Recipe: 24 Carat Carrot Cake

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Need a carrot cake to blow everyone (including those who aren't huge fans of veggie cakes) away? 

I'm one of those people who brings a dessert to a party and then keeps peeking at the dessert table every ten minutes to see how my dessert is doing. I just want to ask people how they like it! But I resist.

This cake made it easy for me! I made this for a birthday party and had three recipe requests by the time that I left the party, as well as several people asking for dibs on leftovers to take home!

To me, that is the mark of a successful recipe!

This carrot cake is perfect for a flavorful, moist (sorry to those of you who hate that word for whatever reason, but it's not dry) cake with the perfect balance of flavors and textures. You'll never want to use a different carrot cake recipe!

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Review: Honey Ridge Farms Artisan Honeys

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Where has 2015 gone? I can hardly believe that there are only a few short years until the new year!

2015 has been a wonderful year, full of growth, new career developments, new relationships, old creative passions in new ways, and a wonderful abundance of adventure, travel, good times with loved ones, and learning, I'm excited to see what 2016 brings!

One of the New Year's Eve traditions that I find really cute is the tradition of eating honey to herald in a sweet new year. I love honey, so any reason to eat it is good with me!

This year, I'm going for a gourmet spin with the honey I will give my loved ones and enjoy myself on Christmas Eve.



Honey Ridge Farms has a variety of absolutely delicious gourmet honey products that are perfect to start 2016 off on the right foot - or really for any morning!

The unique flavors of honey cremes include blackberry, clover, lavender, lemon, raspberry, coconut, blood orange, lemon lavender, and my personal favorite, spiced. Honey Creme spiced is the perfect festive blend of warming spices that, paired with the sweetness of the creamy honey, makes for a treat perfect for the holiday season!

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Review: Eating Evolved Chocolate

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Merry Christmas!

Since many of us start the day dumping our favorite treats out of our Christmas stockings, it's the perfect day for a chocolate review!

Growing up half-German, good chocolate was treated as much as a staple food as bread. Eating Evolved Chocolate agrees!

A company that believes 'Chocolate is Food, Not Candy,' an assertion that's printed boldly inside their chocolate bar boxes, Eating Evolved creates all natural, paleo dark chocolate bars out of just a few simple, whole foods ingredients to keep the nutritional value of their huff-cocoa-content dark chocolate bars intact.

Once again, my belief that healthy is delicious is proved right!

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Recipe: Chewy Chococonut Cookies

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Everyone loves a good chocolate chip cookie, but sometimes you want to mix it up a bit. If you've had enough plain chocolate chip cookies this holiday season, check these out!

These chewy Chococonut cookies might be a bit of a tongue twister, but the flavors of the dark chocolate chunks and the chewy shredded coconut compliment each other brilliantly and make these a great change from the typical chocolate chip cookie!

They're big, soft, chewy cookies, like the kind you get from the cookie bakeries or carts at the mall. Without further ado, here's the quick and easy recipe! No dough chilling required.

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3 Healthy Habits To Start Right Now

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The holidays aren't always the healthiest time of the year for many of us and that's totally fine. There's no need to be a Grinch and forgo all the special holiday treats that only come once a year.

That said, there is no reason to make things harder on ourselves for when January resolution fever rolls around by completely ignoring the importance of healthy living during the holidays. Completely ignoring our physical well-being for an entire holiday season leads to feeling pretty awful when all the sleepless nights of holiday parties and running on sugar and fumes are over.

It's all about the balance!

Here are three simple, healthy habits that you don't need to wait for the new year to adopt. Get in the habit now and you'll start the new year feeling much better than otherwise - maybe even good enough that you can focus on career or personal resolutions instead of health ones!

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Top Seven Tips for Taking 'Me' Time This Holiday Season!

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The holiday season is my absolute favorite time of the year and the absolute best time to make special memories with friends and family and all your loved ones. I have family Christmas memories from over a decade ago that I still treasure more than anything else!

Being reunited with loved ones is such an amazing feeling!

That said, many of us can find that the holidays can get a bit hectic. That's no fun! It's all about striking the ideal balance between participating in the festivities and taking some much needed, and equally enjoyable.

Read on for my top seven tips for taking some precious 'me' time this holiday season!

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Recipe: Ooey Gooey Chocolate Chip Cookies

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I love trying out all sorts of different cookie recipes and cookies around the holidays. There are so many fun varieties! 

But when it comes down to it, you can't beat the nostalgic appeal of the classic chocolate chip cookie around Christmastime. 

This is the only chocolate chip cookie recipe I use anymore! The cookies are amazing and everyone loves them.

Everyone.

Read on for the recipe. You'll be glad that you did!

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Healthy Holiday Hacks: Top 5 Tips to Handle Never-Ending Days + A GIVEAWAY!

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I love the holidays! Everything sparkles, people smile more, and there's a general sense of happiness, community, and togetherness that is (sadly) not as pronounced during the rest of the year.

Also, decorations!

I know people like to whine about Christmas decorations going up too early and Christmas carols playing on repeat everywhere from the day after Thanksgiving on, but I love all of that!

What I don't love is the hectic that can sometimes be associated with the holidays. No one likes feeling stressed out, but sometimes the happiness of the holiday season can be tainted by hectic back-to-back scheduling.

Read on for my top five tips to survive those inevitable never-ending days without turning into a stressed-out Grinch!

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Review: Pure7 Dark Chocolate

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Chocolate is delicious and dark chocolate is the most delicious - as far as I'm concerned, the darker the better! Chocolate is an artisan food and there is a huge range in quality, taste, and nutrition from bar to bar, even within the same flavor or cocoa percentage. 

Why waste precious time and stomach space eating subpar chocolate? High quality chocolate has the potential to be delicious, indulgent, packed with healthy cocoa flavanols, and an all-around positive addition to your diet!

I recently had the pleasure of trying fair-trade, organic, paleo Pure7 dark chocolate from artisan chocolatiers Julie MacQueen and Carrie Raho.

Like me, they believe that healthy can be delicious and craft all of their bars without the use of chemicals, dairy, soy, gluten, and refined sugars. All ingredients stay under 110F throughout the process, to keep all the essential nutrients intact!

Trying to cut back on refined sugars during the holidays, or at least keep an eye on your intake? All of the varieties of Pure7 dark chocolate (with the exception of the stevia bar) are sweetened with honey, instead of sugar!

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Recipe: Impossibly Delicious Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Happy holidays! Christmas is my absolute favorite time of year and while I go hard all December, I already start prep back in September.

By prep, I mean I start listening to Christmas music, planning Christmas presents, testing recipes, and watching Christmas movies.

Thanks to my obsessive extensive preparation, this Christmas chocolate chip cookie is the absolute best chocolate chip cookie recipe out there. I've tried so many, I know what I'm talking about!

I love to make the dough for these the night before and then bake them shortly before serving, because they look great after the dough has been chilled and they taste amazing warm and fresh from the oven.

Read on for the recipe!

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#HowWeFamily with Tylenol!

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I have received information from the makers of TYLENOL®. The opinions stated are my own. This is a sponsored post.

There's nothing quite like the holidays to bring families together.

Today even more than ever, a lot of families aren't always in the same place. Or even if we're physically in the same location, we're often worlds away with work, our electronic devices, and all the other things that keep us busy!

One of my favorite things about Christmas is that warm, glowing, loving family feeling that you can only have when you're together with, and truly present with, the people whom you love the most.

I think the Tylenol #HowWeFamily video is so touching, because it shares the stories of 11 real American families coming together for the holidays, including the family of spokesperson Gabrielle Union.

What family looks like is different for everyone. Some of us are born into our families, some of us build our families around us, and some of us have a mix of both or multiple families. Family isn't about who you love, it's about how you love!

I encourage all of you to let the holidays inspire you to focus on what truly matters. The baubles, flavors, decorations, gifts, and travels of the holidays are all absolutely wonderful. But what matters most is the invaluable time spent with loved ones.

We never know how long we will have with those we love, or when we will see them next, so we should take every opportunity to delight in the beauty of unconditional love!

How will you connect with your family this holiday season?

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Top Five Tips for A Healthy Holiday Season

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Who else can't believe we're already a full week into December?

Since the holiday season is clearly in full swing by today (though, let's be real, I've been watching Christmas movies and listening to my (six) favorite Christmas Pandora stations since October) I have teamed up with goodnessknows to put together a list of my top five tips for a healthy holiday season. Let's be healthy and happy this holiday season!

1) Be gentle with yourself.

This one comes first on the list, because it's so important. Especially in NYC, where everyone is so high-powered and high-strung and ambitious, being unnecessarily strict with ourselves isn't a rarity. Whether it's expecting ourselves to be perfect nutritionally, or throw the perfect party, or stick perfectly to our fitness goals, or prepare the perfect holiday dinner, all that perfection is very unhealthy!

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Happy Holiday Hack: DIY Gifting Made Better

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Tomorrow is St. Nicholas Day! 

Since I'm half-German, that was the first official holiday day of the Christmas season for me. I always cleaned my boots the night before, placed them outside my bedroom door, and found them full of candy and fruit (clementines and apples, mostly, though sometimes I also lucked out with prunes and dates) the following morning. It was so exciting!

These aren't mine (I'm - sadly - not an owner of wooden clogs) but this is an example of a great haul for a few lucky kids!

Tomorrow is also the first night of Hanukkah! Needless to say, gifting season is upon us. 

DIY gifting is a popular way to keep holiday spending in check without missing out on the most significant part of holiday presents - the thought! Since I love to bake, my favorite DIY gifts to give are homemade baked goods. 

This year, I found a way to make my DIY baked good gifts even better! Read on to find out how to take your DIY gifts to the next level!

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Review: Nibble Chocolate

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It's December, so I'm officially in all-Christmas, all-the-time mode! AKA I'm incredibly happy and loving my favorite month of the year.

Today I want to share a great stocking stuffer for your chocoholic, health-conscious, and/or foodie loved ones!

Nibble Chocolate is organic, made with just two ingredients (organic cocoa beans and organic cane sugar) and hand-crafted in San Diego California!

Forget about GMOs, artificial flavors, chemicals, or anything else that you wouldn't want in your chocolate (or your body). Nibble Chocolate proves you don't need any of that to make delicious chocolate!

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Recipe: Peppermint (Extra) Nice Cream

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Christmas is, hands-down, the best time of the year. Ice cream (and especially plantbased nice cream, for anyone with lactose issues, an interest in healthy eating, or just a fondness for delicious food) is one of the best desserts ever.

They're a match made in heaven!



This peppermint nice cream is festive, creamy, sweet, and absolutely scrumptiously Christmassy! Since Christmas is an extra nice time of year, it's only fitting that this nice cream is extra nice, too.

It's not only delicious and made of healthy fruit, but it also delivers the greens that a lot of us tend to neglect over the holidays, as well as satiating protein to keep us healthy and full of even energy all season long. 

Vega Protein & Greens vanilla powder provides lots of plantbased protein and an extra dose of greens, making this extra nice cream just the sort of thing you'll need to power through marathon ice skating, present-wrapping, and Christmas caroling sessions this holiday season.

If you're a fan of chocolate peppermint bark, use the Vega Protein & Greens chocolate powder in your nice cream instead. It works just as well, but makes for a delicious chocolate-peppermint treat!

It's easy to make and healthy enough to have as a breakfast, snack, or nutritious dessert all holiday season long! Read on for the yummy, festive recipe.

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