Cheesecake. Cheeeeeeeesecake. Cheeeeeeeeeeeesecaaaaaaaaake.

What? I like cheesecake, okay? I like to say it, I like to bake it, I like to smell it, I like to eat it.

Cheesecake. It is good.

My dream cheesecake has a chocolate crust and raspberry topping. Unfortunately, raspberries are fruit and do you know what my husband thinks about fruit? Bad things, that’s what. The man will eat a banana every now and again, but that is the only fruit he likes. He’s so weird. I’m not sure I can stay married to a man that doesn’t enjoy a good berry every now and again.

Enter these cheesecake bites. I swirled some fresh raspberry puree into my portion of cheesecake bites and I swirled in a bit of Nutella for my husband. We both cried tears of joy and decided that maybe our marriage would survive after all. I love a happy ending, don’t you?

These cheesecake bites are so fun. They’re pretty simple too and bake up much faster than a full sized cheesecake. It’s  also a lot easier to sneak one of these in your mouth while hiding behind the refrigerator door so that your kids don’t ask if they can have dessert for breakfast too! Not that I would ever do that or anything.

Cheesecake Bites
slightly adapted from Annie’s Eats (whose blog I ADORE

For the crust:

• 2 cups Oreo crumbs (just crush the cookies, filling and all, in a food processor or blender)
• 4 tbsp butter, melted

For the topping:

• 6 oz fresh raspberries
• 2 tbsp sugar
• Nutella, chocolate, caramel topping (only if you want a variety of toppings, optional)

For the filling:

• 2 lbs cream cheese (4 8oz packages), at room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 large eggs, room temperature

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Enlist your children to line the muffin pans with paper liners. Combine the crust ingredients in a small bowl. Stir together with a fork until the Oreo crumbs are moist. Spoon 1 tbsp of the crust into each paper liner. Press flat with the back of a spoon. Bake for 5 minutes to set the crust. Transfer to a cooling rack.

To make the topping, add the raspberries and sugar to a blender or food processor and process until smooth. Press through a fine mesh sieve to remove the seeds. Set aside.

To make the filling, add the cream cheese to the bowl of your mixer. Beat the cream cheese until fluffy on medium speed. Beat in the sugar until the mixture is smooth. Mix in the salt and vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time beating until each is fully incorporated.

To assemble, add 3 tablespoons of filling to each cupcake liner/crust. Dot a 1/2 teaspoon of whichever filling you are using (I vote for raspberry!) on to the batter 3 times. You should have 3 separate dots of filling, 1/2 teaspoon each. Use a toothpick to lightly swirl the filling in to the batter creating a pretty swirl. Repeat with the remaining cupcakes.

Bake until the filling is set, about 22 minutes, rotating the pans half way through. Cool to room temperature on a wire rack. Transfer to the refrigerator and let chill at least 4 hours before serving.

Yield: between 24 and 30 cupcakes – I had enough filling for 30 cupcakes, but only enough crust for 24. That being said, I went heavy with the crust because I like lots!

Alright, alright. I can hear you all rolling your eyes and looking at that picture saying “Oooh, Karly can open up a tube of crescent rolls and bake them! She’s magical!” Quit with the sarcasm, people.

Those crescent rolls up there are special. I really am magical! It’s true. You see, I took a boring (but delicious) tube of refrigerated crescent rolls and I opened it up. It was hard, lemme tell ya. Sometimes the tubes don’t pop the way they are supposed to! It’s horrible! And turrible. Just turrible. (Also, yes, I meant “terrible” but my husband says it with a “u” and I kinda like it.)

After I had those crescent rolls open do you know what I had to do? I had to unroll them! Oh, the work. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it!

Then I did something wild and crazy. Also, magical. Very magical, indeed.

I placed two squares of Hershey’s milk chocolate right in the center of each little crescent roll triangle. Then I rolled it all up, popped it in the oven, and sat back and congratulated myself on the magic that I had just created.

Seriously, y’all, the chocolate just transforms inside the crescent roll into something amazing. Chocolate is good, but chocolate baked in a crescent roll is super-fantastic. It’s almost like the frosting you lick off a donut. What? You don’t lick the frosting off your donuts? The crescent rolls really aren’t very sweet so they play against that yummy chocolate just perfectly.

Whether you make these for a super simple breakfast or totally easy after school snack, you are going to go nuts for these things. Absolutely nuts. In a good way, I hope.

Chocolate Crescents

• 1 tube crescent rolls (I prefer Pillsbury)
• 2 bars Hershey’s milk chocolate candy (you’ll have some left over for snacking on)

Pre-heat your oven per the directions on the tube of dough. Unroll each dough and place on the baking sheet. Place 2 small squares of chocolate in the center of each triangle of dough. Roll dough up in a crescent shape over the chocolate being careful to seal the edges so the chocolate doesn’t leak out. Bake as instructed on the crescent rolls packaging. Devour while warm with a glass of cold milk.

Y’all know what streusel is, right? It’s butter, flour, sugar, and sometimes oats all mushed together to form this delightfully sweet treat. It’s the perfect topping for pies or coffee cakes and it’s down right decadent on dessert pizza. I love streusel. I want to marry streusel. I would have streusel’s babies if I wasn’t so against eating my own offspring. Actually, after the day I’ve had, maybe eating my own offspring wouldn’t be so bad. Also, is it time for my kids to go back to school? What’s that? I homeschool? Who the heck signed me up for THAT?

It’s been a long day, y’all.

Luckily, thankfully, happily I can just hide out in my kitchen making sweet treats while my kids play video games for an unhealthy amount of time. It happens. I admit it.

Enough about my bad parenting, let’s talk about my delicious baking instead. This little treat is basically a streusel crust with a raspberry jam filling. It’s kinda amazing.

I always use Smucker’s Simply Fruit red raspberry spreadable fruit because it’s HFCS free and it’s basically just mushed up fruit. This is not a paid advertisement, I just like what I like and I like Smucker’s. I also like opening a new jar of peanut butter (JIF, because I’m a choosy mom) and being the first to stick a knife in the jar, but that’s neither here nor there and I don’t know what I’m talking about anymore.

So, uh, make these? And, maybe, eat ‘em? Yep. I’m pretty sure that’s where I was going with this whole post.

Over and out.

Raspberry Oatmeal Bars
recipe from allrecipes.com

• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup seedless rapsberry jam (or any other flavor you might like)

Preheat oven to 350. Line an 8×8 baking dish with foil and lightly grease.

Using a pastry cutter, two knives, or your hands, cut together everything but the jam. Don’t be afraid to get in there and get your hands dirty. Combine until you have a nice crumbly mixture without too many large chunks of butter.

Press 2 cups of the mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan. Spoon on the jam (if it is cold, it helps to microwave it to soften it up a bit) and spread to within 1/4 inch of the edge. Lightly press the remaining crust mixture over the top of the jam.

Bake for 35-40 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool completely before cutting.

I admittedly have a lot of “favorites” when it comes to food, but one constant favorite of mine is Mexican food. I could eat at our local Mexican restaurant every night for dinner and I’d be delighted to have Taco Bell for lunch each day. Yes, yes I did just admit to loving Taco Bell on a food blog. I kinda have a thing for drive thru food. Don’t hate.

Anyway, my love of Mexican food is deep and never-ending. I once told my husband that I wanted a divorce so that I could instead find an old Mexican grandma to marry. It would have been a match made in heaven.  However, I also have a love of pasta. It’s so carby and delicious. You can dress it up any way you like and one of my favorite ways to dress it up is with my other favorite…tacos.

And, okay, I probably shouldn’t call this Mexican food, but it’s my American version of Mexican food and man, is it ever tasty.

My daughter who routinely declares that she hates Mexican food, doesn’t want tacos, won’t eat that quesadilla, and WHERE IS MY CHEESEBURGER, MOTHER? ate this for lunch today. It’s all about presentation and this one is quite impressive.

You need a bit of extra time to prepare this as the pasta doesn’t just stand up in the pan all by itself, but it was much simpler than I anticipated. Smooshing the meat down into the tubes of pasta was pretty simple as well and the sound it made as it was sucked in was quite entertaining.

If, however, you are a normal person with a busy life who does not have the time to stand a pound of rigatoni noodles at attention, then just go ahead and toss this all together in a baking dish (9×13 would be good) and then cover with cheese and bake it that way. It’ll still taste good…it just won’t be as entertaining.

Y’all are gonna love this.

Taco Pie

• 1 lb rigatoni
• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 package taco seasoning (or your own recipe)
• 4 ounces cream cheese
• 1 1/2 cups salsa
• 1 cup cheddar cheese
• 1 1/2 cups monterey jack cheese

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Boil the pasta until not quite al dente. I let mine boil for 2 minutes less than the package suggested for al dente. When the pasta is done, drain and rinse. Toss the pasta with 1/2 cup of monterey jack cheese.

While the pasta is boiling, brown the ground beef and drain. Add the taco seasoning and however much water is needed, per the directions on the taco packet. Cook for a few minutes over low heat and then add in the cream cheese. Allow the cream cheese to fully melt into the meat mixture. Remove from heat and stir in 1 cup of salsa.

Grease a springform pan and stand the rigatoni noodles up tightly in the pan. It may help to hold the pan at an angle to get them to stand when you’re first standing them up. This step really is easier than you would think!

Spread the meat mixture on top of the noodles and use a straw to poke the meat down into the holes of the noodles. When you’ve poked the meat in as much as you can, pour the remaining half cup of salsa over the top. Sprinkle the top with the remaining 2 cups of cheese.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand for 10 minutes before removing the sides of the pan and cutting. Enjoy!

My husband and I just celebrated our tenth anniversary. I know! Ten years! And I haven’t killed him yet!

Or, maybe it should be: Ten years! And he hasn’t killed me yet!

Or how about: Ten years! And we’re both still alive!

Yeah. I think that last one sounds about right.

How about a little engagement story? Oh, I know, you don’t care how I got engaged, but this is quick and it involves food. Kinda.

You see, my husband and I started dating when I was 16 and, well, I was pregnant not too long after I turned 17. A month or so after our sweet baby boy was born, my husband proposed.

We were driving home from somewhere and he just drove right past our apartment.

“Uh, honey? I think you missed your turn,” I said, ever so politely to him. And, okay, maybe I was irritated. How did he forget where we lived? Also, I was barely 18 with a newborn baby. Everything irritated me.

“I’m just heading to the store for some ice cream,” he replied in a weird tone of voice.

“We don’t have room in the freezer for anymore ice cream! We have lots of ice cream at home!”

“But we don’t have Butter Pecan ice cream! I want Butter Pecan!” he whined. And, okay, so maybe he didn’t whine. Maybe he just stated this in his manly voice.

I proceeded to go on about how Butter Pecan was the worst ice cream flavor ever. In the midst of my rant about ice cream flavors that were not chocolate based, he turned into the parking lot of a golf course that I had worked at the previous summer and parked right where I had told him I loved him for the first time.

“Uh, honey, what the heck are you doing?”

“I think we’ve got a flat tire.” he said in that weird tone of voice that I would one day come to realize was his LYING VOICE.

We both got out, he dropped to one knee, and he proposed.

The end!

I’m sorry. That was long and boring, wasn’t it? Well, let me make it up to you with these amazing Butter Pecan Squares. See? See how I tied it all together?

I have since matured a wee bit (both in terms of food and just in general) and I’ve come to realize that anything with the name Butter Pecan is pretty darn delicious. These bars are no exception. They are so buttery, so rich, so sweet, so full of delicious flavor that they will just blow your mind.

They might even have you running around sharing your engagement story with the internet! They’re powerful, is what I’m sayin’.

The original recipe called for a box of yellow cake mix, but while I was standing in front of hundreds of box mixes, the Golden Butter cake mix jumped right off the shelf and begged me to take it home. I think it knew that it would fit right in at my house full o’ butter.

Enjoy these at room temperature with a fork or eat ‘em with your hands right out of the fridge. Either way, they’re amazing.

Butter Pecan Squares
adapted from Taste of Home

• 1 box (18.25 ounces) Butter cake mix
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups chopped pecans
• 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 3 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the cake mix, 1 egg, butter, and pecans. Mix well. (I found it easiest to use my hands and just moosh it all together a bunch.) Press into a geased 9×13 pan.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the cream cheese, 2 remaining eggs, and the powdered sugar until well combined. Pour over the crust.

Bake for 45-50 minutes or until the top is golden brown and the center is set. It should be gooey, but not runny. Cool completely before cutting, 1-2 hours. Store in the refrigerator.