This easy baked Cranberry Cream Cheese Dip is the perfect holiday appetizer this season. Only a few simple ingredients (cheese, cream cheese, leftover cranberry sauce, cranberries and spices) to this savory hot dip. Ever wondered what to make with leftover cranberry sauce? This is the answer!

This cheese dip is one of my favorite holiday dip recipes! I love that it looks as festive as it tastes and the kids love that it’s the perfect combination of sweet and salty!

The holiday season is here and that means a lot of parties, get-togethers and food. From the family Thanksgiving dinner to the “favorite things party” with girlfriends, our calendar is packed. When I need to bring a dish to share, quick and easy recipes are the way to go… like this Baked Cranberry Cream Cheese Dip.

We Love Cranberry Cream Cheese Dip!

Our family has a list of recipes that are a tradition every year. It’s not the holidays without our best cheeseball, soft and chewy gingerbread men cookies, peanut butter balls, and the best Christmas cookies ever! So why do we love this savory cranberry dip?

• Easy to make: There are only a few simple ingredients so no running to a million different stores to get what you need.
• Sweet and Cheesy: The tangy flavor of the cranberries are balanced with the savory cheeses and then you get that hint of sweet from the cranberry sauce.
• Everyone Asks For the Recipe: I love that this is the dip we often get asked for the recipe, guests just love it!
• Uses Up Leftovers: I don’t know about you, but I’m often googling “what to make with leftover cranberry sauce” This festive recipe solves that problem!
• Make Ahead: This dip is easy to make ahead of time, so you can spend more time with your guests. See more below.

Ingredients for our Holiday Dip Recipe

• Extra-Sharp White Cheddar Cheese, grated
• Mozzarella Cheese, grated
• Cream cheese, 

Sharing lots of ideas for the tween girls you’re shopping for this holiday season! I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments, too. 

Hi friends! I hope your week is off to a great start! Our Kleiger fam was here for a super fun packed weekend and now it’s back to the routine around here. I’m continuing the holiday gift guide party with a fun one: for the tweens!

I love shopping for this age group and between our two girls, we check a lot of the boxes when it comes to gift request diversity. We have the real life Liv and Maddie situation (did anyone else have kids who watched that show?). Liv is into skincare, fashion, and dance, while P is our sporty STEM girl.

As always, if you have any ideas or if you’d share your tween’s gift requests in the comments, that would be amazing!

Check out all of my holiday gift guides here!

2025 Holiday Gift Guide for tweens

New Stanley cup

or an Owala water bottle

Hatch light. This made a huge difference in my stress levels, so I got one for Liv a couple of years ago. She prefers to have bird sounds wake her up instead of me lol.

Silk pillowcase

Samba sneakers

Makeup eraser set

Bubble initial necklace

Lip butter with clean ingredients

Cozy and clean makeup set

Skincare headband

Aviator Nation hoodie. These are an amazing special occasion gift! I get new ones for the kids for Christmas since they’re always trying to *borrow* mine.

White Fox and Palm Puff hoodies are also popular

Fuzzy socks

Bow bobby pins

Our Easy French Toast Casserole is a classic recipe for brunch or breakfast, especially a holiday breakfast! You’ll go nuts for the cinnamon crumb topping. 

It has been years and years since we’ve updated this old post for our favorite, simple french toast bake, but I’m finally getting around to it. Every year I’ve made it for a special breakfast, vowed to take new photos and then gobbled the entire thing up. 

Well, a few months back we lost a few of our older posts in a tragic mishap on the blog, so here we are, desperate to get this baked french toast back up because it’s the perfect holiday breakfast!

Ingredients for French Toast Casserole

There’s nothing too surprising here, but starting with a good bread is crucial! Other than the bread, you’ll probably have everything else at home already. Here is your ingredients list:

• Challah, Brioche or Sourdough Bread: you want a dense sturdy bread and day old is best
• Eggs: large eggs, medium and you’ll need more eggs, extra large and you’ll need less
• Milk: don’t use fat free milk, but any other milk will work fine, we prefer 2%
• Heavy Cream: essential for the custard base of the casserole and adds richness and flavor
• Sugar: any granulated refined sugar works great
• Brown Sugar: adds flavor and richness
• Cinnamon: any brand of cinnamon is great
  • NOTE: If you’re a nutmeg fan, you could add a little pinch of nutmeg too. I especially love that during the holidays!
• Vanilla: real vanilla extract is preferred

Topping

• Butter: chilled and cut into small (1/2 inch-ish) cubes
• Flour: just all purpose
• Brown Sugar: I never need a reason for brown sugar…haha…but really it’s all the flavor and sweetness
• Cinnamon: combined with the brown sugar and it’s all the flavor you need
• Salt: just a little pinch enhances all the flavors
• Optional: Top with powdered sugar and fresh raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, etc.

How to Make French Toast Casserole

This is a great recipe for the holidays because you can make it the night before and just pop it in the oven in the morning. In fact, it’s better if you let it sit overnight. Overnight french toast casserole makes breakfast on Christmas morning so easy! Just a thought! Here are the simplified steps for making this breakfast casserole:

1. Prep: Tear or slice the bread into bite size pieces and prepare a baking dish by spraying with cooking spray. Place the bread into the pan.
2. Whisk: Whis

Hi friends! Happy Friday and Happy Halloween! What are your plans tonight? Are you taking the kiddos trick-or-treating or going to any parties? We’re having tacos here at the house with my brother and some friends, trick-or-treating around the neighborhood, and I’m counting down until I can decorate for Christmas.

We carved pumpkins and watched Coco last night:

It’s time for the weekly Friday Faves party. This is where I share some of my favorite finds from the week and around the web. I always love to hear about your faves, too, so please shout out something you’re loving in the comments section below.

10.31 Friday Faves

Fashion + beauty + random:

P’s 10th birthday! This little lady turned 10 this weekend and I can’t even believe. 10 hits hard! It feels like just yesterday that we were taking a hamburger piñata to the Kleigers’ in the middle of the night. (Her birth story part 1 is here and part 2 is here!)

She’s athletic, brilliant, kind, inquisitive, and silly. She asks great (and sometimes challenging!) questions, genuinely wants to help everyone, and is always down for a game of h-o-r-s-e, a family adventure, or a hike. She fills my heart and cracks me up every single day. Happy happy birthday, P Rose.

We celebrated in the morning with a party for

Get into the holiday spirit with these delicious cranberry crumb bars. It is my favorite way to use up leftover cranberry sauce. Follow our step-by-step instructions and video to create a festive and tasty dessert that is perfect for any holiday gathering.

I got fed up last year with leftover cranberry sauce so for months after Thanksgiving I was testing it in all sorts of recipes to find ways to use it. This is how our cranberry sauce muffins came to be! And it’s the same story for this cranberry crumble bars recipe. I’ve been experimenting with this one and this is finally the winning recipe. They are to die for!

They are the most wonderful combination of creamy cranberry sauce and a chewy sugar cookie, tart shortbread crust!

Ingredients for Cranberry Sauce Bars

We will actually make one crust recipe and we will use it for both the base of the bars and the crumble on top! Then we will make a filling to go in the middle. I’ll include the ingredients for an optional glaze too. Here is everything you will need for each component:

Crust and Topping

• Wet Ingredients: Butter (softened), Cream Cheese (softened), Brown Sugar, White Sugar, Egg, Vanilla and Almond Extract
• Dry Ingredients: All Purpose Flour, Cornstarch, Baking Powder, Baking Soda and Salt

Filling

• Sour Cream: full fat cream cheese
• Eggs: binds the filling together
• Cornstarch: helps thicken the filling
• Vanilla and Ground Cinnamon: add flavor
• Cranberry Sauce: homemade is preferred, but store-bought would work fine too, just don’t use the canned cranberry jelly
• Whole Fresh Cranberries: adds more flavor and texture

Glaze

• Powdered Sugar: acts as the base of the glaze and adds all the sweetness
• Milk: adds richness and creates the glaze
• Vanilla: adds flavor

The measurements for each ingredient can be found down below in the recipe card. This is meant to just be an overview of the ingredients you will need.

How to Make Cranberry Crumb Bars

Let me walk you through each step of this recipe! It might seem like a lot of steps, but it’s super easy.

Crust

1. Prep: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a 9×13 inch baking dish with a piece of parchment. Spray everything with cooking