Three recipes that hit the sweet spot and won’t waste your groceries

It’s day who-knows-what into quarantine and my sweet tooth is starting to fight back. My candy stash is empty and I can’t make anymore QuikTrip runs to restock. Not wanting to demolish our new groceries, I tried three easy recipes that hit the sweet tooth spot and didn’t leave me in trouble for using the last two eggs. 

Banana Anything

I’m a firm believer that anything with banana tastes good. Laffy Taffy, milkshakes, pancakes, ice cream — especially bread. If you aren’t super experienced when it comes to baking, you’re in luck, because banana bread is one of the easiest recipes. You don’t have to worry about you’re mom nagging you for “wasting” perfectly good bananas, because rule number one of all banana desserts: the darker and mushier the bananas are, the better — and who wants to eat brown bananas?

Once you find your squishy “misfit” bananas, this recipe involves your typical baking ingredients: butter, vanilla, eggs, flour, sugar, baking soda and salt — walnuts are always optional, but I don’t add them because I will just pick them out anyways. The whole process from mashing up the bananas to measuring took me about 10 minutes. Then you just wait an hour for the bread to rise in the oven and boom — you’re a baker. 

Seriously, my mom wasn’t huge on me wasting her ingredients, but we compromised. She didn’t have to toss her old bananas and I got to steal just a little bit of butter and eggs. And if you’re worried about your bread disappearing as quick as mine did, I’d suggest banana muffins, that way everyone is tempted to eat one muffin compared to a large chunk of bread — but maybe that’s just my family.

Try the best banana bread recipe

Edible Cookie Dough

TikTok isn’t only for Renegade dancing or funny comedic sketches — recently there’s been a lot of recipes popping up on my For You Page. And last night, when I craved chocolate, a recipe for a singular serve of cookie dough caught my eye.

The recipe requires very few ingredients, with nothing measuring over a cup. Of course I wasn’t going to tell my mom I took a tablespoon more of her butter — I’d do anything for chocolate. This recipe requires butter, brown sugar, sugar, vanilla, milk, salt, flour and chocolate chips — definitely the big chocolate chips, not the minis.

I managed to make this in five minutes, and that included washing all my dirty dishes. I decided to stick my bowl of cookie dough in the freezer for about five minutes, which I highly recommend doing — cold cookie dough is so much better than room temperature cookie dough.

Was this recipe perfect? No. But did it cure my craving for some chocolate? Yes. The consistency of the cookie dough wasn’t super doughy, but when I added a little more flour to thicken it up, it just tasted dry. This recipe wasn’t my favorite, but I made it and ate it within 15 minutes, so bonus points if you need a quick bite of chocolate. 

Try this fast cookie dough recipe for one.

Peanut Butter Fudge

Okay, this recipe will most likely cause a trip to the store, but I promise you can convince your parents to buy it — it’s only three ingredients. A jar of peanut butter, store bought vanilla frosting and a bag of Reese’s peanut butter baking chips that cost seven dollars. I was skeptical too — a three ingredient recipe can’t possibly work, but if you’re a Reese’s fan, this is what you want to make. 

Just like the other two recipes, it took me 10 minutes to whip up the ingredients. You microwave the peanut butter and frosting then slowly add in the peanut butter chips. Once everything is microwaved you pour the mixture onto parchment paper lined in a tray and refrigerate for one hour. Don’t be like me and get lost on TikTok and forget to take out the fudge until an hour later — my wrists were sore trying to cut the fudge with a butter knife. 

I guess my family underestimates my baking skills because everything I’ve attempted baking this past week seemed to vanish within 24 hours. Some people might be trying to focus on eating healthy during this quarantine, but I know your sweet tooths are saying something different. Try out these recipes then check out Riley Atkinson’s “Quarantine-friendly online workouts” and you’ll be just fine.

Try this easy three ingredient recipe.