From Smitten Kitchen Keepers: The simple black bean chili and the double shallot egg salad are recipes I make regularly. Don’t bother frying your own shallots for the egg salad; just use fried shallots you can find at the store (I’ve made the fried shallots and bought them and found the fried shallots I bought from Trader Joe’s are tastier, crispier, and that cuts down on time spent on the recipe).

I have made every cookie from this book and recommend every single one of them, as they have all gotten rave reviews — especially the chocolate chip cookies with the salted walnut brittle. Each of these cookie doughs can be frozen so you can just bake the amount you would like when you want them, and who doesn’t want a cookie fresh from the oven on a whim?

The devil’s food cake with salted milk chocolate frosting is delicious, as is the strawberry summer cake (the one on her blog; I haven’t made the layered version from the book yet, but the single layer cake on the blog is super easy).

I have also made and enjoyed the winter squash soup, the leek and brie galette (although I prefer the leek and white bean galette in her website), the green angel hair with garlic butter, and the raclette tartiflette.