Jolene's Recipe Journal

Gingerbread Simple Syrup is perfect for adding a festive touch to your favorite beverages or as a topping for pancakes or waffles. 

These cookies are soft, buttery, and have a lovely lemon flavor. You can decorate them with colorful sprinkles or icing to make them look even more festive!

When I was a kid, Christmas afternoon was spent with my dad's side of the family, and I remember a house bursting at the seams with people and tables full of goodies that my grandmother and aunts put together. Pizzelles, rosettes, bowties, totos, little tarts filled with lemon or chocolate.  

These bite-sized cups are made by pressing gingerbread cookie dough into a mini muffin tin and baking until they're crisp and golden brown. 

Eggnog biscotti are a delicious holiday twist on the classic Italian cookie, filled with the flavors of vanilla, nutmeg and rum!

I'm so excited to be hosting this year's Christmas Cookies Week! It's one of my favorite events to participate in and we've got a fantastic line up of foodie friends sharing their recipes.

Are you tired of plain old hot cocoa? Why not switch things up with a festive twist? Gingerbread hot cocoa is the perfect way to add some holiday cheer to your hot cocoa routine. 

Now that Thanksgiving has passed I'm fully embracing winter flavors like gingerbread and peppermint mocha. I made these Lemon Filled Gingerbread Muffins from Taste of Home for this month's Muffin Monday!

I've been making this Original Nestle Toll House chocolate chip pie for almost two decades now. It started as a treat for my sister's birthday and after all this time, I've still not managed to get pictures through the bake up to the finished product in one shot. I also change up the methods and baking vessels depending on availability and other things. 

It's Muffin Monday and I'm firmly in fall mode so I chose these Cranberry Orange Muffins from Taste of Home. I really wanted to use fresh cranberries but wasn't able to get them so I used dried instead.

We are a house divided when it comes to favorite breakfast foods. My husband likes French toast, my son, pancakes, but I am a huge fan of waffles. I love how the little pockets hold just the right amount of maple syrup, the crispy outside and the soft inside.

  If there's one dessert that says fall to me, it's apple crisp. I've made a few different varieties, some more fancy than others. We like this easy version from Taste of Home because it lets the flavor of the apple shine through.

I'm not one to usually make recipes that claim to be "the best" version of it because it's so subjective. What makes something the best pizza to one person makes it the worst to another.  I had been craving French toast for about a week so I searched and found this Best French Toast recipe on Taste of Home. 

I am a huge fan of B. Dylan Hollis. I discovered him on social media during the pandemic and just could not get enough. He worked his way through vintage cookbooks and made some of the craziest recipes I'd never heard of before.

Have you ever tried a monster shake or freakshake? These over the top milkshakes are so easy to make at home! 

Cookies are always a hit around here and I'm always looking for interesting ones to try. These Kiss From A Vampire cookies were on the Taste of Home website a while back and I came across the printout when I was deciding on this year's HalloweenTreatsWeek recipes so I thought I'd give them a go.

Welcome to 2023’s #HalloweenTreatsWeek event! If you're new here, welcome! If you're a returning haunt, welcome back! HalloweenTreatsWeek is a yearly blogging event that is hosted by Angie from Big Bear’s Wife . You'll find that this fun and spooky event is an online, week-long event that is filled with some frightfully fun Halloween treats and recipes from some fantastic Halloween loving bloggers!

We recently met some of my husband's friends for Happy Hour and they're all very into beer. I'm not going to lie, I'm not a fan of that or wine, I tend to stick to drinks centered around rum, vodka and liqueurs.

Fall is an amazing time in New England. To me, the season kicks off when I see that first notification that honeycrisp apples are ready. It's like Christmas morning! I went through the recipes I'd earmarked to try and decided on Glazed Apple Maple Blondies from Taste of Home.

August has flown by and it's time for Muffin Monday again! This month's pick was a no brainer.  Zucchini is plentiful everywhere and I had a pretty decent blueberry crop this summer despite a late hard frost back in May. 

I have a love/hate relationship with August. On the one hand it means that summer is coming to an end.  On the other hand, two of my seasonal favorites, corn and tomatoes, are finally available. It's often too hot to run the oven or stand outside tending the grill so I look for easy to prep sides like this salad.

July is #NationalIceCreamMonth and I'm getting together with some foodie friends for an ice cream social so grab a spoon and dig in to all the awesome recipes we're sharing today!

We recently purchased a smoker and it's been real fun learning to use it.  We were doing some 3-2-1 St. Louis ribs over the weekend and I thought some cornbread and baked beans would be the perfect sides. 

I've been wanting to try these Lemon Crumb Muffins from Taste of Home for quite a while but they kept getting bumped for whatever reason. I ended up with some extra lemons from another recipe so I finally gave them a try for this month's Muffin Monday.

If you've followed my blog for a while you'll know that I'm overnight oat obsessed! I'm terrible about making breakfast so if I have something that's grab and go I will definitely eat it. 

  I hope you're enjoying #BrunchWeek as much as I am!  For my second  recipe I'm going with a classic, coffee cake.  I found myself with an overload of chocolate chips and I found Trish Q's recipe on the Taste of Home website. 

I'm kicking off #BrunchWeek with my latest obsession, stuffed waffles !  Today's version is a peanut butter waffle chock full of bacon and banana, also known as the Elvis Stuffed Waffle.

Happy National Grilled Cheese Day! I actually didn't eat many grilled cheese growing up but now I'm  a huge fan.  My guys like the classic, American cheese on white bread but I'm much more adventurous.  When I saw this Cinnamon Raisin Apple Grilled Cheese on Taste of Home I knew I had to give it a try!

“There are five elements: earth, air, fire, water and garlic.”  Louis Diat April is #NationalGarlicMonth and today I'm getting together with some foodie friends to celebrate the delightful Alium.  Being Italian, garlic is a staple item in most of my favorite dishes and I always have some on hand.

“I see recipes calling for one clove of garlic. One clove of garlic is not enough for any recipe unless it’s a recipe for ‘How to cook one clove of garlic’ – even in this case, use two.”   Unknown April is #NationalGarlicMonth and today we're sharing some of our very favorite recipes.  Garlic is in the Allium family along with shallots, onions, leeks and chives. It can be consumed raw or cooked. I've exclusively used it in savory dishes, but there are recipes for garlic ice cream and other sweet treats out there.

March has flown by and it's #MuffinMonday again!  Sometimes I choose my recipe based on a holiday or a theme but this month's choice was brought to you by the bunch of bananas that my guys asked for but then didn't eat.

It's the final day of Spring Sweets Week and I sure hope you've all enjoyed it as much as I have! Actual spring is still quite a few weeks away here in New England, but it's been great getting together with all the talented bloggers and sharing recipes.

For my second Spring Sweets Week recipe I whipped up some scones.  They are super simple to make and really pop when you load them full of freshly squeezed citrus juice and ginger!

Today kicks off one of my favorite events of the year, Spring Sweets Week. Winter has definitely overstayed it's welcome this year and nothing helps lift your spirits like bright spring flavors!

It's been a while since I've been able to participate in the Taste of Home Bakeable challenge so I was excited for this month's, Classic Irish Soda Bread. 

For a New England girl, March is one of the best months of the year.  The snow is melting, daylight lasts longer, and the sap starts running. It takes a lot of time and effort to produce maple syrup, and I highly recommend visiting a sugar shack to see how it's done if you have one nearby. 

When I went searching for this month's Muffin Monday recipe I narrowed it down to something with cherries.  February is #NationalCherryMonth and we are big fans here.

  #NationalPancakeDay is celebrated on the Tuesday before Lent begins each year.  It's also known as Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Tuesday.  Here are our favorite ways to celebrate!

I've been absolutely terrible at eating breakfast lately.  I get up, putter around with some housework, make a cup of coffee and then the next thing I know it's closer to lunch than breakfast.

Our sponsor for the upcoming Spring Sweets Week event was so incredibly generous this year I'm doing a few posts ahead of time.  Melissa's Produce sent three bags of Key Limes and I knew I had to make my husband his favorite pie.

When my son was little he used to get excited for game day. He wasn't really interested in the game itself but very much enjoyed the variety of foods I would put out to nibble on.

I wasn't sure I was going to blog these stuffed waffles since it was the first time I tried using the new iron but since I'd already taken the pics as I went I figured, why not? They aren't perfect but they are delicious!

February is National Chocolate Lovers Month and I was searching for a fun way to celebrate.  I found these pancakes on the Taste of Home website and they sounded absolutely awesome.

I'm happy to be rejoining the #MuffinMonday bakers after a few months off.  I've been in a bit of a cooking slump overall so I jotted some potential flavors down on slips of paper and let my guys decide.  The winner for January was Cinnamon Crumb Muffins from Taste of Home.