Living away from home during my first year of college, there have been simple joys I’ve missed: my dog’s warming greetings at the doorstep, laughing with my best friend, being with my family, and sleeping in the comfort of my big cozy bed. But, I never realized until I was a freshman in college how much love I have for cooking and baking when I’m home in the kitchen.
It has become one of my all-time favorite hobbies to do once I’m out of my dorm and have access to a stove or oven. Although I do love my home-cooked meals, I also like to try new recipes. In particular, ones from Sugar Spun Run. If you do not know what Sugar Spun Run is, it’s a baking blog by Samantha Merritt. Samantha’s recipes have been featured on People, BuzzFeed, TLC, Delish, The Huffington Post, and now, because I am writing this, Her Campus.
Without exaggeration, every recipe I have tried from her has always turned out to be perfect. She’s the only person I completely trust for following new recipes that I’ve never done before. Merritt has both YouTube videos and written instructions to follow. Personally, I prefer the videos because she shows you how to do everything step by step in a super simple way. But, besides this, I always enjoy watching her because of her bubbly personality and how she is super precise when in the kitchen. She will make almost anything from scratch (even sourdough crackers!) The recipes always taste the same each time, which says a lot about the precisely tested instructions being used in her perfected recipes.
Today I want to share all of the recipes from Sugar Spun Run I have followed, and I want to give you my honest opinion on them all, so you can try for yourselves.
Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup
This Chicken Noodle Soup is creamy, comforting, warm and delicious. Making it on the stove, it tastes fresh everytime and it’s perfect to make for when it’s cold and flu season in the winter. It has to be one of my favorite comfort recipes and the heavy cream that you add in it gives it something extra. When eating the soup, I love to add in oyster characters and drink a side of Schweppes ginger ale with it (it helps the flu experience run a little bit more smoothly). My family makes this almost every week, and when I come back home from school, it will certainly be the first thing on my list to make. To me, it’s pure comfort in a bowl.
Lemon pasta WITH A MEDITERRANEAN TWIST
I come from an Italian family, so I am picky when it comes to any sort of Italian food that isn’t made by my grandmother or mom. However, this dish of lemon pasta is fantastic. It has a zesty lemon flavor to it, along with the creamy parmesan cheese added into the dish. You can eat your pasta with a side of chicken cutlet or fish as well. I used linguine, but you can use any pasta that you like for this ranging from bucatini, capellini, vermicelli or tagliatelle.
RASPBERRY thumbprint cookies
These are my favorite cookies I have made from following off this blog. They were also my dog Sophie’s favorite because she would not stop looking at me to give her a bite again, but that’s easy to say because she only likes eating sweets and not dog food.
Baking these raspberry thumbprint cookies during the Christmas season is great, but any other party or occasion you could do as well. They’re sweet, buttery, and the raspberry jam you put on top adds a fruity refreshing flavor to the cookie. When you roll the dough into sugar after the base is done, it really helps give it an extra touch of sweetness to the cookie, even though this part is optional when following the recipe.
oreo balls
I’ve prepared these Oreo balls for the SuperBowl, Easter, Christmas and Thanksgiving. Basically all the holidays (if you’re counting the SuperBowl). They are my go-to treat to make and always end up being my favorite, although there so simple.
These Oreo balls are super easy to make and they only require four simple ingredients: Oreos, cream cheese, vanilla extract and chocolate bars for melting afterwards once frozen. I used Hershey’s chocolate bars because I think it tastes best with the Oreo’s rather than using melted chocolate candies, for the reason that Hershey tastes more rich.
They have a delightful sweet, chocolatey, taste and if you are not a person who likes the strong flavor of cream cheese, you can taste the Oreo, in addition to the vanilla extract.
Personally, my favorite thing about this is that you can decorate them for any holiday by simply dipping them in chocolate after they finish freezing, and then going ahead using colorful frosting drizzle on top to decorate, but that’s up to you, so feel free to do so! I have found countless of ideas on Pinterest of holiday themed Oreo ball designs from the Grinch, snowmen, reindeer, bunnies, and football shaped ones to.
SPICED CARROT Cake
Although the prep for making this cake takes a while, I believe that it’s hundred percent worth the chaos in the kitchen. If you plan on making this one, I suggest getting pre-shredded carrots because it will save you so much more of your time and energy. When I first made this, I used regular carrots that you have to chop up and it took awhile out of my day, so I suggest getting ones that are already cutted up for you.
Besides this, the carrot cake is exceptional, once it’s out of the oven. My sister Olivia and I bake this one together all the time for family gatherings and everyone compliments us on how great it turned out to be!
It has a spicy, cinnamony touch to it, along with the sweet pecans, carrots, and sweet cream cheese frosting on top of it. Everytime it comes out of the oven, I find it to be super moist and always tastes exactly how it was the first time I made it.
Monkey bread
If you haven’t tried monkey bread at least once in your life, I highly suggest that you do. Monkey Bread is a pastry like treat that is sticky, sweet, and consists mostly of dough, cinnamon, butter, and sugar. This recipe from Sugar Spun Run is actually super easy to follow off of and I was surprisingly shocked. You only really need your standard dry ingredients for this recipe that will contain flour, sugar, baking powder, and cornstarch. In addition to the cinnamon, milk, and, butter that is going to make this recipe turn into the sweet dough that you want it to. It’s also great when having family or friends come over because you can pull it apart and share with whoever!
CHOCOLATE chip cookie BARS
Sugar Spun Run chocolate chip cookie bars are ooey gooey perfection. If your the type of person who just likes to eat raw cookie dough out of the batch (without the salmonella part), then these are for you. They taste a bit like dough but cooked. I suggest making these because you get best of both worlds, and you also don’t need to shape them into a cookie, you can just pop it into the pan and cut them up when your done!
Homemade biscuits
For Thanksgiving, I made these batch of biscuits and let me tell you, they turned out to be a fresh, buttery, warm golden-brown perfection.
I used to rely on the good old biscuits from Pillsbury that you can pop in the oven for just a couple of minutes, but now making them fresh out of the oven homemade is what it’s all about. This recipe from Sugar Spun Run has honestly been a total game changer, and I highly suggest you use this instead of the store bought biscuits from your local grocery store that’s an artificial dough.
All in all, these recipes I have followed from Sugar Spun Run have been a 10. Whether you have family gatherings where you need to chef something up, or just simply want to spend some more time in the kitchen, I recommend any of these. They are all simple to make and taste delicious!
Moral of the story is that Sugar Spun Run is a blog that I wholeheartedly trust and you can’t go wrong with any of the recipes you chose from, and will have have people asking you for the recipe!
All of the recipes can be found online at sugarspunrun.com by Samantha Merrit.