Of all the recipes I’ve made over and over in my life, trying to perfect the iconic chocolate chip cookie has been the most fun. About 1M batches later, I’m ready to share the version that is my current obsession! I’m talking crispy edges. Dense, chewy center. Ripples of golden-brown caramelization cascading over the surface. Perfect bursts of bittersweet chocolate studding the dough. The reality is, I’ll probably never stop tweaking and playing… why should I??

See this recipe come to life on IG.

I want to acknowledge 3 very delicious other Chocolate Chip Cookie recipes that have inspired me over the years and from which I gleaned some important techniques: Tara O’Brady, who taught me to melt butter — slowly! Sarah Kieffer of The Vanilla Bean Blog, who taught me to add water to the batter and a little more granulated sugar for crispier edges, and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt of Serious Eats who taught me to tear each ball of cookie dough in half once it is set and stick the 2 halves back together, craggy sides facing out for a gloriously individual, crunchy edged, chewy center cookie!

This is the cake I make for all of my kids’ birthdays! Delicious, tender cake crumb, speckled with rainbow sprinkles, enveloped in perfectly fluffy homemade buttercream frosting – and then I decorate simply with a rim of more sprinkles to keep the whole thing lovely and loose and festive. 

The original, utterly sublime recipe is Samantha Merritt’s of sugarspunrun.com. This one has my tiny tweaks —made mainly out of necessity when I’d run out of certain ingredients — but her original version is perfect and you can check it out HERE! I hope you and your family love it as much as we do… there is nothing like the heavenly smell or caramelizing sugar and vanilla that will perfume your home when this is baking!!

See this recipe come to life on my IGTV.

This is my mom’s recipe for pumpkin pie that we make throughout the fall every year and is the #1 request for Thanksgiving dessert.

Did I mention there’s cookie dough crust?!? Because it’s sweet and buttery and gives you the little crunch carrier you want to spoon that lusciously spiced pumpkin pie filling right into your mouth.

Speaking of the filling, my mom adds plenty of the usual spices — cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice — but the real star is cardamom (don’t skip it!) and ginger (add some fresh if you have it to grate!) to pump up the wonderfully warming appeal. We normally peel, steam, and purée a bunch of fresh pumpkin around Halloween and freeze it to use here, but canned pumpkin works well in a pinch.

See this recipe come to life on my IGTV.

The very best Holiday sugar cookies you will ever make — and easy, too! One of my favorite childhood memories was making batch after batch of this family recipe in the days leading up to Christmas, and it makes me so happy to share this tradition with my kids now!!

I love seeing so many of you making these at home after I shared in my stories, and thought it would be good to put all my tips and tricks in one place for you to enjoy… worth making tonight! Merry merry!

See this recipe come to life on my IGTV.