You guys, it’s National Donut Day, and BOY are we excited. We made the donuts above (photo by Mary Costa Photography!) years ago for our favorite crazy photo shoot on the beach (with an oven, of course!)

We wanted to let you know so you can go out and get some donuts for yourself, or better yet make them yourself!

First of all, we are loving this striped donuts by Studio DIY, in case you’re short on time but want to wow your friends and have delish donuts, too.

Secondly, we love LOVE chocolate donuts, and these look divine.  I love anything triple chocolate, and I love everything the Sweet Life does.

Now, if you don’t have a fancy donut pan (we don’t either, we had to borrow one for our own forays) you can certainly make donut holes if you have a mini muffin pan – why didn’t WE think of that? Check out these from Sally’s Baking Addiction – yum!

Gluten free? Not a problem – head here to find some Chocolate Chip GF Donuts (are you sensing a theme?) that simply look to good to be true.

Guys, what are YOUR favorite donuts? Tell us – we might just have to whip some up this weekend!! Happy Donut Day!

This grain-free banana bread recipe is moist and delicious! GMS originally made it as an Easter dessert treat, and it was so good, we knew we had to highlight it on the blog.

The original recipe for plain coconut banana bread can be found here. It used almond extract, but because of allergies, we made our version without it. Plus, we added chocolate, because, why not?! Fun fact: in addition to being paleo, this is also a gluten free treat – what a win.

An important note: follow the directions closely for best results! The first time we made this recipe, it had a wonderful cake-like consistency. The second time, we made slight changes and the consistency was a little different. You can find the recipe here.

What’s your favorite sweet paleo treat?

We are so glad we can sit here today and share this recipe with you because, guys, this almost didn’t happen.

Well, it did happen, but then somehow I deleted the photos and they were gone forever, until our mighty guru of all things Internet, Camera, and general Life, Jeff, found some program that made them appear magically on a card as though I’d never accidentally deleted an entire recipe’s worth of photos.

So now that the photos have reappeared and we are able to share them with you and the world, we present to you our Asparagus, Goat Cheese, & Caramelized Onion Tart.

Here’s what we did: we took our old fave, the Tomato Tart, and we doubled the crust. Then, we used a whole bunch of asparagus, about 6 ounces of goat cheese, and about half a cup of caramelized onion, and we went to town on that delicious crust. And then we salted, peppered, and added a couple of drizzles of olive oil. And we baked it like we did the Tomato Tart.

Then we added a drizzle of balsamic, and we ate that sucker right up. We recommend eating this as an easy appetizer or a lighter dinner. The asparagus tastes like spring right in your mouth, and it reminds us of all the good things about the days getting longer and the farmer’s market having every veggie you can dream up.

What is your fave spring veggies, and how do you eat it?

Today is Jeff’s 30th Birthday, and to celebrate we had a barbecue, and obviously part of that was making Jeff a treat. His first request was a cookie cake (so easy!) but upon further reflection, he decided what he really wanted was a Star Crunch, homemade.

What’s Star Crunch, you ask? Well, they are a Little Debbie snack, described as, “A soft, chewy cookie topped with caramel and crisp rice then covered in a layer of fudge.”

Now, looking at the ingredients of a Star Crunch you’d never know what was actually the snack, which let’s forevermore acknowledge as a treat (because who snacks on cookies covered in fudge?!). We did some taste testing, some dissection, and two batches of taste tests with Jeff before getting it right.

First of all, we determined the cookie inside most definitely was a molasses cookie of some kind, so we set out to find a molasses cookie that’d stand up. We ended up using Bon Appetit’s Molasses Cookie recipe, but we left out the cardamom, cinnamon, and ginger, as we didn’t want the spices to interfere with the rest of the snack – the overlying flavor in the original Star Crunch cookie was molasses, so we went with that flavor.

We made the recipe otherwise as stated, and we smeared it onto a baking sheet (a jelly roll pan) as thin as possible, taking up the entire sheet. Then we baked as instructed for about eight minutes, and let it cool.

Next up, we made the My Baking Addiction’s Caramel Sauce. This would be our caramel layer. We also set that aside to cool, and then headed off to make our chocolate crispy mix – we used 70% cocoa chocolate from Trader Joe’s (the pound plus bar) as our chocolate, and the Rice Crispies from Trader Joe’s.

The recipe to success seems to be this: mix the caramel sauce with the melted chocolate (we used the whole pound plus bar and melted it with a double boiler) and stir until smooth. Then, add about three to four cups of crispies – as many as you like, this is more of an art than a science.

Cut the molasses cookies into circles (we have a whole circle cookie cutter set, and that’s what we used.) Next, you’ll use a slightly larger circle cutter (we used a 3 inch as our larger circle, but again whatever you have is good) and on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Fill your circle mold with a thin layer of the crispy/chocolate mixture. Then, drop a cookie on top of that. Add a crispy/chocolate layer to the top of that, and then lift off the circle mold, being careful to get crispies all the way around the edges of the cookie. This will most certainly be a messy process, but a delicious one.

Repeat until you run out of crispies or cookies, and then freeze your trays for 15 minutes until hard. Store in the fridge until you’re ready to eat and/or serve.

These were a big hit at Jeff’s barbecue, and they were much more delicious than the originals. Plus, it was fun to try to recreate a snack that evoked such nostalgia! We hope you get a chance to make these and enjoy them like we did!

We’ve made it to June and we can’t believe it’s already almost time for full-blown summer! We love June because it’s the beginning of summer, because it’s a month full of birthdays, and because we finally, finally can start going to the beach on a regular basis! We hope you’ll follow along this month with us!