This Lemon Basil Bruschetta was the perfect idea to take to my friend, Liz’s, Virtual Baby Shower! I’m sure you know Liz from The Lemon Bowl, right? She’s having another baby boy very soon and a few of her friends and I decided to throw her a virtual baby shower to celebrate!

I’m all for baby showers and people having babies and all, but I really must confess that I’m a little annoyed with Liz for having another boy… she’s kind of got the market on cuteness with her first son, Asher. I’m not sure what she’s trying to pull bringing more cute into the world. Sounds like some kind of crazy blog stunt to me! (That’s Asher, hanging out with me in Michigan this summer… little did I know at that point that he’s kind of a ladies man and I’m pretty sure has long forgotten about me by now. I still love him though!)…

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The post A Little Lemon {Recipe: Lemon Basil Bruschetta} appeared first on Dine and Dish.

The funny thing is, as much as I love summer, as soon as the kids start back to school I am more than ready for autumn to make its presence known. The crispness in the air, the colorful hues adorning the trees, football and pumpkin…all are my cue that summer is long gone and fall is here.

I wanted so badly to make pumpkin bread today, but I couldn’t do that to summer. Summer needs it’s last hurrah before autumn pushes it out of the way and takes the spotlight. So, with the smell of lemon filling my kitchen and sweet sunshine tones of summer, I made a lemon cake.

This, my friends, is not just any lemon cake. This is a lemon cake with everything rich and indulgent I could imagine poured in. Sour cream, pudding, butter and buttermilk… all wrapped up in one brightly baked package. It smells like summer, it tastes like summer… in my mind, it is an ideal way to bid adieu to a wonderful few months and to let fall know that yes… now we’re ready.

(Just like those awesome chevron spoons from my banana pudding ice cream post, these yellow bags are also from I’m With Cupcake. Check out their adorable stuff, today!)

When you are truly ready to say goodbye to summer and want a more fall like sweet treat, give this Banana Bread recipe from Brown Eyed Baker a try!

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Sinful Lemon Cake

A sinful lemon cake with hints of summertime.

Ingredients

• 3 Cups Cake Flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon Kosher salt
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 4- ounce package instant dry Jello pudding mix vanilla or lemon
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup butter softened
• 1/2 cup butter flavored shortening
• 1 cup buttermilk or buttermilk substitute
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• Zest of 1 lemon
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 teaspoon lemon extract

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray two standard size loaf pans with cooking spray. Set aside.
• In a medium sized bowl, mix together cake flour, baking powder, Kosher salt, granulated sugar and pudding mix.
• In the bowl of a stand mixer, add eggs and beat until a soft yellow. Add butter and shortening and mix until fluffy. Slowly add additional wet ingredients (buttermilk, sour cream, vanilla, lemon zest, lemon juice and lemon extract) and mix until well blended.
• Add the dry ingredients, 1 cup at a time, to the stand mixer bowl and beat at medium speed until all the dry and wet ingredients are incorporated and batter is smooth.
• Pour the batter into two prepared loaf pans. Bake at 350°F for 50-60 minutes or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.
• Allow to cool then remove from pan.

The post Holding On To Summer {Recipe: Sinful Lemon Cake} appeared first on Dine and Dish.

Strawberry Lemonade Spritzer

I consider myself very lucky to have a mom who I can also call my best friend. I love many things about my mom, but I’ve managed to sum up a few of my favorite things about her that make me smile.

1. It’s the thought that counts. My mom isn’t a big card sender and coincidentally, neither am I. When I was growing up my mom and I would be in a department store and I’d hear her calling my name.. “Kristen, come here!” I’d walk over and she’d have a card in her hand and would say “Now, if I were the card buying type, this is the card I’d give you for your birthday.” Although she didn’t buy the card, she thought of me when reading a card and in my opinion, that was good enough. I have so many great memories of my mom and I, standing in the card aisle, laughing and crying over cards we would give each other if we were the card buying type.
2. Never underestimate the power of Midol. No matter what, when I call my mom and am being overly emotional or unreasonable about something, she’ll say “Honey… what time of the month is it?” I usually am annoyed and dismiss her thoughts that everything irrational in my life is PMS. Then, sure enough, a couple days later she is proven right.
3. Choose your friends wisely. One thing my mom drilled through my head growing up was to choose my friends wisely.  She would often remind me the people I associated myself with determined what other people might think of me. I now spend a lot of time teaching this life lesson to my kids and have to remind myself of this lesson often as an adult. Choose your friends wisely as they are a huge part of shaping who you are and who you become.
4. Be spontaneous. When I was a senior in high school, in the dead of winter, I woke up to this note on the kitchen table “Went to find the sun… be back on Sunday”. My parents were tired of the winter and decided that instead of complaining about it, they would do something about it. They packed up their Mustang convertible and headed south in search of warmth.  My mom has always had a bone of spontaneity about her and I admire that so much. It’s hard with younger kids, but I can’t wait until I can take after my parents when it comes to being spontaneous.
5. Sing like no one is watching. I can’t hear the song “How Great Thou Art” without thinking of my mom. When that song is played, I am immediately taken back to Sunday morning in church and my mom’s beautiful voice booming over the entire congregation. When you are moved by a song, you’ve got to sing it and sing it loud… like no one else is around.

I could go on and on, but I’ll save the rest for another day. Mom – if I were the card buying type, my card would say something like “Thank you for being my mom… in good times and bad, I know I can always turn to you for love, advice and support. I admire you, treasure you and love you.”

This recipe for Strawberry Lemonade Sprtizer is something I’d love to share with my mom today. She loves lemons and can eat strawberries again after a long respite. Cheers to you, mom, and all the other mamas out there doing the most difficult job in the world. I’ll add a little spike of vodka for those of you who have toddlers or teenagers. You deserve it!

The adorable straws in these photos are from one of my favorite sponsors, Hey Yo Yo on Etsy. Make sure to check out their store for festive paper straws, cupcake liners nut cups and more.

Strawberry Lemonade Spritzer from Delish

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Strawberry Lemonade Spritzer

Author Dine & Dish

Ingredients

• 3 cups strawberries hulled
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 8 cups prepared lemonade I used Country Time, but fresh or frozen will do as well
• Club Soda
• In a food processor combine strawberries & sugar. Puree until smooth.
• Add lemonade and mix. Refrigerate for at least one hour.
• Right before serving combine lemonade & club soda (2 parts lemonade and 1 part club soda)

Instructions

• cups strawberries, hulled
• Tbsp sugar
• cups prepared lemonade (I used Country Time, but fresh or frozen will do as well)
• Club Soda
• In a food processor, combine strawberries & sugar. Puree until smooth.
• Add lemonade and mix. Refrigerate for at least one hour.
• Right before serving, combine lemonade & club soda (2 parts lemonade and 1 part club soda)

The post 5 Things I Love About My Mom {Recipe: Strawberry Lemonade Spritzer} appeared first on Dine and Dish.

My family loves fish. Well, I am not sure if that is exactly true. My family loves fish that does not taste like fish, like this Lemon Baked Cod. If the fish has a fish flavor, the fish is not loved. However, if I can spice up and drown out the fishy flavor of the fish, then the fish is gobbled up. So, my family likes fish as long as it tastes nothing like fish. Make sense?…

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I sat down at 2pm this afternoon to write an article for Her Life Magazine. At 10:42pm this evening, the article still is not written. It has nothing to do with the fact that the article is a difficult one to write. The story is fascinating and I pretty much have how I want it to go all planned out in my head. The problem is… I keep getting distracted! Hubby came home with chocolate…so of course that distracted me right from the get go. Then the kids wanted to go to the swimming pool so of course I couldn’t turn that down. The Pedi Egg Blogher add grabbed my attention (and yes… I was swayed enough to buy one get one, plus the lotion and the upgrade to the Deluxe – what a deal!), etc. Just about everything sounds better to me right now than sitting down and writing the article I am supposed to be writing. So what do I do? Sit down and procrastinate some more by writing a Dine and Dish blog post!

Are any of you out there like me? You go to get the mail and notice weeds in your flower bed, so you stop to pull the weeds and completely forget to get the mail. You go to grab your address book so you can sit down and write a thank you note and when you open the drawer to find your address book you notice that you stashed a bill in there when company was coming last week, which reminds you that you forgot to finish downloading your Quicken transactions so you head to the office to do that… moving the thank you note to the next days to do list, once again. You head to your freezer to pull out a roast to thaw for dinner, and by the time you search through your freezer you completely forget what you are looking for and end up closing the door without pulling anything out? I think FlyLady calls us “Sidetracked Home Executives“… I know that term sums it up very well for me.

There is one appliance I am very thankful for that really helps with my distracted brain, and that is the microwave. I rarely use the microwave for anything other than the defrost function, but the letters on that button are barely legible because I use it so often. I love the defrost function. I can just picture the focus group who sat around and determined that microwaves needed a defrost function. A room full of “Sidetracked Home Executives” who feel like they really accomplished something that day if they remembered to take the meat out of the freezer to thaw. I seriously feel like I should be awarded or something on those days! “And Kristen gets a medal today for actually making it to the freezer, pulling out the meat and having it thawed in time to cook it for dinner without having to turn to the defrost button on her microwave for assistance.” <applause, applause>

Thanks to my microwave defrost button, we still get to eat pretty good around here. I have been wanting to share this recipe with you for quite some time now, but I keep getting distracted by other things to post. Lemon Chicken Spaghetti Toss is probably one of the most regular recipes on our menu. We have it at least once or twice a month, and have been for the past several years. This is a recipe that I can even pull through without getting too distracted by other things. I typically have all of the ingredients on hand and my entire family enjoys it.

Now – I’m going to share it with you immediately because as I was going to pull the recipe from my Zaar account, I got distracted by a chocolate cake recipe I want to go and check out. Enjoy!

Lemon Chicken Spaghetti Toss (adapted from a past issue of Quick Cooking magazine)

The post Distractions appeared first on Dine and Dish.

My son requested pumpkin muffins as his birthday treat to take to school this past Monday. I happily made the muffins but felt like they needed something added for a festive touch. I decided to whip up some Cream Cheese Frosting, but when I added the frosting to the pumpkin muffins they just didn’t taste like something a 5 year old would love. I found another solution for the muffins (just stuck a dum dum lollipop in the top of each one, which thrilled my own 5 year old), but now had the problem of what to do with all of that cream cheese frosting. Sitting down and just eating it out of the bowl sounded like the perfect solution to my three year old… probably a good thing she isn’t in charge of meals around here, isn’t it?

We went to the birthday party yesterday afternoon of a neighbor girl and the mom had made lemon cupcakes with… you guessed it… cream cheese frosting. After enjoying that lovely treat, I was determined to make a lemon something with cream cheese frosting today. I poured over my cookbooks, browsed some cooking magazines, and searched the net high and low. I finally found a recipe at trusty old Recipezaar that I knew I could adapt to what I was looking for. The result was a fabulous Lemon Pound Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. To get the desired lemon result that I was craving, I added an extra tablespoon of lemon juice to the cake recipe and a splash of lemon juice to the cream cheese frosting.

These are both recipes that are super simple to make and ones that I will continue to use in the future.

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Lemon Pound Cake

A moist and delicious lemon pound cake recipe with cream cheese frosting.

Course Dessert

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 1 hour hour

Total Time 1 hour hour 15 minutes minutes

Servings 6 servings

Author Dine & Dish

Ingredients

• 1 ⁄2 cup butter melted
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs well beaten
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 ⁄4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1 ⁄2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Instructions

• In the bowl of your electric stand mixer, mix together 1 cup sugar and butter.
• Add eggs and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice; blend well.
• Add salt, flour, and baking powder to mixture.
• Add milk.
• Bake at 325°F in a well greased loaf pan for approximately 1 hour, or until golden brown and toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

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