BLT Ravioli, Buckeye Brownies, and Homemade Granola Bars

We have been busy trying to cook from scratch more. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes we give in and use prepackaged things. And sometimes we combine the two, like with BLT ravioli. I don't think we will ever make our pasta from scratch (although we did make gnocchi once) but it's just not worth the time to me.

BLT Ravioli is a great recipe. It does require alfredo sauce. They use jarred but I didn't want to do that. So I made this sauce. It recommends doubling it for a whole box of noodles. We did so, but I'm not sure it was necessary. The sauce was really easy to make and the only ingredient we didn't have on hand was the cream. It does cook up really really fast and if you make it too early, you have to constantly whisk it so it doesn't form a film on the top.

The BLT Ravioli is a bit more time consuming. I do believe it was worth it and I will make this recipe again but it took a lot of time management, which has never been my strong suit while cooking. Our bacon took 15 minutes to cook and the rest of the prep took about 5 minutes. We did use frozen spinach rather than fresh though because it was what we had. Also, we left out the cheese because our alfredo sauce had cheese in it and the ravioli was cheese. That seemed like plenty and we didn't regret it. This recipe was a new twist on an old favorite. It was great!

Then over the weekend, we made buckeye brownies. Brownies don't need any sprucing up and are plenty of calories on their own but these looked too good to resist. We love buckeye balls so when I saw these, I knew we had to have them. I will admit we gave some away so we didn't eat the entire pan ourselves. The chocolate topping takes a lot longer than expected to harden but we ate them before it completely hardened anyway.

Lastly, we made our own granola bars. They always seem like such a waste of money to buy and you can't control what goes into them then. These ones can even be made vegan, if you pick the right ingredients (like the chocolate chips). We replaced the corn syrup with honey. We also only needed 1 1/4 cup of cereal instead of 2 cups. I love how quick these came together. You do have to wait to cut them but that isn't a big deal. You can even freeze them!