Welcome to the weekend, my friends! It’s good to be home. Our weather has cooled off again, no surprise there, but there are hints of spring everywhere. We have bright yellow daffodils in the yard and I grin every time I see them.

ON THE BLOG this week:  Sweet berries and buttery cake are perfectly combined in this very easy six-ingredient Berry Cake recipe. A friend who shall not be named Lynne may have helped me consume a ridiculous amount of this cake when I made it again to photograph it a while back.

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.

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.

Pasta with broccoli and mushrooms in a garlicky cream sauce is a quick dinner that my whole family enjoys. 

Want to spice up your chicken tacos and take them to the next level? Mix together a batch of homemade chicken taco seasoning and give it a try.

Fresh green beans with a buttery, cheesy sauce and a crispy breadcrumb topping will get rave reviews and clean plates every time. Tired of the traditional green bean casserole? Try this green bean gratin next time and you might have a new holiday favorite.

This is not your average Cookies and Cream Ice Cream, this isn’t Oreo dust or a few crumbles of cookies stirred into ice cream. This is nearly an entire package of chocolate sandwich cookies stuffed into a batch of ice cream and you’re going to love it.

You only need a handful of ingredients to make a Homemade Chocolate Sauce that it tastes better than any chocolate syrup you can buy at the store.

What I’m CRAVING: This Lemon Ice Box cake! I stumbled on it again the other day, having saved the recipe to try over ten years ago. Let’s just say it’s a “fussy” recipe, at least at first glance, but oh my word, it sounds incredible. I’m putting it on my list to finally make one weekend when I feel like playing in the kitchen.

My FAVORITE THING this week is my Kitsch

This is not your average Cookies and Cream Ice Cream, this isn’t Oreo dust or a few crumbles of cookies, this is nearly an entire package of chocolate sandwich cookies stuffed into a batch of ice cream.

If you love Oreos, you are certain to love this homemade cookies and cream ice cream.

This is creamy, rich, homemade vanilla ice cream absolutely loaded with chunks of Oreos. Oh, Cookies and Cream Ice Cream, how I love you. Is it the fact that handfuls of my favorite sandwich cookies are crammed into each bowl of creamy ice cream?

Or is it simply that I can never have too many ways to eat Oreos? or is it that I can never have enough recipes for homemade ice cream? Whatever the reason, this is our house’s newest favorite ice cream.

To really take this ice cream over the top, I recommend stirring together a batch of this Homemade Chocolate Sauce while the ice cream is churning.

Chocolate Magic Shell is another favorite topping for ice cream in our house as well. However you serve it, this ice cream is always a treat.

The most popular question I get is whether it’s possible to make ice cream without a machine. The answer is YES. You can make ice cream without a machine. Find the full directions here!

Cookies and Cream Ice Cream

A great many of our favorite ice cream recipes begin with a batch of smooth and creamy vanilla ice cream.

To make the best-ever cookies n cream ice cream, chop up a whole pile of chocolate sandwich cookies while the ice cream is churning. When the ice cream is ready, layer those cookie pieces into a container with the soft ice cream.

All that’s left is to stash the ice cream cookie mixture in the freezer until it’s semi-firm and scoopable. Easy as can be to make and you likely won’t be buying another carton of cookie and cream ice cream from the store anytime soon.

Yes, homemade cookies and cream ice cream really IS that good.

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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