Hi friends! Happy Tuesday. Or happy only 4 more full days of work until the next weekend… I guess that is a negative standpoint, but I am just always so excited for my weekends! This weekend we’re headed to San Diego for my friend Whitney’s birthday! Yay for being able to conquer a new baking recipe! Last week I made my first-ever completely-from-scratch real (and full fat! eek!) layer cake for another bestie. A four layer vanilla cake base with vanilla buttercream covered in a variety of sprinkles! SO GOOD. I have photos… but it wasn’t exactly beautiful given I am still very much a beginner on the whole frosting and piping thing. Practice makes perfect!

Anyyyway, back to what this post is about! Carrot. Cake. Donuts! And they’re healthy to boot! YAY! These are adapted from i heart eating

Chicken Fajita Quinoa Burrito Bowls — CallieCooks.com

Honestly, I could live off Mexican food. No joke, Jake and I had a different kind of Mexican meal each night last weekend. Luckily I know (and now he does too!) how to lighten it up so it isn’t as damaging as it normally can be.

I won’t lie, I LOVE traditional cheesy Mexican food. If it was possible for me to eat what I wanted without gaining weight i’d eat a steady diet of nachos, cheese enchiladas, and chips and guac. Oh and taquitos. And tamales. And burritos. You get the point. I. LOVE. IT. ALL.

Back to the point, between my job and my normal every day obsession with brainstorming new ways to reinvent foods in a healthier way, I have become somewhat of an expert at lighting up my favorite Mexican dishes. Recently, as mentioned befor...

Greek Chicken Quinoa

Happy Easter! Ever since I moved away from my hometown, the holidays seem to fade over time. Of course I go home for major holidays my family celebrates, but Easter hasn’t been one of them in a couple years. Luckily one of my closest friends here in LA is the hostess with the mostess. She always hosts a pot luck for all of us who don’t have our families nearby for the holidays. Today we had an Easter brunch full of Micheladas and Mimosas and all kinds of yummy foods. I made carrot cake donuts and mini egg bakes. A full post on our Easter brunch will come soon!

Anyway, I hope you all had a wonderful Easter with friends or family, or both...

Veggie Loaded Pepperoni Calzone

Aaah. Calzones. How dare you to exist. As a kid I always loved the idea of shoving all kinds of pizza ingredients into a thick crust with a ton of cheese. Of course, I didn’t cook this… my dad would, but they were always so good. My dad actually used to make homemade pizza dough and everything! Him and my mom actually met at a pizza parlor when they were in high school and are still together over 30 years later. Yay parentals! They really are the greatest.

Anyway, I have an obsession with all things pizza and I always try and find ways to lighten them up so I can have my pizza and still fit into my jeans. In fact, one of my first posts was an awesome skinny deep dish pizza! Gah, I want some now.

OK back to the point...

Honey Lemon & Rosemary Chicken

Sometimes I seem to forget how much of an improvement a marinade can make! Who wants plain old chicken? I mean sure, it’s okkkk. But maybe it’s just me, but I just don’t love the flavor of chicken or turkey on it’s own. It needs flavor. I now love to make my own simple marinades. I peruse FoodGawker on a multi-day basis for inspiration, although normally I just use whatever I have on hand. The more I look for inspiration, the more I become more confident that I can just wing it. Jake actually is the one who originally showed me that meals don’t always follow a recipe. A couple years ago when he introduced this idea to me, I was confused. I always searched for recipes, created recipes, and then used recipes to cook...

Jack & Coke Cupcakes

Admission: I dislike Jack Daniels. To my own dismay really. I want so bad to be a Whiskey Girl. So bad. But it’s just soo gross.

Okay, so anyway, I found a way that I like JD. Infused into a frosting! Yep. These cupcakes were inspired by a recipe I found from Betty Crocker for Rum and Cola Cupcakes. It was my best friend’s birthday — she’s so lucky, she really is a whiskey girl — and because Jack is her drink of choice, I decided to sub JD in for the rum in the frosting of those cupcakes.

Jack & Coke Cupcakes

Now, if you read my previous post for Pink Champagne Funfetti Cupcakes, you might know of my frosting mishap I experienced when making frosting that has booze in it...

Pink Champagne Funfetti Cupcakes

PINK. CHAMPAGNE. FUNFETTI. CUPCAKES!!! To me, birthdays are an excuse to pretend calories don’t count and drink as much champagne and eat as many cupcakes as possible. What’s even better than that?! COMBINING them! Although, I have to admit… I had champagne and these cupcakes, so… whatever!

I discovered these cupcakes a few weeks ago. I was in Minnesota at the General Mills HQ (coolest place EVER! And kinda literally, it was negative 17 degrees one day) working/observing the next Hungry Girl book shoot which is professionally in the Betty Crocker Kitchens. I spotted the Betty Crocker Big Book of Cupcakes and was in awe...

Creamy Chicken and Veggies

As much as I am surrounded by the food we make in the kitchens at Hungry Girl, I always somehow forget to make the recipes we produce at HG at home. I almost always forget the recipes are normally simple, but really good — and most importantly guilt-free! What’s even better is Jake never knows the recipes came from Hungry Girl until I told him. I think that’s the great part of Hungry Girl, the recipes are well disguised in that they taste good enough to not be as healthy as they are… AKA guy-friendly!

For quite a while I have been wanting to make this foil-pack recipe called Mom-Style Creamy Chicken and Veggies. It’s a super-easy recipe that doesn’t call for many ingredients...

Cheesy Sausage Spaghetti Squash

WOW. It’s been way too long since my last post! Sorry guys! Between working long days and savoring my weekends, I have failed to make it a priority to get more posts up! I have an exciting, fun post I will be sharing with you all later this week — all I will say is I took my second trip out to Minneapolis (where it was BELOW ZERO!) to visit the General Mills HQ and attend the next Hungry Girl professional book shoot! It was an incredible week, despite getting hit with a bad cold that has now turned into the full-fledged seasonal flu now that I am home. In any case, I have tons of photos and stories to share and will post once I am able to get out of bed.

In the meantime, I do want to share a quick and delicious recipe I whipped up a couple weeks ago...

Garlic Knots

Hi Everyone! Happy New Year! Hope you all had a nice holiday season and a great New Year. Now it’s time to get all my posts done with the photos I took before the holidays! I hope you enjoy them all as much as I did!

Making homemade rolls and bread using yeast has always intimidated me. Then I got a stand mixer, and for whatever reason — probably the fact that I don’t exactly know how to knead — I got the courage to give it a try.

Growing up, my Yiayia (grandma in Greek) always made these awesome knot rolls and I have always wanted to recreate them myself. People, making bread yourself is not hard! YAY! I did have some minor problems here and there, all my own fault. Like not reading the directions fully and skipping the last rise time...