If you’ve never had a buckeye, then first and foremost you should know that these sweet confections — that most often appear around holiday time — are pure bliss. They’re made with a ball of smooth peanut butter coated nearly all the way, save for a small area around the top, with a firm, crisp layer of chocolate. They can have a reputation for being tricky and messy to pull off, but as long as you steer clear of these common mistakes, you’ll find that neither is true and they’re actually quite easy.

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Here’s a sweet way to encourage cooking skills in any aspiring junior chefs you may know: Make an Instant Pot in which they pretend cook all their favorite recipes, both real and imagined! It’s like a play kitchen, but even better. The process of making these mini pots isn’t exactly simple, but it’s absolutely worth busting out your crafting skills for. And when it’s done you’ll be bringing a kid joy during the holidays. That’s reason enough to dust off the old glue gun right? Right. Here’s how you do it.

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If there is one thing Ina Garten is known for, it’s her roast chicken. It’s her signature dish for Friday night supper with Jeffrey, and anyone and everyone who’s ever made it raves about it. (Five stars! 1,000+ reviews!)

Yet despite the accolades and fanfare, I’d never actually made her version before. My go-to roast chicken recipe is actually Jacques Pepin’s — I’ve stuck with it for years for it’s sheer simplicity. But lately I’ve been less enthusiastic about it because of problems with the skin sticking to the skillet and lack of crispiness. So I decided to give Ina’s a try and, perhaps unsurprisingly, I loved it.

Get the recipe: Ina Garten’s Perfect Roast Chicken

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Living in a big city means paying a lot for a small apartment. And as a person who cooks almost every day, the meager amount of counter space available in my kitchen is a constant source of frustration. Thankfully, Joanna Gaines — known, of course, for her uncanny ability to overhaul and redecorate homes — has the secret weapon to maximizing your counter space.

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I’m not totally sure I understand how to use Reddit, but I do know that for the past few weeks, every time I browsed the food and cooking-related threads, a recipe for spicy cranberry salsa continued to pop up. I sort of glazed over it the first few times, until I realized it was being spooned over cream cheese and served with crackers as a holiday appetizer — a very popular one, it seemed. I couldn’t decide whether it sounded strange and disgusting or strange and delicious, but I knew I needed to find out for myself.

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Welcome to the moment you’ve all been waiting for … the Kitchn Awards of 2018. This is our chance to celebrate, memorialize, and poke a little fun at the things that cooks and food-lovers talked about this year. From the alternative milk of the year to the food hero we were most grateful for, there were many moments to remember.

Check these awards that we discussed, laughed over, and debated — then tell us: Who do you think deserves a Kitchn award as we leave 2018?

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Christmas morning is always a feast for the senses. The smell of the tree, the hum of holiday music, and now the rich and welcoming smell of a fresh-out-of-the-oven casserole. It’s the cozy breakfast, often with make-ahead potential, perfect for feeding a crowd of any size, big or small. From a citrus and maple French toast casserole to a ham and cheese strata with a twist, here are 20 breakfast casseroles to make and serve at this year’s Christmas brunch.

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Join me on a journey to the past, to a simpler time. You were a kid, coming home from school. First thing you did after dropping your book bag on the floor was pour yourself a glass of milk and pull the blue package of Oreos out of the cupboard before your parents caught you. Back then, of course, the Oreo formula had only a few variations, and you stuck to the classic: Vaguely vanilla crème sandwiched between chocolate cookies. It did not occur to you in your wildest dreams that this cookie recipe could ever be improved upon. It seemed — and probably still does, to your adult brain — perfect.

And yet, we find ourselves in an era when Oreo is absolutely dead set on remaking the Oreo in almost every flavor combination it can reasonably (and to be honest, sometimes unreasonably) translate into cookie form. The latest flavor? Carrot cake.

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When it comes to celebrating the holiday season, and particularly Christmas, there are two types of households. One type opts for decorating their home with stately, minimalist touches — preferring white lights, silver bells, and multiple matched red and gold glass ornaments hung from a fresh seven-foot Douglas fir.

The other type of household goes 180 degrees in the opposite direction, choosing a style I like to call “Yuletide Game Show Chic,” and if you’re wondering what I mean by that, well, it can be summarized quite nicely in a new holiday cake offered by Sam’s Club.

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When you go to your local Starbucks in the morning to pick up your coffee before heading into the office, do you ever think to yourself, “I wish this was fancier,” or “I wish I could bring a date here”? I seriously doubt that the thought has ever crossed your mind, and yet Starbucks has answered questions we didn’t even know we wanted answers to, and in the most epic way imaginable: The coffee company has opened a three-story cafe complete with a lounge, cocktail bar, and a fully stocked Princi bakery.

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