You only need a few ingredients to make this Homemade Chocolate Sauce and it tastes better than any chocolate syrup you can buy at the store. Smooth, sweet, and incredibly chocolate-y, this is the chocolate sauce I tried for years to make.

Along with all the ice cream that everyone is making, this copycat Hershey’s syrup has become one of the most popular recipes on the website over the past few months. It’s been fun to see what we can make from home instead of immediately running to the store.

Homemade Chocolate Sauce

When I first made this, I wanted a simple homemade chocolate syrup similar to Hershey’s syrup; something that I could use to make chocolate milk for my boys or use as an ice cream topping.

Over the past few years, I’ve made numerous chocolate sauces: rich creamy hot fudge sauces and basic melted chocolate sauces (i.e. Homemade Magic Shell).

I ran across this chocolate sauce recipe many years ago and tried it within a few days of finding the recipe. This was exactly what I wanted!

The sauce is not overly sweet and it is smooth and rich in flavor. This is even better than the Hershey’s syrup that I remember. I am excited to have this in the refrigerator now and I can hardly wait to make a treat with it after dinner tonight!

How To Make Chocolate Syrup

When I found this recipe for homemade chocolate sauce, it was almost too simple to believe. No fancy ingredients, no dairy, just sugar, cocoa powder, and water. A pinch of salt and a tiny splash of vanilla finish it off perfectly.

This sauce tastes like Hershey’s syrup, only better. The fact it’s so incredibly easy to make means there is almost always a jar of this chocolate syrup in my refrigerator.

Roasted sweet potatoes, browned and slightly caramelized on the edges, are tossed with spicy hot sausage and handfuls of baby spinach to create a flavorful Sausage Sweet Potato Hash.

Sweet Potato Sausage Hash

The key to a great hash is getting all of the ingredients cooked and ready to eat at the same time. You’ll need to start the potatoes first and prep the other ingredients while they’re roasting.

When they’re almost done, you’ll cook and crumble the sausage. Then cook the onion and bell pepper in the same skillet. Pull that from the heat, add the sausage and roasted potatoes back to the pan, and give it a stir.

Toss in the greens and stir for a minute or so, just long enough to wilt them. If you want to serve this topped with an egg, just loosely cover the skillet while you cook the eggs.

The first time I made this, the potatoes roasted while I napped on the couch and when the timer beeped, I pulled together the rest of the meal in less than 20 minutes. I love quick and simple meals on a lazy Sunday night.

Going back to the first time I made this hash recipe, I actually used beet greens in place of spinach. (Most of the breakfast hash recipes here are made with spinach or cabbage.)

If you’re lucky enough to have an active garden and an abundance of beets growing, give it a try. Unlike their fully-grown counterparts, baby beet greens look and taste very similar to baby spinach.

(I don’t recommend trying this with fully-grown beet greens. For what it’s worth, I often find them to be woody and bitter.)

We all enjoyed this meal (my three kids included!) The beet greens tasted so much like the spinach we love; I could easily see eating the entire garden’s worth of baby beet greens before any beets have a chance to appear.

If you don’t happen to have an abundance of baby beet greens on hand, I’ve made this many times with baby spinach and we enjoy it both ways.

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Crisp, buttery tortillas filled with spicy chicken and melting cheese add up to a buffalo chicken quesadilla that any fan of buffalo chicken is certain to love.

Buffalo Chicken Quesadilla

Quesadillas are one of those stretch meals or snacks at our house. Don’t we all have those times? When you know you NEED to go to the grocery store but don’t have the time or feel like putting a list together to go. We have all been there.

Cheese and tortillas are never in short supply in my kitchen so it makes these so easy to make.

Buffalo chicken quesadillas are a great way to use up a small amount of leftover chicken. When you make quesadillas a little bit of chicken can go a long way.

Shredded or chopped chicken tossed with buffalo sauce and layered with plenty of cheese between a couple of crisp buttery tortillas? I’ll happily call that lunch any day of the week.

Any kind of cooked chicken can be used for this recipe. Grilled chicken thighs, pan-fried chicken, broiled chicken, and shredded chicken will all work nicely.

If you don’t have leftover chicken on hand already, or just don’t feel like cooking the chicken yourself, my go-to for this type of recipe is often a rotisserie chicken.

My quesadilla technique is super simple. First, butter the tortillas, not the skillet. Second, use two layers of cheese.

You heard that right, bottom tortilla + cheese + the buffalo chicken + more cheese + top tortilla. You can’t go wrong and the cheese holds everything together

White Chocolate Raspberry Blondie Recipe

I’m letting you in on a little secret for making a chewy, never dry, and always tender blondie recipe, and this one is loaded with raspberries and gooey white chocolate! 

The day we listed our home for sale I photographed our TO-DIE-FOR Raspberry White Chocolate Cookies and have not been able to stop dreaming about them ever since. Which made me wonder… if I’m in a hurry, could I make a blondies recipe instead?

Now, in the cookie recipe I really like to use straight butter so that it has that classic cookie texture and flavor, but in these blondies I’ve found a preference for the cream cheese addition as bars need more time to bake and tend to dry out a little more which the cream cheese totally solves that issue. That’s secret! Cream cheese!!

And this white chocolate blonde brownies situation has totally triggered my need to create the perfect classic blondies recipe again. I’ve searched for years and years but have always been so, so disappointed. Any tips or tricks that you all believe in for the perfect Blonde Brownies?

There’s something quite luscious about biting into a soft and chewy blonde brownie that has the perfect amount of raspberries dotted throughout and all with little nuggets of melty, dripping-from-your-lips-white-chocolate. But the real winner ended up being the addition of almond extract and the white chocolate drizzle. Do not skip either one or you’ll be lacking that little something in flavor and texture.

What Are Blondies?

A blondie (or a blonde brownie) is a rich, sweet bar cookie that is similar to a traditional chocolate brownie, but substitutes vanilla for the cocoa, and usually contains brown sugar. 

Ingredients for White Chocolate Raspberry Blondies

Here is your shopping list for these blonde brownies:

• Butter – unsalted and softened
• Brown Sugar – light
• White Sugar – regular granulated
• Cream Cheese – softened so it isn’t clumpy in the blondies
• Egg – gives structure to the bars
• Egg Yolk – add just a little extra richness and helps the bars be soft and chewy
• Vanilla – flavor
• Almond Extract – flavor
• Flour – all purpose
• Cornstarch – helps the blondies be crumbly but still tender
• Baking Powder – leavening agent
• Baking Soda – gives the blondies their rise and fluffiness
• Salt – cuts the sweetness enhances all the flavors
• White Chocolate Chips – we love Guittard or Ghiradelli brand chips
• Dehydrated Raspberries – it’s important that they are dehydrated or freeze dried raspberries, they add real raspberry flavor without adding any extra moisture 

Sweet berries and buttery cake are perfectly combined in this very easy six-ingredient Berry Cake recipe.

Berry Cake

If you’ve fallen in love with the Cranberry Christmas Cake and then been sad to find that cranberries are out of season the next time you want to make it, this cake is the answer to your cake-loving dreams.

The biggest comment I get when cranberry season ends is – I can’t find cranberries. Can I use blueberries? Will raspberries work? Can I make this cake with other berries? Lucky for you the answer to all of those questions is a resounding “YES”.

But in all seriousness, make a note and pick up extra bags of cranberries to freeze after Christmas. Sometimes you’ll be lucky enough to find them marked down after a holiday, but either way, pick up as many as you think you’ll want and then grab a few more.

No special treatment or preparation is required when freezing cranberries. Just toss the bags into your freezer for safekeeping.

There is no other cake on this site that gets the rave reviews the Cranberry Christmas Cake does and I am giddy to tell you that this berry cake. It has already gotten some of the same raving reviews.

A friend who shall not be named 365 Days of Baking may have helped me consume a ridiculous amount of this cake when I made it again to photograph it a while back.

While I love making this to share with my family, friends, and neighbors. I can’t lie, sneaking a piece with some quiet time and a cup of coffee mid-morning is my absolute favorite thing.

The texture and crumb are just delightful The sugary crust is so buttery crisp. I could talk nonstop about this cake – it is that good!