at cookouts for decades. The coleslaw mix adds crunch and freshness…
Wacky Cake (Depression Cake)
The secret ingredient in this chocolate cake is a tablespoon of white vinegar. No eggs. No milk. No butter. Mixed directly in the baking pan with a fork. This is wacky cake — also called Depression cake or crazy cake — invented during the 1930s when those ingredients were either…
Golden Vanilla Bundt Cake with Vanilla Glaze
One bowl. A box of yellow cake mix and a handful of pantry staples. An hour in the oven. And what comes out looks like you planned a whole afternoon around it — a golden bundt with that glossy drizzled glaze, the kind that sits on a cake stand and…
