Cheap and easy recipes + dessert
Skillet Chicken and Potatoes, Cinnamon Biscuits, Orange Drizzle Cake, and Coconut Cream Pie for two!
If you’re new here, welcome! I’m Rebecca, a recipe developer and food photographer. You might know me from my recipe websites, Of Batter and Dough and A Little and A Lot.
My husband and I are nomads with an RV, a motorcycle, and a sailboat, so I write about life on the road, the incredible places we visit, and the experiences we have along the way. Plus, there’s recipes.
And, if you are brand new to Substack, I created this short video tour.
Quick links
The Let’s Get Lost Studio Store includes hats, bags, clothing, journals and more with original illustrated art that celebrates travel and exploration!
Classes! Here you’ll find information about upcoming classes and the replay links for past classes. LIVE classes are open to everyone who would like to drop in. Replays are available to everyone for a couple of days then available to paid subscribers (Lost Supper Club members)
It’s October and therefore, in my kitchen, apples are making their way into a lot of different dishes. If you are a fellow apple lover, I’ve compiled 17 of my favorite recipes into an ebook that you can download for free: Everything Apple
To date, one of the most popular issues of all time is The Cookie Issue, published in December of last year. If you are already thinking about what cookies you’ll bake for the holidays, you’ll find some gems in there!
All of the art you see in this newsletter, including logos, the illustrations in this short story about a fictional character named Edna, all the art in the Let’s Get Lost Studio Store, the animated art on the recommendations page, and the logo for a mastermind group that I run for for food writers was created by the talented hands of
. If you should ever find yourself in a position where you’d like to work with an artist on a project, I can’t recommend her enough.
This week’s menu
Skillet Chicken and Potatoes, Cinnamon Biscuits, and Orange Drizzle Cake
If you are a member of the Lost Supper Club (a paid subscriber), you’ll find downloadable pdf's of these recipes and every recipe in the recipe index.
From now through the end of the year, each week will include a new recipe that’s easy to make and won’t break the bank. If you missed last week’s issue, we kicked off this series with two stuffed pepper recipes. This week, I’ve got a 30 minute chicken and potatoes dish that is delicious, adaptable, and wholly satisfying. And also, it goes perfectly with a pan of hot cinnamon biscuits. 😋
→ Find more cheap and easy recipes here.
Skillet Chicken and Potatoes
This is one of those super quick and easy recipes that’s perfect for nights when you don’t have a lot of time or energy to cook but also want to fill your belly with something delicious, nutritious, and satisfying.
It requires a small handful of ingredients and the amount of nearly everything can be increased, decreased, or swapped out for something else as you like.
Of course, if you swap out the chicken and potatoes, you’ll have to call it something else. 🙂
This dish will be on the table in about 30 minutes at a total cost of $20, or just $5.00 per serving
Cinnamon Biscuits with (or without) Cream Cheese Frosting
My initial intention with this recipe was to bake cinnamon roll muffins. I wanted them to be rolled and sliced like cinnamon rolls, with a thick cinnamon sugar filling. As such, they kept veering towards biscuit dough until I realized that what I really wanted to make was cinnamon biscuits.
Cinnamon roll muffins may still be coming, in a much different form, but these buttery biscuits, with their cinnamon sugar filling and topping and a thick smear of cream cheese frosting are exactly what I want to eat right now.
One of the the things I love about biscuits, is that you can sweeten them up or down as your mood dictates. My go-to recipe are these flaky buttermilk biscuits. Sometimes I eat them with just a bit of butter, other times spread with a thick layer of sweet jam or honey.
These cinnamon biscuits are sweeter than that, but still not so sweet that you can’t serve them alongside a meal. Minus their cream cheese frosting, they are perfect with warm bowls of chili or alongside a simple roast chicken, or a pan of skillet chicken and potatoes.
Served with cream cheese frosting, these become sweet rolls or dessert. Eat them for breakfast or as a decadent afternoon snack, or for dessert.
And, of course, I’d never begrudge you serving these cinnamon biscuits topped with cream cheese frosting right alongside a meal. Who says dessert can’t be served with a meal instead of after??? Break the rules, eat what you want, do what you want.
Orange Drizzle Cake
Just like this Elderflower Lemon Cake, the batter for this Orange Drizzle Cake contains whole fruit. Zest a couple of oranges, slice off the peel, then break up the orange segments, collecting as much of the juice as you can, and fold the fruit right into the batter.
The result is a gorgeous, soft texture that’s bursting with fresh citrus flavor.
Contrary to how this cake might appear, this is not a super sweet cake, even after it’s drenched in orange syrup. Using real fruit allows us to use less sugar in the batter and still keep everything moist and tender.
So, if you are the kind of person who loves rich and creamy desserts over sugary sweet ones, you are my kind of person and this is the cake for you.
The orange syrup for this cake comes from making candied oranges, which are used to decorate the cake. Candied oranges are quite easy to make, requiring little more than slicing up a couple of oranges and letting them simmer in sugar water for a while. The sugar water turns into orange simple syrup which is the drizzle part of orange drizzle cake and the candied oranges become the cake’s decoration.
Candied oranges are also really delicious, which is generally a requirement I have for any decoration. If I’m going to put it on a cake, it must also taste good because isn’t that the point of cake???
The caveat here is that the candied oranges need to be made in advance because they need about 24 hours to set. So, plan accordingly.
This and that
Earlier this week,
showed up to a zoom call holding a Rosemary Lime Rickey that looked so good, I had to make one for myself. It was even better than I thought it would be. Highly recommend!Also, I have it on good authority that Betty is going to publish a recipe for sugar free simple syrup soon, which is very good news because I may have sucked down 4 of these in quick succession. 🙄
I have often wondered why we, as humans, have such a difficult time learning from history. Perhaps
provides one explanations…“It is not ‘left-wing arson’ to want to commemorate a different set of values than the country held in the 1920s.
What is arson, though, is the attempt to skew history to serve a modern-day political narrative. Rejecting an honest account of the past makes it impossible to see accurate patterns. The lessons we learn about how society changes will be false, and the decisions we make based on those false patterns will not be grounded in reality.
And a society grounded in fiction, rather than reality, cannot function.”
Keep reading…
I just discovered this brilliant substack and I am completely enamored. Writer and illustrator
is the creator behind this illustrated newsletter “about the ups, downs, twists, turns, and life-changing power of making art and telling stories.”It was this story that captured me and then I stuck around and read them all.
Earlier this week,
, who writes Your Wild and Radiant Mind, wrote this about her hometown of Chicago:“In my town outside of Chicago, ICE has been kidnapping people at the local library. In Chicago proper, they’re stalking daycares, holding entire buildings hostage in the middle of the night, shooting and killing unarmed people, pepper-spraying Chicago Police, shooting directly at a priest with a pepper bullet, and putting children in zip-ties for hours.
I taught the children of immigrant parents for eight years of my career, in both Chicago and Texas. Many of the parents of my students were undocumented, and some of my students were too….
I’d be horrified by all of this no matter who I was, but I find it especially horrific as someone who felt so appreciated, respected, and loved by the immigrant community during my years as a teacher.”
Keep reading here…
Attention fellow food writers!
If you are a food writer or recipe developer here on Substack, there are two events you don’t want to miss!
#1. Mastermind for Food Writers
Every month, a group of us get together over Zoom for a Mastermind meeting. Meetings are free, and awesome, and we’d love to have you join us. At this month’s meeting, we had a special guest -
, an acclaimed author, writing coach, speaker, and teacher.Dianne generously answered all our questions about writing, voice, book publishing, freelancing, and all things involved in the art and the business of writing about food.
The meeting was recorded and if you’d like to watch the recording, you’ll find it here.
#2. Food writers retreat!
This retreat in the spring of 2026 at a gorgeous estate in Pennsylvania booked up within days of registration opening. But, life happens, and a couple of people have had to cancel. If you are a food writer, that might be good news for you, because there are 2 spots open! Snag one before they’re gone!
What’s happening in the Lost Supper Club
*Exclusive content for paid subscribers. Find out more.
→ Here is where you’ll find all the goodies that are exclusive to members of the Lost Supper Club.
Mini Coconut Cream Pie for 2!
This is the latest recipe in a series of small batch baking recipes available only to members of the Lost Supper Club.
Honestly this pie can easily serve 4, but I’m saying it serves two so that you have some leftovers. If I go to the effort of making a pie, I’d like to eat it today and tomorrow.
But, of course, you can also share your pie with two other people you love. Which is exactly what most of you are prone to do, because I’ve met quite a few of you and you are generous like that.
The No Recipe Required Cookbook
No Recipe Required dishes are more of a formula than a recipe. They are designed to be thrown together with whatever ingredients you like with one thing swapped out for something else, increased, or reduced as you like. This book is FREE for all paid subscribers!
The Weekly Recommendation List
If you were sitting around my dinner table this week, and I genuinely wish you were, one of the topics that would inevitably be sprinkled throughout the evening’s conversation is recommendations. For books, food, restaurants, clothing, places to visit, things to see, things to do, things we love.
Recipe Index: Get Every Single Recipe
This index + downloadable recipe cards for every single recipe (over 200 and counting!) is a perk of being a member of The Lost Supper Club (a paid subscriber.)
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First of all, YUM. Now I want to make cinnamon biscuits. On the list for next time we can get to a store - butter!
And I love the recommendations to new Substacks. Thanks!
That cake Rebecca looks so good. Since I gave up dairy I don't eat so many desserts any more and when I do, I prefer them less sweet now but I will try making a Me friendly version of this. Thanks for sharing x