by Mlissa | Nov 12, 2025 | Baking, In the kitchen with...
I’ve been baking this year. And y’all have my son to thank for it.
It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed baking at all, but this year that love has started to come back and I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed it and how happy it’s made me to get in the kitchen and make a mess again.
Earlier this year, my son came to me with a recipe he’d seen on X or YouTube for No-Bake Boston Cream Pie Bars and asked if we could make them. We not me. So, I said yes and the next day, we made them, devoured them and the next week, made another batch.
After those, he asked if we could make Brookies. I again said yes, and we got in the kitchen a couple of days later and spent a couple of hours making brownies and chocolate chip cookie dough and in the end had the most amazing and decadent brownies/chocolate chip cookie bars ever.
There’s a whole list of things we want to make, but there are things I want to make too, just because I’ve missed it so much.
I’m not much of a cookie baker, but I was browsing Pinterest and found a recipe for Gingerdoodles. Snickerdoodles + Gingerbread spices = Gingerdoodles.
They were gone in less than two days. And they were delicious. Soft and chewy and just wonderful.
Being in the kitchen for me was something I’d do when I was stuck on a story. I’d bake cupcakes or brownies or cookies or bread or muffins. I’d do it all from scratch because following a recipe allowed my brain to work in one way and relax in other ways. When all was said and done, I had usually figured out where the story needed to go and I had some sweet treat to show for it. Baking was a form of therapy for me.
But somewhere along the way, over the last decade or so, I’d lost that, even more so the last six or seven years.
A lot of things have happened, have changed in my life, in all our lives and I was just barely hanging on, just trying to make it through the days. Writing was overwhelming. Baking was overwhelming. Most everything to me was overwhelming except taking a drive and standing on top of a mountain and looking out at the Blue Ridge and breathing some air that wasn’t threatening to choke me.
Baking these last few months has been a real joy and I haven’t been able to say that about anything at all in a very long time.
The other thing that’s been a real joy… Writing. I’m finding my way back into creating stories, creating characters, creating love where before there was nothing more than…nothing.
Joy is necessary. Joy is something I’ve been missing and right now, we could all use more than a little joy.
The next two things we’re going to bake are Buckeye Brownies and Gingerbread Latte cookies. Sourdough bread is on my list, too, but I might have to wait until December or January to start on that.
Oh, and here’s a picture…
You’ve gotta wonder, too… What books are all these treats going into because if we know anything at all about me, treats and coffee make it into my books and if I’m in the kitchen this much…
Anyway…
What are you baking this year?
Lissa
by Mlissa | Dec 1, 2018 | In the kitchen with...
You may not want them and I totally get that.
Then again, maybe you’ll enjoy them again.
The truth is, I love food. I love being in the kitchen. I love to bake, to cook… Every so often I even like going grocery shopping.
One of the things I’ve always wanted to do is be a food blogger. I don’t take professional photos. I don’t use fancy ingredients. I don’t make foods that only one person in my house will eat. I make comfort food. I make relatively easy food. I use my phone to snap pictures. I don’t have backdrops or special plates/glasses. I don’t create recipes, but I do adapt some. I don’t follow food trends, just as I don’t follow romance writing trends. I just cook what sounds good to me at any given moment.
I just like food and it makes me happy and it’s been suggested more than once that I should share that with others. And being a food blogger of any sort seems like fun to me and so, this section of my blog is going to be used for such.
Not to mention, I use food in my romance books. My characters cook and/or bake. They like real food. They like delicious food. I’m a Southern girl who grew up cooking from the age of 8 or 9. I had chores and sometimes that included dinner. I’m a self-taught baker, too. My first attempts were a disaster, but I learned and learned quickly how to read ingredients, recipes, and measurements.
So, that’s all for now, but as it had been nearly 3 years since I’d added anything to this section of the blog, I thought the beginning of December would be a good time to start over.
~lissa
by Mlissa | Jan 9, 2016 | In the kitchen with...
When I was growing up (yes, it’s one of those stories), eating out was a rare thing. Special occasions were when we went to Red Lobster. You also dressed up to go there or to a steak house. You didn’t wear jeans.
Fast food was rare, too. We’d stop at McDonald’s on the way out of town for a quick on the road dinner or breakfast. Taco Bell was a once every couple of weeks thing. And we rarely ever ordered pizza out unless it was for a party.
No, we ate at home. You wanted pizza, we made it. Tacos, we made them, too. Cheeseburgers? There was a secret recipe and they were famous among family and friends. We didn’t eat out on a regular basis as we all do now. And when I say we, it’s a collective society WE.
My parents worked, sometimes crazy hours, but 90% of the time, we ate at home.
But, it’s been a problem in our house, the eating out more than we should. I’m the only cook. My kids have no interest in cooking (they better marry a chef or have a really high paying job so they can eat out). I’ve tried, but nah. My spouse has no interest in learning how to cook much either. And, I get tired of being the only one, no matter how much I love doing it. But eating out is too expensive on a regular basis. Too many meals can be made from just what a family of four spends eating out at some place like Applebee’s.
Now, I’ve tried this before and life got the best of me and it was working out really well. I’m doing it again in the hopes that it sticks this time.
I loosely plan meals. I find dishes I want to make or try and buy all the ingredients for them for the week. I pick a cookie or something to bake (I haven’t yet this week). I buy all the breakfast stuff and the lunch stuff to make sandwiches. And I do my best to stay out of the store the rest of the week. It didn’t work this week, but maybe it’ll work better in the coming weeks.
I make things that are hearty and will have leftovers. Casseroles. Stews and chilis and soups.
We used to dread leftover when I was a kid. It was like, “but we had that last night’. Little did I know how much I’d come to love having leftovers in the fridge. It makes life so much easier, especially on the weekends when people are hungry ALL THE TIME!
The links to the recipes I made this week are as follows:
- French Onion Chicken and Rice Bake
- Grown Up Cheeseburger Macaroni
- Mexican Lasagna
- Crock-Pot Ravioli Casserole
Most recipes I try I have found on food blogs and Pinterest. I haven’t decided what we’ll have in the upcoming week, but I’m thinking something with shrimp, and maybe a beef stew… It helps to know what we’re having each night, using the crock pot especially, even just once and yes, I know there were only 4 recipes, but, there are enough leftovers for Friday and Saturday without someone eating the same thing more than twice in one week. And dinner on Sundays is typically, breakfast.
Do you cook at home? Do you plan meals? I’d love to know your tips and tricks.
~lissa
by Mlissa | Jan 2, 2016 | In the kitchen with...
So, yesterday I made Banana Pudding.
I’d been craving banana pudding for months, ever since I saw Desmond Howard dig into a big bowl of it on ESPN College Gameday. Well, yesterday, for New Year’s, I finally made some.
For years, the recipe I’ve been using doesn’t use the normal ‘Nilla wafers and it’s not layered into a bowl. I use the recipe for ‘Not Yo Mama’s Banana Pudding‘. Paula Deen made this one famous on her Food Network show and it is a delicious, easy banana pudding. It can be made with fat-free, sugar-free pudding and Cool Whip, as well as with light or fat-free cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk (I’ve never done light or fat-free cream cheese or sweetened condensed milk in mine cause just NO, but I don’t see why it couldn’t work if that’s important to you. However, if it doesn’t work, not my fault.).
It makes a lot, too. 13×9″ pan full, but I break mine down to a 8×8″ pan and then make 4 individual servings. And no matter how I make it, it never lasts longer than 2 days in my house.
Big desserts like this or cheesecake are special occasion desserts for us. Holidays or birthdays. A few times a year. It’s what keeps them special and keeps them tasting more and more delicious. They’d lose their luster, just as anything would, if I made them more than I do.
But,if you like Banana Pudding, I’d encourage you to give this recipe a whirl.
~lissa
by Mlissa | Mar 28, 2015 | Cover Reveal, In the kitchen with..., Inspiration, Pinterest
Lone Star Sweets has new covers created by TEZ Graphics. They’re beautiful. Bright. Light. And reflect the series.
I’ve flipped out the older covers and inserted all the new ones. I’ve uploaded all new information to Amazon, All Romance eBooks, and Barnes and Noble. Amazon seems to be taking the longest to get everything going in the right direction, but eventually, they’ll all be there and looking good. (more…)
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