• Sugar Cream Pie

    Sugar.  Cream.  Pie. Okay you guys, help me with this.  Who was like, “I’m gonna mix up some sugar and some cream and bake it all up in a pie?”  Who thinks that way? (Ok, maybe I do.  A little bit.) Seriously, this is just what it sounds like.  Sugar and cream in a pie crust.  And it’s fantastic.  Oh, just a custard pie, right?  I know what you’re thinking.  But it’s not. There are no eggs in this pie!  It is literally baked cream.…

  • Summer Corn & Bacon Chowder

    I’m a soup person.  I love it, and I can eat it year ’round – yes, even when it’s 103 degrees outside.  (Which is good because it was PRECISELY 103 degrees outside when I made this yesterday!) There’s something about this particular recipe thought that really doesn’t feel like a soup – or a chowder – but feels lighter and screams summertime.  The combo of the fresh sweet corn with potatoes and bacon is a marriage made in heaven, so I was particularly excited to team…

  • Charred Poblano White Chicken Chili

    I had a heck of a time naming this recipe for you, because – I don’t know.  This feels like a soup to me, but “White Chicken Chili Soup” sounds funny to me.  It’s one teeny-tiny step away from a Rachael Ray made up word, like “stoup” or “sammie” or something equally annoying. Disclaimer:  I love Rachael Ray, but I CAN’T DEAL with the made up words.  All of the time.   WHY, RACHAEL, WHY ALL OF THE PRETEND WORDS?  I know it’s a combo…

  • Chocolate Layer Cake

    This is a variation of the very first layer cake I ever made.  I got the itch to make it yesterday, after doing a little bit of maintenance on my site.  I’m in the process of updating all of the recipes on all of Lemon Sugar to make them printable and more functional for everyone, and oh holy cow – I came across some cringe-worthy photos and blog posts from my early days. Case in point:  This cake. I’m totally blushing right now.  I’m so…

  • A Pantry Makeover with Organized Living™ (Part 1: Before)

    Ok.  I feel like I need to make excuses and be defensive about my pantry for a minute. First of all, yes, the picture above is my pantry.  This is what my pantry looked like the day after my daughter’s Rainbow Party just a few weeks ago. I’m not proud. I have an awesome pantry, which was a requirement when we built our house five years ago.  In fact, we even made it bigger than the plans originally called for because it wasn’t quite big…

  • White Chocolate & Vanilla Bean Cupcakes

    I just looked over the top of my laptop at my husband, who’s sitting on the couch next to me, and said “I don’t have any wittiness for my blog post.”  He just looked at me funny. You guys don’t care about wittiness, do you?  You care about cupcakes.  I knew it.  You’re just using me. See?  No wittiness.  I’m not even sure I’m spelling that right.  Wittiness?  Witty-ness?  Wittyness?  My spell checker likes wittiness, so we’ll go with it. Have you ever said a…

  • A Family Birthday Party

    My oldest daughter turned seven years old yesterday.  I realize that every year, I find myself lamenting that it’s just not possible that another birthday has come and gone, but it really does amaze me just how quickly time flies.

  • Homemade Vanilla Extract

    If you’ve spent much time at all in the kitchen, you understand how essential good-quality vanilla is to the outcome of your desserts.  The problem is, REALLY good vanilla is also REALLY expensive.  Even the grocery-store options are relatively expensive, and they don’t even compare to the good stuff.  To buy a bottle of top-quality vanilla, you’re going to spend nearly $20, and if you do a lot of baking, that’s quite an investment! So, as you can imagine, I was overjoyed to find this…

  • Caramel Pecan Apple Pie

    So, you really can’t go wrong with apple pie.  Am I right?  Even bad apple pie is usually pretty tasty.  Or maybe I’ve never had bad apple pie?  Aaannnd, now that I say that, I’m envisioning really bad apple pie, so I guess I could theoretically imagine an apple pie so bad that it might not be worth the calories. But this one?  For Pete’s sake, it’s covered in a crumb topping.  And then.  THEN.  That crumb topping?  It’s topped with toasted pecans and caramel…

  • Chicken & Avocado Enchiladas

    I don’t know about you, but we tend to get into a food rut during the summertime.  We grill a lot, eat a lot of sandwiches, fruits and vegetables, and other generally “quick and easy” meals.  It’s rare that we want to turn on the oven or heat up the kitchen, and the thought of eating anything hot is pretty unappealing.  Because this dish not only requires me to turn on my oven, but also to actually eat something hot and mildly spicy in the…

  • Pumpkin Crumb Cake: A Throwback

    Hi everyone!  Starting today (!) I am going to use Thursdays to bring back some of my favorites from the archives from Lemon Sugar.  This Pumpkin Crumb Cake is still a favorite of ours, and I haven’t tweaked the recipe a bit.  Do yourself a favor and make this, STAT!  Enjoy! ♥   So yeah, this is another pumpkin cake.  And yeah, I thought I had sworn off pumpkin recipes for at least a week or two, but as it turns out I was pretty…

  • One Hour Maple Pecan Cinnamon Rolls

    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 yeah- and they can be made start to finish in an hour.  No big whoop. YES.  ONE HOUR.  CINNAMON ROLLS IN ONE HOUR, FOLKS! So today, we changed it up a bit – I added some sticky-sweet pecans to the filling, and doused…