Welcome to the Land of Stress Baking! The holiday season is peak stress baking time for a couple of reasons. So far I have not made a single thing which feels incredibly weird. But I am ready to start baking. All of my stress has piled on and I am ready to use this weekend for hours and hours of baking. Something I’m sure everyone I know is excited about because they will all reap the rewards. There are THREE staples when it comes to my cookie tins and trays.

Pumpkin Pie is no doubt one of the best things about Thanksgiving and fall in general. I think I’ve tried every pumpkin pie recipe known to man trying to find the very best one. Some just never had the right spice levels and the others just never had the right cook time. But this recipe has become my favorite pumpkin pie recipe.

If loving pumpkin makes me basic then so be it. I love it all. My hand soap smells like pumpkin. My coffee creamer is pumpkin spice flavored. I'm counting down the days until Thanksgiving because I just really can't wait to consume more pumpkin pie than humanly possible. Why wait till Thanksgiving? Cause I have to practice self-control. I have to set limits.  

I don't think anyone who's followed this blog for a while, or maybe even recently stumbled along it, would be surprised to find out how excited I was to find out Chrissy Teigen was working on a follow up to Cravings. I've been steadily cooking my way through it for the last two years much to the enjoyment of everyone I know (at least I think it's enjoyable). But I was not expecting to get an entire cookware and tableware collection with this new cookbook. The second I found out I could only imagine what my credit card balance would look like after just one trip to Target. I haven't even bought the Cravings Hungry for More yet. Forgive me. 

I will be the first to admit, as a child I took having a fully stocked kitchen for granted. There was always a variety of fruits, vegetables, and snacks at the ready. As an adult, stocking a kitchen for myself, I find myself in a constant struggle between "I want that" and "Oh, I don't actually have that." It's a dance where I am juggling shopping lists, new recipes, and forgetting what I already have. How many containers of cayenne pepper do I currently have? Three. Yes, three. See what I mean?

Somehow, someway my life has turned into a quest to try nearly every chocolate chip cookie recipe in the world. It might just be some way to compare my own recipes to those of others or maybe it's just I get sick of those recipes and want to try new ones. It also doesn't hurt that the holiday season is creeping up, and I'll need some new go-tos for the cookie tin. No one can resist a good chocolate chip cookie.  I found this recipe while browsing Pinterest for something completely unrelated. In fact, Pinterest showed it to me countless times in the pins I might enjoy section. Pretty much whispering in my ear "make these" every 2 seconds.

If you like piña coladas, then these ice pops might be for you.  I don't really know how the obsession my friends have with piña coladas began. But last summer it seemed to completely take over. It could have been a conversation about Yacht Rock or the day we spent poolside trying about 6 recipes until we got the right one. But I truly believe it was the chill weekend we stayed at the vintage hotel which, naturally, serves vintage cocktails.

I went back and forth about ever covering this on my blog, but ultimately I decided I'm incredibly proud of how it turned out so I really have no reason not to share. Why am I so proud you may ask? This is the very first cheesecake I have ever made on my own. That might be hard to believe for someone who bakes constantly, but it's true. It just always seemed like an overwhelming task to take on. But, this cheesecake was written in the stars. My dad loves cannolis. Every Christmas we nearly end up with the local Italian deli's whole inventory. 

Chrissy Teigen's Cravings cookbook is probably my favorite cookbook. So it's not really surprising how excited I am for its follow up. But since that doesn't come out for a little while I have plenty of time to keep cooking my way through the OG cookbook. And there is one recipe that keeps popping up in my Twitter feed. I feel like Chrissy has literally favorited every single tweet featuring her Cacio E Pepe. I am pretty hesitant to try new pasta dishes.