Cookies! Okay, sooo I have an obsession with cookies and chocolate chip cookies. Each one I have made, I call them the best ever! Now everyone thinks I’m lying. I guess I have to say I have three favorite recipes. The recipe I’m sharing with you today is now in the top three too. Have you stayed at a Doubletree Hotel before? They give you these fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies and they are heaven. I’m so happy to have found a recipe in my searches, so I can make them at home!

I made these cookies for our food blogger bake sale this year! Huge thanks go out to all of the bloggers who participate this year: Katie’s Cucina (my co-organizer! here’s her recap), Kokocooks, Forkful, Live Pretty, Simply Southern Baking and My Sweet Zepol. We raised almost $700 for Share our Strength! And huge thanks go out to the Winter Garden Harvest Festival — they let us combine our bake sale with their festival which was a blast!

There’s our great group! What a lovely bunch of ladies!

And oh my goodness, we had generous sponsors donate prizes for our wonderful raffles including: KitchenAid, OXO, KINGS Bowling, World Market, Tommy Bahamas Restaurant & Bar, FirstWatch, CRAVE, Pretty Flips and Mannix Vanilla. Thank you so much to these wonderful companies!

It’s Ben & Jerry’s week– presented by Shelly and Kristan. When they invited me to join, I had to say yesss! I love ice cream, in fact, my first job was at an ice cream shop! But making a dessert inspired by an ice cream flavor, I chose Americone Dream immediately. It’s vanilla ice cream with chocolate dipped waffle cone bits/crumbs and caramel. I love it!

I was going to try to make a cookie but then I worried the waffle cone would get all weird. I woke up the other morning and thought blondieeeees! And the rest is history…it’s so easy because I used store bought waffle cones and a jar of caramel sauce (next time I’m going to try it with salted caramel!).

I melted the chocolate in the microwave and used a silicone brush to brush the chocolate on. I picked 7 cones — because it’s lucky number seven. It was the perfect amount of chocolate to coat all 7 cones!

Then, I refrigerated them for about 2 hours but you can get away with doing them for an hour.

While those were in the fridge, I prepped my blondies and baked them! They are plain blondies, I didn’t add any nuts or white chocolate to them. I did however add a little extra vanilla extract to them.

I used a meat mallet but be gentle, okay? These waffle cones didn’t do anything to you. I didn’t want to use my fingers because it would make the chocolate melt again.

And how about a collective sigh? I feel so good and bad about this recipe…don’t ask how many I had. Let’s just say, I really enjoyed them and they are perfect for when you’re having a super stressful day.

One of my most favorite things to order at an Italian restaurant is clams casino or any kind of seafood with pasta. I love it. I cannot get enough mussels, clams, lobster, whatever, you name it, I love it. When my friend, Ricky, asked me to contribute a recipe to his new guide to Orlando restaurants that highlighted local ingredients…I knew I had to make a seafood pasta dish!

The Food Lovers’ Guide to Orlando is out now! It’s great, it’s packed full of great advice on the best places to eat in the area and includes recipes from some of my blogger friends and my favorite restaurants!

First, I start the water boiling for the pasta. Then, I prep the lobster. Cut along the bottom of the lobster tail and the top too. Then, pull out the tail and chop it up. Scrub the clams.

I’m so excited to share this giveaway with you! My friend, Lori, her cookbook was just released!!! The Recipe Girl Cookbook is an awesome cookbook full of fun recipes for everyday meals and are great enough for entertaining.

And be sure to check out the recipe for Gorgonzola Smashed Potatoes from Lori’s cookbook!

Let’s get to the giveaway…

The winner gets to choose a KitchenAid blender in the color of their choice, the colors are below…and look above, those are KitchenAid’s Catalina colors, pretty aren’t they?

The prize includes:

• one copy of the Recipe Girl Cookbook
• one KitchenAid Blender in the color of the winner’s choice (choose from Metallic Chrome, Silver Metallic, Contour Silver, Tangerine, Blue Willow, Majestic Yellow, Crystal Blue, Oynx Black, Green Apple, Gloss Cinnamon, White and Empire Red)

Approximate value is $155.00

Please use the form below to enter in the giveaway. Good luck!

Giveaway alert, I’m giving away a copy of The Recipe Girl Cookbook! Details below.

Hey there, don’t you like potatoes? This recipe was aaa-mazing and it’s from my friend, Lori’s, new cookbook The Recipe Girl Cookbook.

I love Lori’s blog, The Recipe Girl, and I love her food…so I knewww I would love her cookbook! It’s full of great recipes for cooking everyday and even entertaining. I love how she organizes the recipes, meals but with titles like Hungry Mornings, Let’s Do Lunch and Happy Hour and she even puts together 20 themed menus for entertaining to make it easier!

Doesn’t this Make-ahead Overnight Breakfast Casserole look so good?

Brown-Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies — need I say more?

I’ll admit before trying this recipe at home, I made tempura using the batter mixes from a box. It never tasted like what I’m used to at Japanese restaurants so I haven’t tried it again since.

A couple of months ago, KitchenAid invited me to attend the South Beach Wine and Food Festival. I was so excited when they asked if I wanted to attend, it’s an event they are a big sponsor of. And can you believe I have never been to Miami and I live in Florida? I jumped at the chance to attend the festival and go to Miami for the first time.

When I first arrived, I was trying to figure out where the entrance was. You see, this wine & food festival was on the beach! Then, I saw Ashley. I had met her last year at Food Blog Forum and she is as sweet as can be. I ended up hanging out with her, her husband and her friends. They are hilarious and so fun!

Then, we happened upon this huge sign and we became so excited!

I was oohing and ahhing over the KitchenAid appliances. Aren’t those colors so fun??? I can’t choose a favorite — love them all!

And those wall ovens, I wish wish my kitchen wasn’t so small so I could have KitchenAid wall ovens!

It was Andrew Zimmern who showed us how to make tempura and showed us how EASY it is to make over at the KitchenAid demo stage.

He talked about how tempura is actually Portuguese not originally from Japan like everyone thinks. And I love this quote from him: “food is delicious but food with a story is even more delicious”.

I also saw cooking demos from Robert Irvine who I learned about grape seed oil from and Chef Michael Symon.

And then I proceeded to eat and eat and eat.