Cécile's Chèvre on Toast

What's not to love about cheese on toast?

Are you looking for something quick and easy to make for breakfast? Lunch? A lazy dinner that doesn't involve a lot of clean up, prep time, or much of anything else? Or an appetizer for a party you're throwing to prove what a sophisticated, high class adult you are?

Look no further. These little cheese toasts look elegant and are simple enough for even the most inexperienced cook to make. Although they're not my personal favorite thing I've ever made for the blog, they seemed to be a hit with my taste testers and were happily gobbled down almost as soon as I took them out of the oven, which will hopefully be the case for you, too if you ever decide to try your hand at this French treat!

Molly's Nut and Raisin Bread

A tasty bread for breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. Or for a snack.

I'm going to apologize in advance: this is a long post. Like, a really long one. Maybe longer than any other one I've done so far on this blog, and so if you're in a rush, I promise I won't judge you for skimming. Or just looking at the pictures.

(There are a lot of pictures.)

So why, you may ask, is this post so long? Was this recipe especially complicated? Did it require more than one attempt. Yes, and no respectively, and you'll hear all about that in a minute. Long story short, for Columbus Day weekend, I went down to visit my aunt and uncle in Washington, D.C. and this was the recipe I picked to bring down with me and feature on the blog. And because I'm me, and we were in D.C., we did a lot of wandering around museums and memorials dedicated to one of my favorite periods in history to study. Since I'm always looking for ways to keep this blog fresh and interesting, I decided to share some of the trip with all of you!

Felicity's Apple Butter and Breakfast Puffs

A tasty accompaniment to pretty much anything!

Fall is probably my favorite season. I love the way the leaves change, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, and I'm a big fan of sweatshirt weather, even if it's still hard to believe it's already dark at six thirty at night.

I'm also a fan because apples are one of my favorite fruits, and I've been waiting to break out this particular recipe for quite some time! Actually, probably since this time last year, when I just kind of ran out of time to make it. Since I really didn't want that to happen again, this was actually the first blog post I did for the month... and then I got lazy, and didn't post it for several weeks. Oh well!

The important thing is that it's happening now, so without further ado, apple butter, plus bonus breakfast puffs!

Caroline's Joe Frogger Cookies

Super tasty molassesy cookies with an interesting origin story!

Caroline Abbott is the newest addition to the historical character line up - excuse me, the BeForever line at American Girl, and I imagine most of my non AG fan readers aren't familiar with her. Her stories take place during the War of 1812, and although she comes from Sackets Harbor, New York, for some reason, I always find myself wanting to do New England or maritime recipes with her, probably because she loves boats and sailing, and I associate that pretty strongly with my own roots.

Plus, I've maybe been wanting American Girl to make a historical character from New England since forever, and Caroline's another character from New York, so I'm borrowing her for a while until I get someone closer.

Caroline technically joined the group back in May for my birthday, but I've been sitting on a way to introduce her for a while. Quite a while at this point!

To get some inspiration for this post, Caroline and I went on a field trip...

Samantha's Marble Cake

I've never understood why you would choose chocolate or vanilla when you can have both!

And then I kind of wandered away for two weeks. Sorry about that! Life happened, and I was kind of running on fumes for a while when it came to even thinking about doing anything with my blog. I'll be getting to answering comments shortly.

Anyway, in case you've been under a rock for the last month, some exciting new developments have occurred in the world of American Girl! The historical characters have got a fresh new look that I, for one, am very excited about, and while I'm pretty late to the party, I figured what better way to celebrate than make a cake?

And considering who made a pretty impressive comeback with the relaunch, it seemed only fitting for Samantha to host this post!

Well, that, and I really wanted to make a marble cake.

Julie's Ice Cream Pie

This might have been a bigger hit than the skillet cookie!

My mom's birthday was last Tuesday, and since I like baking and doing nice things for people since they do so much for me, I asked her what she'd want for a birthday treat. She surprised me a little by saying she didn't want cookies, she didn't want pie, she didn't want cake...

She wanted ice cream. And she had a really cool idea about how to make that happen.

What follows is a totally improvised recipe that's both really simple and very customizable. I apologize in advance for introducing it to you, because I've already had several requests to make it again, and the leftovers have been calling my name all week long. Seriously, it's a problem. But I guess that's what happens when you put ice cream, cookies and other delicious things together and stick it in the freezer for a while.

So, why is Julie hosting this post?

It's Our One Year Anniversay!

We've certainly expanded since last year!

One year ago today, I published my first official post on A Peek Into the Pantry, and as promised, we're doing a slightly different kind of post today. I thought about what I wanted to do for our anniversary post. For a while, I wanted to do some kind of recipe, but couldn't settle on a good one. Should it be a Kirsten recipe because she was my first doll? Should it be a family recipe we're all really fond of and dying to figure out a way to incorporate into the blog?

Then I got the idea that it might be fun to do a kind of retrospective. Instead of focusing on one new recipe, I wanted to take a look back and think about what I learned, what people enjoyed, what people really didn't, and where we want to go moving forward. This is what resulted! Instead of just giving you guys my thoughts about the blog, I polled my most frequent taste testers and supporters in the blogging process about their favorite dishes and ones that just didn't fly

So hopefully this will be a fun way to take a step back and look back on the last year, while also looking into the future to see where we wind up this time next year. If not, I guess we'll have to come up with a new idea for next year's anniversary!