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.

Pasta salads are basically a 4th of July tradition. At least to me for a couple of reasons. First, the end of June/beginning of July the temperature begins to start hitting over 110 more frequently. This makes cooking or consuming heavy meals uncomfortable. Second, everything about pasta salad screams summer and al fresco eating. I mean BBQs, picnics, or even just casual meals at home can welcome a tasty pasta salad. And, I won't lie, as an Italian, I'm a fan of any dish featuring a good noodle or a really good antipasto.  Antipasto Pasta Salad combines two things I've joyously grown up eating. This is one of my favorite pasta salad recipes.

I guess you could say Memorial Day weekend was all about guacamole wars. I'm not exactly sure how or why that happened. I mean I have my tried and true go-to recipe any time I need to contribute guacamole to anything. I make it so much I have it memorized. Rather than sticking with that, I ended up beginning the weekend with Beyoncé's recipe and ending the weekend with this one from Joanna Gaines. I guess you could say having guacamole, rosé and watching the premiere of the Bachelorette has become quite the summer tradition. So what better time to try this?

I forget where I saw these brownies first, but the second I saw them I knew I needed to make them. There are a couple reasons I was really excited to try these brownies. The biggest one being I had never made brownies or ganache from scratch before. Crazy right? I love to bake, but making brownies and ganache seemed daunting. Luckily, these brownies have completely changed my mind about that!

I'll say right up front. I'm not a food blogger. I envy their ability to create delicious recipes and take perfectly shot images of their final creations. That said, I do like to play around in my kitchen whether it's creating meals I find delicious or trying out recipes I come across. Many years ago my friends were obsessed with sushi. Every time we wanted to go out to eat, sushi was always the dish of choice. Okay, so maybe that slightly had to do with the fish bowl sized cocktail 6 people could share. I couldn't stand fish so I always found myself eating cucumber salad instead.

Okay, real talk. Looking at all of the social media posts of meals couples made on their Valentine's Day dates was barf-inducing. So finally after logging out when I just couldn't take anymore, I went browsing my bookmarks, Pinterest, and Tumblr to create a list of #GOALS for the year. Being single can suck when it comes to cooking because when it comes to purchasing ingredients you have to be really strategic. Most ingredients, if not all, aren't packaged for one so creating a menu of meals has to use whatever I've purchased so it doesn't go to waste. Good news is I learned how to cut the recipe for pancakes for a single serving. 

I won't lie. I think I've probably baked every chocolate chip cookie recipe claiming to be the "best." As a teenager I think I made the classic Nestle Tollhouse recipe so often I had it memorized for many years. Sadly as an adult you begin to realize the chocolate chip/dough ratio is so poor no matter how many chocolate chips you add in. More recently my go-to was the NY Times recipe which uses cake flour and bread flour rather than all-purpose flour. But it has a wait time which is often really hard to abide by when it comes to baking. Eating the dough is rather tempting when it's just sitting there for an extended period of time. Then I moved on to a sea salt chocolate chip recipe I adapted from somewhere else, and made it so much people grew tired of it.