Pumpkin Spice & Everything Nice

This Thanksgiving, I decided to jump on the pumpkin bandwagon (a bit late I know) and try my hand at some pumpkin desserts. If you ever need to whip up a dessert in less than hour, this is the recipe for you: Vegan (well except for the chocolate chips) Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars.

No eggs and no mess! I didn’t have pumpkin spice, so I just ground cinnamon sticks, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger into a powdered form – didn’t explicitly follow any proportions but used cinnamon more than the other spices.

The end result is a pie of chocolatey – pumpkin goodness, with the flavors of fall reminding you of your daily pumpkin-spiced latte. Definitely an easy recipe I’ll be keeping in my back pocket!

Cut this into bite-size pieces!

Happy Thanksgiving y’all!

Holy Crêpe…Or Should I Say “FRENCHiladas?”

This past weekend, R and I decided to have some fun and make crêpes! It of course helped that she’s a killer cook and Parisian, but the recipe actually turned out to be much easier that I thought it would be.

We followed the general gist of this recipe for the batter and let it sit in the fridge for 40 minutes before making the crêpes. Once you’ve heated the pan and spread some butter, take a scoop of the batter and pour on to the pan, quickly making sure to twist the pan right and left to ensure the batter covers the whole pan. You’ll notice that the edges will start to lift upwards after a minute or two, and then you can flip the crêpe. Once it’s fully cooked, lift out of the pan and make the next one!

If you want to add savory fillings to your crêpes, I suggest a spinach and cheese combo (I know this probably doesn’t come as a surprise). When you’ve flipped over the crêpe, add some shredded mozzarella (goat cheese works too) and spinach to the middle, and fold over the crêpe in half before lifting out of the pan. Sweet fillings are great too – add melted chocolate chips, sliced bananas, strawberries, whipped cream, nutella, apple, cranberries…you get the picture…

If you have extra crêpes, you can store them in the fridge and reheat later on with your fillings – the taste stays great for days! Special thanks to R and her Mama for the expert guidance 🙂

Savory fillings pictured below:

If I Call You Darling, Will You Make Me Pancakes?

Who recognizes the page below? Saw this on Pinterest today as I was looking at pancakes (I know, it’s midnight here and I’m drooling at pancake recipes instead of going to bed) and suddenly third grade memories of reading Shel Silverstein poems came back…Am definitely going to pick up Where the Sidewalk Ends over the holidays and give it another read. Nothing better than revisiting childhood stories. 🙂

So with that enormous stack of pancakes courtesy of Shel Silverstein above as inspiration…

I had the orange-chocolate chip pancakes at Summer House Santa Monica a few weeks ago and can definitely say they were the best pancakes I’ve ever had. The texture was just right – not too soggy – and the combination of citrus and sweet was to die for. Summer House Santa Monica is themed as a ~California chill~ restaurant, and I’ve got to say, the orange in these pancakes definitely adds to the vibe. Worth a try if you’re into sweet over savory brunch. Here’s a recipe from Two Peas & Their Pod for the DIY folks!