I never have been more anxious about a Test Kitchen recipe than this one. I’m pretty good at baking. But I am terrible (TERRIBLE!) at decorating things, in part because I lack the skill for it and in part because I lack the patience. I’m just being honest.
If I make Christmas cookies to take home to my family celebration, I always bake a batch of peanut butter blossoms. When my sister and I were little, our mom informed us those were Santa’s favorite, so they’ve become a Christmas tradition in the Matas house.
Every year, I volunteer to bring a few dishes to take to my family’s Thanksgiving celebration, and every year, I find myself feverishly scrolling through Pinterest to find something new and better to make than what I showed up with the previous year.
Around Halloween, the only treat I feel like eating is candy. Unfortunately, you can’t always show up with a bag of candy in hand and hope it suffices as bringing a dish (though, if you’re coming to my house, disregard this because yes, you totally can).
I love making slider sandwiches because they’re super easy, and they’re always a crowd-pleaser. I never have met someone who doesn’t love a good Hawaiian roll.
When I make food for a party, I usually opt for a dessert or a dip—something that’s quick for me and easy for my friends to eat. I’ve prepared my fair share of homemade queso and cake-mix cookies, so when I found this recipe for bacon cheeseburger garbage bread, I was excited about trying something different.
When it’s summertime, I like my meals to be a little tropical. I know you might not want to turn on your oven in July, but I like this recipe because it’s low-effort. There aren’t many ingredients, you don’t have to chop anything, and you mostly can forget about it once you stick it in the oven.
These fun breakfast pops are essentially a frozen smoothie on a stick. Creamy on the inside, crunchy on the outside, with a subtle sweetness that comes mostly from the fruit itself, they are a playfully cool way to start the day.
Happy Cinco de Mayo month! Let’s make enchiladas. I have cooked enchiladas once before (the salsa verde variety, not the red-sauce kind), but I opted for this recipe because it also incorporates guacamole, which is on the short list of my favorite foods.
My preferred brunch food usually falls in the pancakes/waffles/French toast category, so when I stumbled on a recipe for blueberry pecan pancake bread pudding, I had to try it.
The concept is similar to French toast and cinnamon roll casseroles I’ve made before. You prepare your bread element and then soak it in a custard mixture for several hours before baking the whole thing.
