I made my own blood orange syrup and you can too! All you need to make your own flavored syrup are two ingredients: sugar and flavoring, and you can make any custom syrup you want.

Creating your own syrup is simple and fun. The base of simple syrup is just sugar and water boiled together on a stovetop until the mixture reaches the desired syrup consistency.

Though it may seem more difficult, the process of making flavored syrup is just as easy as making simple syrup: boil together the flavoring, sugar, and water together, and voila! Flavored syrup!

This is where it gets fun.

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Finally, with these Trader Joe’s Multigrain Pancakes I have an excuse to try out my Lodge Cast Iron Reversible Griddle/Grill! I’ve been sitting on a new Lodge Griddle for far too long, and these pancakes were the perfect reason to inaugurate a new kitchen appliance.

Pancakes are quite the crowd-pleaser for breakfast. When I make pancakes for a group, however, I just want them to be quick and easy.

My answer? Pancake mix and a griddle. I find that a griddle offers large, evenly-heated surface area to maximize cooking space and with a mix, pancake batter can be whipped up in just a few minutes.

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Before college, the combination of banana with peanut butter was unfathomable to me. However, during my Freshman year, that all changed. Bites of ripe banana interspersed with smooth, creamy peanut butter soon became my snack of choice. As a mix of protein and sugar that could store well unrefrigerated, it was this busy college student’s perfect midnight study break snack.

Years later, one ingredient banana ice cream is now a staple in my home. I love that I can get the sweet, frozen creaminess of ice cream with a single natural ingredient, the humble banana.

Even peanut butter frequently shows up in my cooking, but rarely in the now-classic combination of peanut butter and banana.

So, today, I want to throw it back to my college days with an indulgent twist—a Peanut Butter + Banana Ice Cream Sandwich!

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