Gingerbread Cookie Cheesecake Bars

Gingerbread Cookie Cheesecake Bars

We’re here. Gingerbread season. Let’s do it up right!

I’ll be honest with you: I have very mixed feelings about the holidays. They seem to be an elaborate ruse to guide us toward winter with enthusiasm, where we’re left in January with bare trees, chilly mornings and frozen windshields. But on the other hand, those lights sure are pretty.

While I don’t celebrate Christmas, I can get down with gingerbread anything. That includes these gingerbread cookie cheesecake bars, which are both easy and festive. They’re also studded with cinnamon chips, one of my favorite baking inventions.

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Cinnamon Crumb Babka

Cinnamon Crumb Babka

Whenever I’m in my local grocery store, I always accidentally-on-purpose wind my way toward the bakery section. Because you know, it’s really fun to stare at treats and wonder why you aren’t buying them all.

As someone who bakes regularly, I don’t often buy dessert. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t reallyreally want to. There are very few desserts that I have a physically hard time turning away from at the store, but babka is one of them. I love babka. Deeply. Passionately. How could I not? If you’ve ever had babka, you know what I mean.

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Cinnamon Breakfast Cake

Cinnamon Breakfast Cake

Happy 2015, everybody!

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been absent. It was totally beyond my control this time. That flu epidemic the CDC declared the other day found its way into my house. I’ve never been so sick in my life. A week down, unable to do anything but moan. And in the process, my blog just kind of stopped.

But now it’s back, and it’s a new year! Don’t expect me to go with the trend here and start posting healthy recipes. I have very strong feelings about resolutions this time of year. It’s not that I don’t believe in making healthy decisions, but doing it on January 1st is just plain odd. Why would you want to? That date seems to have an alarming failure rate.

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Pumpkin Spice Magic Bars

Pumpkin Spice Magic Bars

Do any of you feel like a trip to the grocery store is a vacation? Especially if you have kids and they’re not there?

You can wander up and down aisles, picking things up at leisure and putting them down. You can try free samples. You can hunt for new products. And if there’s a Starbucks in the store, you can do it all with a lovely hot cup of beverage.

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Cinnamon S’more Brownies

Cinnamon S’more Brownies

Every other morning when it’s still dark and everyone is asleep, I do my strength training workout. You see, I used to be just a cardio girl. I’d move and move and move and it was nice, but I didn’t see the results I wanted. I kept my weight where I wanted it to be, but I wanted muscles. Like Madonna. Totally doable, right?

Well, I’m getting there! About six months ago I discovered Physique 57. They have studios in big coastal cities and in places where really rich people live, like the Hamptons or Dubai. But they haven’t hit the DC area yet, so I sweat it out to the DVD collection and their online streaming. And it’s kind of addictive, mainly because I have muscles in places I never thought about before, and I really like that.

Anyway, I was working my abs to utter exhaustion the other morning when a recipe lightbulb went off in my head, apropos of absolutely nothing. I love it when that happens. It’s so random and so appreciated, like someone you don’t know about exists somewhere in your brain just to give you fun ideas. I love that someone!

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