Baking with Blaire: Pumpkin Patch Cookies

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Dan

Today’s recipe is brought to you by Blaire, Dinners With Dan‘s newest featured contributor!

The weather may be starting to cool down, but Dinners With Dan is about to heat back up. Thanks to all my friends who are contributing to the blog, and for all of you for being patient these last couple weeks while I’ve gone through some big life changes. More on that to come, but I’ll be back up and posting myself very very soon!

In the meantime, I’m extraordinarily excited to introduce the newest feature at Dinners With Dan: Baking With Blaire. One of my best friends from college, Blaire is going to be sharing a couple of her favorite baking recipes with us each month, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. The recipe she is sharing today definitely put me in the mood for some Fall treats, and I hope when you’re finished reading, not only do you want to try this delicious recipe, but you want to bake and get out to the pumpkin patch too!

Fall is by far my favorite season. It has my two fave holidays, Halloween and Thanksgiving. Nature throws a party with confetti colored leaves. I get to wear all my fall clothes and boots. But most of all, I can start making all the Fall and Winter baked goods I’ve been craving since the start of Spring. Zucchini bread, banana nut muffins, cranberry bundt cake, and above everything else, PUMPKIN ANYTHING. Seriously guys, I’m obsessed. I have a problem. So, in order to feed my addiction, the first thing I bake when September 1st rolls around are my Pumpkin Patch Cookies.

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Recipe: All-Vegetable Lasagna

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Dan

This past Thursday I got together with a few friends for the first Dinners With Dan Dinner Party. It was an absolute blast! I will post about all of the dishes in a little bit, but I wanted to at least share with you the dish I made for the evening, and that I think turned out extraordinarily well: an all-vegetable lasagna. I had never made the recipe before, and I’ve adjusted it below to how I made it, but I definitely recommend this!

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Recipe: Mushroom and Parmesan Chicken

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Dan

The initial recipe I made and shared for Dinners With Dan was a chicken dish close to my heart as it was the first recipe I made when I had a kitchen of my own, and it was a recipe I got from my late Aunt. The recipe was also a nice, easy, and simple dish which was perfect to start with on this blog. Tonight I’m going to expand on the foundation I laid in that recipe by adding an additional step to the process, and hopefully take you to the next level of baking chicken with my Mushroom and Parmesan Chicken.

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Recipe: Aunt Jo’s Cheesy Italian Chicken

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Dan

A few months ago, when I began seriously considering starting Dinners with Dan, I talked with many friends and asked what kind of content they would most want to see in a food blog. I’ve already begun to incorporate many of these suggestions, and I will continue to integrate more as time goes on, but the most common response I received was quite simple: Easy, quick, and delicious meals that anyone can make regardless of culinary skill.

So, with that in mind, I thought I would start Dinners with Dan with the very first dish I made from a recipe when I moved into an apartment with a kitchen for the first time. I got this recipe from my late Aunt and it quickly became a go-to. There is nothing fancy about this, and there are many many ways you can make this recipe more decadent (and I’ve noted just a couple things I’ve done in the past below), but for tonight, for my first time sharing with you, I made it just like I did when I first made it over 6 years ago. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

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