Spinach & Ricotta Pasta Bake

November 9, 2022 Amanda Plott

Dinner is SERVED. This Spinach & Ricotta Pasta Bake is super simple to make, it’s meatless vegetarian, and it only has a few ingredients. It starts off with a whole wheat pasta. I used some odds and ends of small pasta that I had on hand; some elbow and some shells that I put together to make a full 10 ounces of noodle. Of course, it’s lightened up with reduced fat cheeses, both with the mozzarella and with the ricotta which goes along with a full 16 ounces of spinach!

I did decide to use a jarred pasta sauce to keep it extra simple. But if I had any leftover sauce stored in the freezer, I would have used that instead. So feel free to use your favorite tomato based spaghetti sauce or marinara here. And you’ll want to reach each part individually so that you really get the flavor through it all that you want…

2 Ingredient Peanut Butter & Nutella Cookie Cups

November 6, 2022 Amanda Plott

It just doesn’t get any more simple than this when it comes to cookies, folks. These 2 Ingredient Peanut Butter & Nutella Cookie Cups are the easiest cookies I’ve ever put together. And they’re super tasty too! When starting these cookie cups off, I picked up some refrigerated peanut butter cookie dough that was pre-made so that there was less fuss on my end.

After that, they were baked, shaped into cookie cups, and then filled with hazelnut spread. You can eat these warm, or directly out of the fridge for a nice cool sweet bite since they can be stored in the fridge for a few days after being made. They’re a great grab-and-go snack to have on hand…

Breakfast Waffledilla

November 3, 2022 Amanda Plott

Look, I don’t know - I love my waffle maker and I am always trying to come up with new and fun ways to use it that aren’t just standard waffles. This Breakfast Waffledilla is definitely that. It combines all the best parts of a breakfast quesadilla and stuffs it into waffle form. That’s right, this is full of bacon, egg, and cheese goodness and only takes a few minutes of hands on time.

I added some jalapeños to mine, but some fresh pico would be another good addition. There were really only a few things I could do to this to keep it lightened up, and that mostly involved the tortillas. I went with a low carb whole wheat tortilla that’s only 45 calories for one tortilla. I also went with a low sodium center cut bacon, because no one can ever tell the difference!…

Giant Pizza Roll

October 31, 2022 Amanda Plott

This Giant Pizza Roll is crazy easy to make and is a super simple way to get creative with your pizza. It’s as simple as rolling out some pizza dough, par baking it, topping it with your favorite pizza toppings and then cutting and rolling it up into a giant pizza roll. It definitely is a fun, new, interesting way to get to nom on some pizza!

Really and truly, it doesn’t get much easier than this. You could go with whatever pizza dough you fancy, but I just grabbed a tube of refrigerated dough to keep it simple today. I also kept it really simple with standard pepperoni and cheese, but you could add your favorites in like sliced olives, mushrooms, or any other pizza toppers…

Clear Pumpkin Pie

October 28, 2022 Amanda Plott

Let’s face it. Pumpkin pie can be a little boring. I saw this idea for a clear lemon meringue pie a while back and I started to wonder if you could do the same thing with a pumpkin pie. So, here we are giving it a shot! For the original lemon version, they used lemon extract - so what do we do to make up for that since pumpkin extract is fairly rare? Well, we use pumpkin pie extract and a dollop of pumpkin puree!

This pie uses a homemade crust too, which you could swap for a sore bought one to save time if you wanted but I promise the homemade crust is easy enough to make and only takes a few ingredients and a couple of minutes of hands on time…

Instant Pot Pecan Pie Cheesecake

October 25, 2022 Amanda Plott

With Halloween this week, and Thanksgiving just around the corner, I thought it would be a good time to play around with a new cheesecake recipe. Desserts around the holidays are always a source of debate in our family. What to make, who’s making it, and when to eat it. I’ve got a handful of favorites to serve around Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I also like to come up with new ideas to throw out there. This Instant Pot Pecan Pie Cheesecake is definitely going in as a suggestion.

It’s pretty easy to make, especially for a cheesecake. The instant pot does the most of the work and quickly too. As it turns out, a pressure cooker is a really efficient way to make cheesecakes! This one though, kind of combines a cheesecake with a pecan pie, so it’s basically the best of both worlds…