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Summer Sauvignon Blanc White Wine Party
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards for IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine. I am fortunate to have a small, tight-knit circle of girlfriends. Our friendship has grown over the past 15 years, starting as co-workers and continuing even after everyone has gone their separate ways to new jobs. They’re the kind of friends that get your inside jokes, but we can also go a few weeks without talking and pick up just where we left off. Good,…
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Turkey & Havarti Croissant Sliders
Oven-baked slider sandwiches are among my favorite party foods. For one, they are SUPER easy to make. Additionally, you can make them ahead of time and pop them in the oven when your guests arrive, so you aren’t left frantically prepping and finishing last-minute details. After a mere ten minutes in the oven, these are warmed through and the cheese is melty and bubbly. They’re awesome. I like Havarti with deli turkey because it’s a smooth, mild cheese and works really well with the pesto. I’ve…
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Cream Puffs (Pâte à Choux)
This is one of those recipes that I stumbled upon and automatically thought would be incredibly difficult and way out of my realm. But, once I really took time to read the recipe I found it was really very simple. Choux pastry is used to make cream puffs, eclairs and profiteroles. It’s a very light, dry pastry and usually offset by some sort of decadent cream-type filling. I used the traditional pastry cream to fill these and topped them with a liberal dollop of dark…
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Rigatoni with Creamy Marsala Sauce
I know, it’s surprising. Another pasta dish! This is a new one for us, but it sounded good tonight and we had all of the ingredients so we decided to try it out. This pasta is actually called “Rigatoni di Gregorio” but since I changed it a little, I’m not sure that it really qualifies as such anymore. We grilled the chicken instead of pan-frying it, and I added green olives in lieu of parsley, mostly because my girls won’t eat “green stuff” on their…
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Grandma’s Dinner Rolls
The other day I was cleaning one of the storage rooms in our basement and I came upon a basket of items I kept when we cleaned out my Grandma G’s house for the final time. I found a rosary, a couple of candy dishes, an old soapstone jewelry box she always kept on her dresser, and a blue apron that read “RUTHIE,” her first name. It immediately brought a smile to my face, and best of all, it still (9 years later) smells like her…
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Pink Velvet Cupcakes
This is my second attempt at pink velvet cupcakes. The first was bad, so very bad. I don’t understand, because that particular recipe gets rave reviews everywhere, but to me it tasted like a blueberry muffin, sans blueberries. It was just kind of blah. They were like little, pink, blueberry-less muffins. Kind of sad little things. So after going back to the drawing board and searching for an ingredient list with more flavors, I settled on this one from a Taste of Home cookbook. I…
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Honey Beer Bread
I’m kind of a beer snob. I have a very short list of beers that I’ll even drink. So, when I saw this recipe I wasn’t totally excited about it. I know that beer does wonderful things for chocolate cake and batters for deep frying, but bread? For some reason though, I kept coming back to this. After further consideration, I decided that beer would probably lend a great, malty flavor to this bread and that it was worth a try. Turns out I was…
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Chocolate Peanut Butter Torte
There’s a thing in this world…it’s called too much peanut butter. This is not that. This is the perfect amount of peanut butter. Which, I suppose is hard to measure because some people don’t like peanut butter. Who are these people? I’ve heard of them, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever met one of them. Actually, now that I think about it, I’m not even sure that there’s a thing called too much peanut butter. That’s probably not possible. This is what happens when…
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Spiced Cranberry Apple Butter
Who still has cranberries left from the holidays? Anyone besides me? I always stock up and freeze what I’m not going to use, because I firmly believe that cranberries aren’t just a winter fruit. It drives me crazy that you can’t find them year round, so when I see ’em, I buy ’em. Our CSA has been overly generous with our apple deliveries lately too – so much so that we haven’t been able to eat them all quickly enough. We eat them like crazy…
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Southwestern Eggrolls
These look like they would be complicated and mess up your kitchen, but they’re EASY and you bake them! No frying, no splattering grease, and they use one bowl and a cookie sheet. Doesn’t get much easier than that! This is also one of those recipes that you can play around with the fillings and add whatever you want to meet your needs. The only thing you have to watch is the liquid content – try to keep the ingredients drained and dry so you…
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A Playroom Makeover: Part 1
I am so excited to be back with another Lemon Sugar remodel project, and especially excited to be working with my friends at Organized Living again! If you remember, we teamed up several months ago to tackle my pantry remodel, and it turned out SO good that we’ve decided to take on a bigger and more challenging space – a playroom for my girls! This project is a little bit bigger and more involved because we didn’t have an existing space to work with. Instead,…
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Vanilla Latte Cupcakes
There are three things that make these super-star cupcakes. One: they’re cupcakes. Duh. Two: they are infused with a sweet-coffee reduction, and three: they’re topped with a sweet, stabilized whipped cream and homemade caramel sauce. Wait, is that four things? Doesn’t matter. If you love coffee, and heck, even if you don’t – YOU. HAVE. GOT. TO. MAKE. THESE.
