Southern English Pea Salad

This Southern English pea salad is a refreshing and delicious side dish, perfect for any gathering. Made with peas, bacon, herbs, and a creamy dressing, it’s sure to be a hit at your next potluck or holiday dinner.

It’s the perfect side dish for Easter, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, or Christmas. I don’t know where English pea salad originated from, or why it’s so dang good considering it’s the world’s shortest list of ingredients, but I do know that any time someone shares a photo of a Southern Potluck or church spread, there’s that pea salad!

Last Fourth of July, we had Cade’s mom, brother, and his family and a friend over for a fun day of swimming and eating. Yes, I did wear a red bathing suit. Yes, I did get mistaken for the lifeguard 100 times. I have had the worst time trying to find a bathing suit that wasn’t cut crazy high or crazy low all year and this one I love, though I will watch where I wear it now. 

But back to the BBQ — we swam, the kids became exhausted, and we headed back to the house where we cooked up classic burgers thanks to our 2 hamburger secrets post, and a selection of our favorite summer salads including this green pea salad, our tomato mozzarella salad, and Nancy’s Southern Grape Salad. We finished the night off with our dreamiest Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting EVER.

Green pea salad is considered to be low-carb, gluten-free, and a slightly healthier option to pasta salad (though we have a pasta version of this recipe too if you prefer). But this doesn’t mean it’s straight up healthy — it contains bacon, cheese, and mayonnaise, after all.

What Ingredients Do I Need for This Salad Recipe?

Although English pea salad has a few different names, it’s all the exact same thing — cold pea salad. You may hear it called pea salad, English Pea Salad, Southern Pea Salad, Green Pea Salad, or, as we’ve called it, Southern English Pea Salad.

Here’s what goes into this easy potluck side dish recipe: 

• Frozen Peas
• Mayonnaise
• Apple Cider Vinegar 
• Salt and Pepper
• Red Onion
• Bacon
• Cheese (Colby Jack or Cheddar Cheese is our favorite)

Some recipes also call for hard-boiled eggs, which we left out this time as I’m really enjoying it as a straight up pea salad lately. I’ve added it into the recipe as optional in case

Strawberry cookies made with real strawberries! These cookies are soft with slightly crispy edges and a thick, chewy middle. You can top them with a light glaze or roll them in sugar.

I was about to make our lemon drop cookies a few months ago when I got the brilliant idea that if a candy could be blended to flavor a cookie, surely freeze dried fruit could as well. Sure enough, a summer strawberry cookie was born! 

I thought strawberry was the absolute best flavor as a kid. Now I actually tend to go more raspberry out of the berry family (curious what you all would pick), but my kids are for sure on the childhood bandwagon of fresh, juicy red strawberries. They love that these cookies are dense and chewy but they have the pick of rolling in sugar or topping with a crackly glaze.

I personally prefer to make a lemon glaze to brighten up these sweet cookies, but you can do whatever makes you happy!

Ingredients for Strawberry Cookies

Most of the strawberry cookie recipes out there use strawberry cake mix or strawberry pudding to get the strawberry flavor (in fact we have our own strawberry pudding cookie recipe here on the blog), but I love using real strawberries in this recipe to get that true strawberry flavor. Here is what you will need to make these cookies:

For the Cookies

• Freeze Dried Strawberries: Don’t use fresh strawberries. They will add too much moisture to the dough and make the cookies cakey.
• Sugar: regular granulated white sugar
• Butter Flavored Shortening: You can also use regular shortening (you’ll lose a little richness in flavor) or just regular butter but they end up more dry with just butter.
• Unsalted Butter: softened, combined with the shortening, the cookies are tender and still rich in flavor
• Eggs: add structure to the cookies
• Vanilla: adds flavor
• Strawberry Extract: just for a little boost in flavor
• Flour: use all-purpose flour
• Baking Soda: leavening agent to give the cookies rise and fluffiness
• Baking Powder: leavening agent that works with the baking soda to help the cookies rise
• Salt: enhances all the flavors

For the Glaze

• Powdered Sugar: adds sweetness and structure to the glaze
• Milk or Water: milk will be a little more rich in flavor
• Lemon Juice: I love to add a little lemon juice to give a nice flavor burst to the cookie, but it is totally optional.
  • BONUS: You could also add a little strawberry extract to the glaze if you want even more strawberry flavor.

Sugar

• Sugar: Roll the cookie dough balls in sugar before baking if you prefer that instead of the glaze.

The measurements for all the ingredients and the instructions for making these cookies can all be found in the recipe card at the

Glazed Orange Bundt Cake

Fresh orange flavor is packed into every bite of this tender glazed orange bundt cake! We use fresh orange juice and zest in the cake, syrup and glaze for bold, bright bursts of refreshing orange flavor.

I have been testing and testing an orange bundt cake recipe in every way you could imagine; I’ve made it with butter, with oil, with sour cream, without sour cream, ricotta, whole oranges, orange zest, orange juice, different glazes and then list goes on. And this is finally the recipe of all recipes.

Listen, in extensive research I found so many people insisting that bakers make the cake with whole oranges and you know what? IT’S NOT THE BETTER WAY. I wanted it to be so bad, but it led to a more dense, heavy bundt cake.

And while yes, it technically wasn’t dry, it also wasn’t light and melt-in-your-mouth moist, so I’d rather have a cake dry out two days later than start out so heavy and not as orangey all due to that white pith holding me back.

What Ingredients Do I Need for Orange Bundt Cake?

This cake recipe is broken into 3 different parts — the cake, the syrup and the glaze. Plan on using about 10-12 oranges depending on how big and juicy they are for all the fresh juice, zest and peel you will need. Here are the ingredients for each part:

Cake:

• Sugar: just regular granulated sugar
• Orange Zest: You’ll need about 2 oranges to get the zest you need. Zest adds so much bold orange flavor and rubbing it with the sugar releases the natural oil in the zest to produce even more flavor.
• Fresh Orange Juice:  You’ll need 6-8 oranges to get all this fresh orange juice. You could also buy a really high quality orange juice if you want to instead of juicing oranges. Make sure it doesn’t have added sugar or the cake will end up overly sweet.
• Eggs: gives the cake structure
• Vanilla: adds flavor
• Almond Extract: adds flavor, if you aren’t an almond extract fan, just omit it
• Vegetable Oil: all cakes must have fat, and oil keeps the cake nice and moist
• Flour: just regular all purpose flour, and you’ll want to sift it into the batter
• Baking Powder: leavening agent that helps the cake rise
• Baking Soda: another leavening agent to help the cake rise and be fluffy
• Salt: enhances all the flavors

Orange Simple Syrup

• Oranges Peels: you’ll need the peel of 2 oranges and they add so much natural orange flavor to the syrup
• Fresh Orange Juice: you’ll need 3-4 oranges for this step to get the juice you need
• Water: the base of the simple syrup
• Sugar: adds sweetness and thickens the syrup

Orange Glaze

• Butter: unsalted and softened
• Powdered Sugar: adds sweetness and thickens the glaze
• He