Butterbeer Cupcakes

To celebrate the birthday of the Boy Who Lived (despite the author), these cupcakes are full of butterscotch flavor!

Oof. A hard post to get to write after some of the behavior of the alleged author of the Harry Potter series, but I am not condoning or agreeing with any of her stances. They are wrong. She is wrong. I wanted to post this recipe today because it is Harry's birthday. I have yet to have butterbeer from Universal and don't know if I'll ever get around to it to be honest. Especially not in the near future.

These are fantastic little butterscotch cupcakes. The cupcakes base is cream soda/vanilla flavored and then you have a butterscotch filling that goes into the cupcakes and into the frosting AND drizzled on top. You don't have to be a Potterhead to enjoy these sweet little cupcakes!

Root Beer Float Pie

A childhood treat in (no bake) pie form that is so incredibly easy to make!

As a child, I had root beer floats all the time. My grandma kept Mug root beer and vanilla ice cream (by the gallon) on hand, so when I visited I could have a root beer float. As an adult, I really don't drink soda very often. I might have the occasional root beer or Sprite when I have fast food, but that's max once a month. I would give up soda completely except that I love root beer entirely too much. I saw this recipe and immediately saved it and put it on my meal plan.

I like to let my ice cream melt just slightly to stir into the root beer to get that light frothy mixture and this root beer float pie really captures that stage of a root beer float. It's heavenly. This pie doesn't take many ingredients and it's no bake. It's perfect to make the night before any get together. It's so easy!

Peach Blackberry Sangria #FantasticalFoodFight

Welcome to another Food Fight! Fantastical Food Fight is a group of food bloggers who will get a theme or ingredient each month and make some sort of variation for it. It could be traditional or nontraditional and can be found in a cookbook, on a blog, or be a blogger's own creation! For more details, check out this page.

It's time again for another Food Fight and this month's theme is RUM! Today is National Rum Day and that is how the theme was chosen. The Food Fighters were not given any particular type of dish so long as it contains rum or rum flavoring. I have to admit that I struggled a little with what I wanted to make because I don't have a lot of recipes saved with rum in them and I don't make a lot of food with rum. I did have a page from the September 2016 Food Network Magazine that was for a Mix and Match Sangria recipe. So the amounts of different ingredients are from that, but the choices were mine alone.

I have had sangria once and it was many years ago, right before I got pregnant with Mason. I had a peach sangria at TGIFriday's. It was so delicious and I hands-down knew I wanted peaches in this sangria paired with white wine and white rum. Nick wanted to do all berries, so I compromised with blackberries going into the mix as well. The recipe called for superfine sugar or light brown sugar and I used vanilla sugar that I had purchased for Kasekuchen. This is a pretty strong sangria and I personally would love to try it with a sweeter wine because I am not a dry wine aficionado. Maybe a tad less rum, although everyone else loved it. The peach and blackberry with lemon was delicious though!

The cups before the Sprite was added...

Smokey BBQ Ribs

Oven baked pork ribs that taste like they were made right on the grill!

I don't eat or make ribs very often. Honestly, the price point is one of the biggest deterrents for me. When they are on sale, I do love to pick some up. I've made ribs in the crockpot and while they were great, this recipe definitely trumps that recipe. I love how tender the ribs turn out from being slow cooked, but I feel like the sauce definitely sticks to these ribs (har de har) much better when cooked in the oven rather than the slow cooker. I used Sweet Baby Ray's Sweet Vidalia Onion BBQ Sauce...which is my all-time favorite.

Copycat Ocean Water

This Sonic copycat is such a fun drink to make for kids during the summer!

I have not yet had an actual Ocean Water at Sonic, but I think it may be something on our summer bucket list, especially after making this recipe! The coconut is the perfect touch for a refreshing summer drink. The blogger who I got the recipe for dropped adorable Swedish fish into her drink, but I had a bit of trouble with that. Instead, I placed them on the lip of the mason jar. I still think they look mighty cute. My kids really loved them. They don't get to drink soda very often and I think the blue color appealed to them.

Peach Dumplings #SundaySupper

The most magnificent summer treat in a pan - perfect for potlucks or get-togethers!

This week's Sunday Supper event is SUMMER'S BEST POTLUCK DISHES and is hosted by T.R. of Gluten Free Crumbly. I made these dumplings last summer for a family grill out (which is like feeding a small army anyways) and thought it would be the perfect recipe to share with y'all today for the summer potluck event.

So it literally could not be written in the stars any clearer than this recipe that Ree Drummond and I should be best friends. I love all of her recipes and she never fails me. However, I decided to switch up her apple dumplings with peaches - and then later noticed the side note where she suggests peach, pear or apricots would work well. I am the worst at actually reading through my cookbooks.

Anyways, I was going through my blog feed and saw Peach Dumplings pop up and noticed they were from Ree and decided it's totally fate that she would post her adaptation so close to when I had planned on posting the adaptation of her original recipe. However, in her adaptation, she used frozen peaches and Sprite, whereas I used fresh peaches and Mountain Dew. I'm definitely taking a page from her book (hah, puns!) and using frozen peaches next time because the fresh peaches were a pain in the backside to deal with.

Ree suggested serving it up with vanilla or cinnamon ice cream. We did cinnamon bun ice cream and I have to say - GO THAT ROUTE!! The whole thing is heaven in your mouth. By far, these dumplings are one of my all-time favorite desserts and recipes!