I love Sherryl Woods as an author. She writes great romances so when I found out she had a cookbook based on one of her series, The Sweet Magnolias, I just had to buy it. I enjoy testing out cookbooks, so I was happy to get to make a bunch of the recipes out of this one. I tried to get a good variety of recipes and I managed to get pictures of quite a few of them.
Garlic Toast Rounds: This was such a good recipe. It was very simple and tasted amazing. I’ve actually made it a couple times now. They are very hard pieces of toast, so if hard foods aren’t for you, I would skip this recipe.
Cheddar Corn Muffins: These were good, but really needed seasonings such as salt and pepper. It is a good starter recipe, but I would add more flavor to it. It has a corn muffin mix you use for it, but I ended up using a pre-made one that had the same ingredients because I didn’t want to made such a large batch of muffin mix.
Panfried Catfish with Spicy Cornmeal Coating: These were very good! I made mine a little less spicy, since my mom can’t handle spicy foods, but they were still very good. The catfish was crunchy and had tons of flavor. We ended up freezing the leftovers and re-frying them in the air fryer and they turned out great.
Honey Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Peach Salsa: I really liked the tenderloin. It wasn’t my favorite, but it turned out pretty good. I didn’t end up making the peach salsa, but it tasted okay without it.
“Oven-Fried” Chicken Tenders: This recipe was so yummy! I love chicken and I’m always down for trying a new chicken recipe. These turned out crispy and was still moist inside. It had great flavor too.
Three-Cheese Macaroni Casserole: This was so good. Mac and Cheese is very hard to mess up and this one was very good and cheesy.
Carolina Red Rice: This recipe was delicious. There was a lot of flavor and many different textures in the rice. I managed to burn mine a bit, but it still turned out really good. My parents loved it.
Dana Sue’s Pickled Okra: My mom is the one who made this recipe and her and my dad tried it. I don’t like pickled okra, but they really enjoyed this recipe.
Cornmeal-Crusted Fried Okra: I did not like this recipe. It was just too many layers of crust on the okra. While the outside was fairly crispy, the inside was mushy. I won’t be making this one again.
Stuffed French Toast with Glazed Strawberries: This was so good! It says to use clarified butter, but I didn’t use it and it turned out fine. I also didn’t make the glazed strawberries, since they were out of season, and instead used frozen, thawed strawberries with powdered sugar. This recipe was good reheated as well.
Whipping Cream Drop Biscuits: These were very good. I ended up making mine a lot smaller, but they turned out really good.
Jacked-Up Tex-Mex Macaroni and Cheese: This recipe was pretty good. I did substitute diced tomatoes instead of the Ro-Tel, since I don’t like it. It said to use a 13″x9″x2″ pan, but I would suggest something bigger, because mine almost spilled out the top.
Southern Cream Cheese Pound Cake: I made this for a small get together and everyone loved it. It was very soft and moist, with a slightly crunchy crust on the outside. It isn’t a very sweet cake, and went great with strawberries.
Cinnamon Roll Bread Pudding with Whipped Vanilla Bean Creme: This was so good! It held up very well too. I didn’t buy store-bought cinnamon rolls like it said, but instead used two cans of Pillsbury’s and baked them myself, letting them sit for a day or two. It was a very sweet dish, so I didn’t end up making the creme for the topping.
Pumpkin Cake Roll: Oh man, this was delicious. I probably could have ate the whole thing in a day, but somehow resisted it. I did keep it in the fridge and it held up very nicely. I can’t wait to make this again!
Deep-Dish Apple Pie with Crunchy Crumb Topping: This pie was good. While I did have a bit of trouble with the crust, it turned out tasty in the end although it wasn’t the prettiest. I didn’t have the Granny Smith apples that it called for, so I used different ones instead.
Valentine’s Special Decadence Cake: This was pretty good. I ended up not making the glaze so it wasn’t super sweet. This is a flourless cake, so it was very dense and rich. It wasn’t a favorite of mine, but I’m also not a huge chocolate cake lover.
Corner Spa Tortilla Soup: This was a good, healthier option. This recipe is low-fat, and it was nice to have some lighter options in this cookbook.
Old-Fashioned Molasses Cookies: I really liked these cookies. We have a molasses cookie recipe we use a lot, and while this one was a bit different it was still very good. These cookies stayed very moist and chewy, plus they had a good, strong molasses flavor.
There are so many other recipes I want to try out of this book, these are all that I managed to get to. I would definitely recommend this cookbook. Not every recipe was great, but that happens in every cookbook. There are over one hundred southern recipes in this book, and most of them were amazing to me.
Hope you enjoyed this! I love getting to cook and try out new recipes. If you haven’t already, subscribe down below to stay up to date on all my blog posts. Until next time.