• Chocolate Gingerbread Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Buttercream

    Oh, heyyyy.  Remember me?  That chick who used to post new recipes three or four times a week?  Yeah, I miss her, too. My days of impromptu, mid-day baking might be over, but with a little bit of planning I’ve been able to work around it and I think I have a workable baking schedule.  This means our weekends are going to be excessively dessert-laden, but it’s all in the name of Lemon Sugar, right? So, these cupcakes have been on my baking list the…

  • Irish Whiskey Cake in a Jar

      {Feel like you’ve seen this already?  You may have!  This was originally posted on culinarychat.net last week.  I’ll be contributing to their fabulous site once a month in the dessert category.  I’ll be re-posting the articles here on the blog as well, just in case you miss them.  For links and other fun Lemon Sugar information, be sure to like my Facebook page!} About this time every year, I start planning our annual St. Patrick’s Day dinner.  It’s become a tradition in our little…

  • Mushroom Marsala

    I’ve talked about my obsession with pasta before…I don’t think I’ve ever met a pasta I didn’t like.  When I make it at home though, we usually stick to the Mac & Cheese or Spaghetti variety so I thought it was time to branch out.  Giada made this Mushroom Marsala with Artichokes on one of her cooking shows last week and for some reason, it called out to me.  Strange, because I usually don’t care for mushrooms at all. Nonetheless, I bought all of the…

  • Chocolate Macarons with Espresso Ganache Filling

    Welcome to my most intimidating moment in the kitchen, the macaron.  I’ve been reading about these little puppies forever in foodie-land, and was SO discouraged by the directions that I put it off.  But, you know what?  They aren’t that hard.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say they’re pretty darn easy – you just have to follow the directions.  I would recommend a digital scale for these to measure the ingredients, although I just saw someone make them on the Food Network that…

  • Boo-tiful Ghost Cake

    I’m a scaredy-cat, generally speaking.  Well, not generally speaking, specifically speaking.  I can fake my way through a lot of scary situations, but deep down, I’m a bona-fide scaredy-cat. I could list all of the things that I’m scared of, but that would be the longest blog post ever. Unfortunately, and against my best intentions, I’m afraid I’ve passed some of my tendencies toward irrational fears along to my girls.  My youngest is afraid of “creepy things.”  And with Halloween right around the corner, everything…

  • Easy Marinara Sauce

    So, if a magic genie in a lantern gave me three wishes, I think mine might be for 1) money (duh), 2) more wishes (also duh) and 3) that pasta would become a health food.  As in, I could eat it all day every day and have the same results as if I lived on raw green veggies. I’m really not kidding.  And don’t try to tell me that you wouldn’t wish for money or more wishes, because that’s what makes the game fun.

  • Lemon Pound Cake & A Giveaway

    On most Saturday mornings, I take my oldest to dance class.  During her class, my youngest daughter and I venture off to a nearby shopping center and take care of our weekly household shopping.  We wander around, looking at toys, books, kitchen goodies and then pick up a few necessities before heading back to the dance studio.  In this particular shopping center, there happens to be a Starbucks, which always seems like a fabulous idea on a busy Saturday morning. My youngest, who is three…

  • Throwback Thursday: One Hour Maple Pecan Cinnamon Rolls

    Hi everyone!  On Thursdays, I will be sharing some of my favorites from the archives of Lemon Sugar.  These are still my very favorite cinnamon rolls, ever and are one of my most-pinned recipes!  Wouldn’t these be great on a lazy daylight-saving morning? Enjoy! ♥ This is officially the third time I’ve used my One Hour Cinnamon Roll Dough on the blog.  There was the original, the Cherry Sweet Rolls, and now these. I think these win. These are Maple Pecan Cinnamon Rolls, and they’re fabulous. Oh…

  • Butterfinger Poke Cake

    So, I have a small confession to make.  I’ve spent the last couple of weeks catching up on Pretty Little Liars. “Catching Up” = watching it from the beginning because I can’t remember where I left off. I’ve watched 32 episodes of PLL in 13 days. This does not make me proud. I’m kind of obsessed, though.  It started when I was traveling on business, continued while I was recovering from an awful cold, and well, now I have no excuse.   Today though, I…

  • A Playroom Makeover: Part 2

    First things first, if you haven’t read Part 1, go back and read it now. Good?  Ok. After we got all of the construction, painting and cleaning behind us, it was time to do the fun stuff – it was time to make the room look like what we’d been envisioning for almost a year now.  Because we adore everything about our new pantry, we teamed up with Organized Living to give our two little girls a bright, clean & efficient play room.  Their bedrooms…

  • 30 Recipes for Fall Baking

    If you’re like me, you’re starting to get a little burnt out on all of the pumpkin recipes that have appeared over the past few weeks.  I am a super-pumpkin-fan myself, and even I have reached my threshold of my second-favorite-baking-ingredient ever.  Any guesses what my favorite ingredient is?  🙂 Over the years, I’ve shared quite a few fall-inspired recipes here at Lemon Sugar, and every fall I try to post a fall-roundup for you all so you can see everything in one place.  These…

  • American Kitchen Stories

    There’s just something magical about the kitchen.  Since following GE Appliances‘ Our American Kitchen stories, I’ve been really aware of how important the kitchen is in the American family life.  Just tonight, my extended family (all 20 of us) were jammed into my parent’s kitchen for Sunday dinner.  This morning, my girls woke me up begging for our Sunday morning waffle breakfast.  Last night, my girlfriends and I gathered in a friend’s new kitchen over appetizers and cocktails.