Adventures

It’s December! That means quick meals, gingerbread houses, lots of cookies and appetizers galore. It’s a time for holiday parties and get togethers and being stressed that the end of the year is coming so very soon! Here is a collection of 15 Cozy Recipes To Make in December! 

Decadent, Delicious Hot Chocolate – This hot chocolate is my favorite, decadent hot chocolate. Truly just the way hot chocolate should be made.

Vegetarian Sweet Potato Poblano and Black Bean Enchiladas – Between all the cookies and sugar, we need dinner. And we need it simple and delicious. I love these enchiladas.

Best Blueberry Muffins – The batter for these blueberry muffins can be made and kept in the fridge overnight. They’ll puff up gloriously!

Pastelitos de Guayaba – Cuban bakery vibes in your kitchen! These pastelitos are filled with sweetened cream cheese and a little slice of guava paste. Super tasty and easy!

Breakfast Braided Danish Loaf – This yeasted loaf is SO good and fluffy. It’s super tasty. This recipe makes two loaves so you can make one for you and give the second one away.

Berry Crinkle Cookies – December is the month of cookies. And I developed these for Valentine’s Day last year but they’re pretty Christmas-y too because of their pretty color!

Cozy Gingerbread House – This gingerbread house took me exactly 1 week to complete (mainly because I changed my mine on the creative direction). I ended up super proud and loving it!

Alfajores – These cookies are melt-in-your-mouth-delicious. Filled with manjar blanco/dulce de leche and rolled in powdered sugar. So good!

Chewy Masala Chai Snickerdoodles – These are big holiday vibes. They’re chewy, amazingly spiced and a very big crowd pleaser.

Chocolate Cardamom Morning Rolls – Chocolate and cardamom are one of my favorite flavor combos. These morning rolls are fluffy and delicious. The best part: they can prepped the night before and then baked of the morning of!

Oat Milk Collagen Hot Chocolate – This is a healthy version of hot chocolate. It has collagen, oat milk and delicious dark chocolate.

Horchata Una Leche Tres Leches – This tres leches uses a single kind of milk: horchata. It’s super delicious and nutty. I love it!

Pie de Limón Cookie Bars – This is inspired by one of my favorite Peruvian desserts: pie de limon. It has a lovely cookie crust that makes these easy to transport.

Brown Butter Pecan Sheet Cake – This sheet cake is SO good. It has brown butter, chopped pecans and cute little cookies on top.

Dulce de Leche Cookie Bars – These marbled cheesecake cookie bars are swirled with dulce de leche. They’re super pretty! 

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It’s November aka the month that seems like the cooking and baking olympics. That’s why this month it’s so important; let’s dive into this list of 10 Cozy Things to Make in November 2019.

1. How to Build a Fall/Winter Cheese Plate – We all love cheese plates, don’t we. There’s an art on assembling a cheese plate this posts talks all about making a big autumnal/winter cheese plate for big family/friend gatherings.

2. Instant Pot Cuban Black Bean Soup – The entire month of October was full of lots of plant-based meals. This Instant Pot Black Bean Soup was on repeat last month and it’s the best “leftovers” soup.

3. Acorn Squash Queso Fundidio – I love queso fundido of all kinds. I’m actually working on a new queso fundido recipe (coming soon!) but this one is a great mainstay. It has sautéed acorn squash and all the flavors. Bonus points for putting it in an acorn squash.

4. Instant Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup – This soup is super warming, spicy and light all at the same time. I love making it in the Instant Pot for pure ease but I included instructions for a regular pot too.

5. Veggie Baked Ziti with Burrata – When I think of fall and winter, I immediately think of melty cheese and pasta bakes. This is SO good because it’s made with a veggie bolognese, and then burrata is melted on top. YUM.

6. Chocolate Orange Morning Rolls – I have been pumping out cinnamon roll and morning roll recipes like a mad woman. These are a classic combo: chocolate and orange. And they’re perfect for any chilling Saturday morning.

7. Swedish Braided Cardamom Bread – I love this Swedish Braided Cardamom Bread. It’s perfectly spiced and the bread is so light and fluffy.

8. Pumpkin Tres Leches – I love Tres Leches cakes of all kinds. I have a few varieties on the blog and by far my favorite around this time of year is this Pumpkin Tres Leches. You would think that the pumpkin would add a lot of heaviness to this cake but it’s pretty light and sprightly.

9. Masala Chai Skillet Cake – This cake is super easy to throw together. Add some apples throughout and it’s so wonderfully spiced and delicious.

10. Shoyu Chicken – This recipe comes from Alana’s cookbook and it’s such an easy, delicious weeknight meal. It’s the thing I want to eat on a cold, crisp night.

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It is officially fall. The temperatures have cooled in Los Angeles. And I am living for this autumn vibe that is in the air. I am very ready for this. I have been scrolling through The Instagram and love the inundation of this season’s recipes popping up. I figured I’d add to the conversation with my own suggestions. These are a compilation of some of my favorites around this time of year. Shall we dive in? We should.

1. Cornbread Chicken and Dumplings – This is one of my all-time favorite fall recipes on this blog. When I figured out how GOOD dumplings are when cornmeal was added, I never looked back. You can use a store-bought rotisserie chicken, if you like, OR you can roast some chicken thighs. It’s a flexible recipe that is PERFECT for fall.

2. Spooky Mummy Pumpkin Pop Tarts – I’m not one for gross Halloween desserts. Like bloody fingers and spider web cupcakes, etc. But these are cute and tasty. I love that they’re just a small twist on a spooky dessert.

3. Cozy Pumpkin Chili – You can use this in a digital pressure cooker, which is amazing. I love this recipe. It makes the flavors merry together so quickly. You can set it on the “warm” setting and keep it there all day long. Delicious pumpkin chili.

4. Squash Saltado – Lomo saltado is one of my favorite Peruvians dishes. It’s so good. This is a vegan alternative that is so flavorful. The squash is delicious with the soy sauce, spices and peppers. Serve it over rice for a veggie fall meal.

5. Blood Orange Pomegranate Thyme Spritz – I love how these blood orange pomegranate thyme spritzes look. Fall flavors but still refreshing is exactly what I want from my fall cocktails.

6. Pumpkin Raclette Stove-Top Macaroni and Cheese – Pumpkin puree mixed into the this cheesy mixture filled with the best cheese ever: raclette. It’s a bit expensive, I’ll admit, but it is so cheesy and funky all at the same time.

7. Cheddar Rye Apple Hand Pies – The flavor combo of cheddar and apples are celebrated in these hand pies. They are SO good. The filling is a delicious combo of gala apples and honey crisp.

8. Delicata Squash Ricotta Baked Shells – If you’re like what can I make that’s cozy and cheesy and full of pasta. Look no further! These stuffed shells are a dream!

9. Pumpkin Funfetti Cake – I love cake, you know this.Funfetti cake is so delicious because in between the two funfetti layers lives a thick layer of pumpkin cake. It’s like fall exploded.

10. Chewy Chai Masala Snickerdoodles – This is the most popular recipe from The Year of Cozy. They have flavors of chai tea, paired with a chewy snickerdoodle consistency. The ingredient that gives these snickerdoodles their delicious chewy texture: cream cheese. It’s a small amount but just the right amount.

It’s September! Almost. A few days shy but I figured I’d put up a post of some things to make this weekend, for Labor Day. I’m headed to Hawaii but if I was here, there are some things in this list that I would be making for

1. Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies – I am ALWAYS on the look out for iterations of chocolate chip cookies. This version is a banger. I love it. Coffee and chocolate are a match made in heaven.

2. Melty Baked Brie with Walnuts, Honey and Figs – Baked brie is so underrated. I think it’s because people are used to seeing it wrapped in puff pastry and drizzled with like honey. They’re used to a trashy version (and for the record, I LOVE that version). This is a classier version of that. It’s melty and gooey. The crunchy walnuts, sweet honey and ripe, juicy figs are glorious.

3. Earl Grey Scones – Having a blog can be weird. I have no idea why this recipe has taken off in the last couple of weeks but it’s brought in SO much traffic. It’s an oldie of a recipe but it’s good. I love these scones. So here ya go.

4. Peach Walnut Cocoa Nibs Snacking Cake – This cake is SO good. It’s a such a sleeper of a recipe. I posted this and no one cared. Lol. That happens sometimes. But I can assure you that it is so delicious. The streusel topping is amazing. And peach and cocoa nibs work surprisingly well together.

5. Miso White Chocolate Chip Cookies – An iteration of chocolate chip cookies with a hint of savory added via Miso. The white chocolate chips are a nice change from the regular dark chocolate chunks I use.

6. Roasted Carrot Potstickers – We can’t just eat sweet things in the month of September. I need veggies. These potstickers are an amazing vehicle for delicious pureed carrots spiked with ginger and sesame oil.

7. Spicy Sambal Oyster Noodles – This isn’t exactly “late-summery” or anything like that. These are what the internet likes to call “evergreen.” Meaning, you can eat them any time you dang well please. They’re spicy and savory and so so good.

8. Payday Lobster Cherry Tomato Pasta – For when that direct deposit hits! This is for that time of the month when you’re feeling sorta spendy and you got some money to spend. I actually love buying a lobster tail and putting it in dishes—it feels so luxurious.

9. Ginger Shrimp Stir-Fry with Garlicky Bok Choy – I can eat a whole bowl of sautéed green onions. This dish has A LOT of green onions added to bok choy the shrimp. It’s a delicious, easy to make dinner.

10. Pumpkin Tahini Loaf – I didn’t want to pull out the fall stuff all early but here it is: the first glimpse of the upcoming season. I’m excited for it!

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My bedroom makeover is done! YAY! It’s taken a lot of time to get it to a place of total comfort. TBH when we first moved in, our bedroom resembled more of a dorm than a cozy, tranquil place. I was procrastinating on pulling the trigger on new furniture and decor—they’re hard choices to make haha.

Before we get into the cozy details, let’s look at some beautiful before photos! Lol. The bedroom furniture was way too dark and the curtains hardly let in light.

The bedroom needed a new fresh coat of paint and some new light fixtures. We also had a desk in there and it was just a place where we would keep folded clothes.

We have a pretty small closet so we definitely needed a big dresser that could hold a lot of our clothes.

I knew that I needed a whole lot of things and that’s where Lulu & Georgia came into the picture. I teamed up with Lulu & Georgia for this makeover and they supplied a good amount of the furniture and fixtures in the house.

I had my eye on this Aliyah Velvet bed (in color Pine) for a long time. I actually first saw it from this post and fell in love with it. I love that the velvet looked lush and soft. I also knew that I wanted the bedroom to feel like a hotel room: nice lighting, comfy linen sheets and just everything being nice and clean.

The first thing we had to do was get rid of the furniture in the room. We gave some away, stored some and gave the room a nice paint job. We painted the ceiling, too, which really brightened up the room. I picked Benjamin Moore “Paris Rain” for the walls and “Ivory Tusk” for the trim.

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