My homemade enchilada sauce has been one of the most popular recipes on my site and I am glad that so many of you have enjoyed it. Today, I have a slightly tweaked version of that original recipe to share with you.

We love my homemade enchilada sauce and I make it often, but I recently wanted to change it up a little. I had a few chipotle peppers left from my chipotle ground beef tacos, and I thought they would make a great addition to my enchilada sauce.

So, I tweaked my enchilada sauce recipe a little bit and came up with something that we all love. The chipotle pepper added to this gives it not only a little spiciness, but also a smokey flavor.

I made enchiladas using this Chipotle Pepper Enchilada Sauce and some leftover chipotle ground beef taco meat as the filling and they were so good. The chipotle peppers gave them great flavor.

I love this sauce just the way it is, but my husband thought it would be great with a little more kick to it. So, if you like your food spicy like my husband does, you can easily add a little more chipotle pepper to this.

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Homemade Chipotle Pepper Enchilada Sauce is a post from: Lynn's Kitchen Adventures ©2011 LynnsKitchenAdventures - All rights reserved.

What is not to like about hot fudge sauce? Especially during the summer and all the triple digit weather that some of us have been experiencing.

I have several different hot fudge sauces that I make, but this recipe adapted from Carnation Evaporate Milk is a favorite of ours.

Pour it over a bowl of ice cream and you have a wonderful summertime treat.

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Creamy Hot Fudge Sauce is a post from: Lynn's Kitchen Adventures ©2011 LynnsKitchenAdventures - All rights reserved.

Canned cream of whatever soups are not a subject I would normally write about, but an article in our newspaper this morning, and a few of your comments yesterday on my Facebook page, got me thinking about them.

I am not normally a newspaper reader, but my husband is, so we get the daily newspaper. As I was putting today’s newspaper in the recycle pile, a headline from the food section caught my attention.

It said,

“Embrace that cream of chicken soup.”

Yes, that was the title.

Now for those of you cringing at the thought, please remember I live in Oklahoma. We are not exactly known for our healthy eating. We are the state known for things like barbecued bologna after all. (And that subject deserves a post all by itself.)

But when a newspaper has a title like, “embrace that cream of chicken soup”, I knew I had to read the article.

After reading the article and several of your thoughts yesterday, I decided to do a post on the subject.

Now, to be fair to the author of the newspaper story, she did admit that cream soups should not be everyday food. She also admitted that she only uses them occasionally herself.

But she did go on to talk about using them in nostalgic type casseroles and how they were a necessity. She also talks about the homemade white sauce issue and people not having the time to make a homemade white sauce at home.

So, this got me thinking about whether or not cream soups are a staple in most kitchens today. Do we really not have time to make a homemade white sauce or do we just want certain foods to have that nostalgic casserole taste many of us grew up on?

What are your thoughts? Are you a canned cream soup user? Is it a staple at your house?

Do you love them and use them regularly? Or are you someone that would never even think of buying a can? Or maybe you just use them a few times a year for that favorite casserole recipe that your mom used to make?

I would love to hear what you have to say? ( And can we keep it friendly and not insults each others cooking here, thanks)

I am also curious about your success with homemade sauces. Do you think they work the same?

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Cream Soups: Good or Bad? is a post from: Lynn's Kitchen Adventures ©2011 LynnsKitchenAdventures - All rights reserved.

Homemade fruit sauces are so easy to make.

They are very versatile and can be used on anything from pancakes, waffles, and french toast, to desserts like my mom’s easy cheesecake or the white chocolate cheesecake pictured above.  ( The recipe for the white chocolate cheesecake will be posted soon. It was one of the best cheesecakes that I have ever made)

I love to make homemade fruit sauces because the taste and texture is so much better than the canned versions that you can buy. It really does make a difference to make your own.

My favorite sauce to make is the raspberry sauce I am sharing today.

A  homemade sauce like this can turn a simple breakfast or dessert into a special one.

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Homemade Raspberry Sauce is a post from: Lynn's Kitchen Adventures ©2011 LynnsKitchenAdventures - All rights reserved.

I don’t know about you, but I grew up eating the cranberry sauce from a can. You know the kind where you can see the lines from the can indented in it. Yes, that is the cranberry sauce that made an appearance at our Thanksgiving table every year.

Because of this I grew up thinking that I did not like cranberry sauce, but really it was just the canned cranberry sauce that I did not like.

It was not until I made my own homemade cranberry sauce that I discovered that I actually enjoyed it. I realized that cranberry sauce could be good.

And not only does homemade cranberry sauce taste so much better, it is actually quite easy to make.

There are a lot of versions for homemade cranberry sauce with extra ingredients added in, but I like to keep it simple and basic.

One of the things I like about homemade cranberry sauce is that you can make it ahead. This can easily be made several days before Thanksgiving, which is always nice during the busy holidays.

If you have never tried making cranberry sauce you really should give it a try.

Do you like cranberry sauce? And if your answer is no, have you ever tried the homemade kind?

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Homemade Cranberry Sauce is a post from: Lynn's Kitchen Adventures ©2011 LynnsKitchenAdventures - All rights reserved.

This is our hot sauce collection. Well, I should say this is my husband’s hot sauce collection.

Can you tell he likes his food spicy? Not only does he like his food spicy, he likes the right sauce for the right food, and I have to say I agree with him on this one.

Chinese hot sauce makes all the difference in Asian cooking. Tabasco just doesn’t taste the same in those recipes. However, for things like eggs, our family grabs the Tabasco or Louisiana style hot sauce.

For Mexican food my husband like Mexican style hot sauces. I have to say I disagree with him on this one, but mainly because I don’t like super spicy food. I think most Mexican food is spicy enough and does not need extra sauce. His opinion though is if Mexican food is not spicy enough you can add hot sauce to it to make it better.

This collection of hot sauces takes up quite a bit of room in my cupboard and fridge, but I really don’t mind. In general hot sauce is inexpensive. They normally cost a couple dollars for a bottle and they last a long time.

I can take a simple bean or rice dish and add a lot of flavor and depth to it, by adding a few drops of hot sauce. So, I look at hot sauces as an inexpensive way to add a lot of flavor to a simple meal.

So how much hot sauce is in your house? Does your collection look anything like ours?

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Hot Sauce is a post from: Lynn's Kitchen Adventures ©2011 LynnsKitchenAdventures - All rights reserved.

By now most of you probably know that my husband and family loves peanut butter. We love it in peanut butter pie and also in peanut butter baked oatmeal, but one of my kids favorite ways to eat peanut butter is on pancakes and waffles.

When I came across this recipe for peanut butter pancake syrup in an old quick cooking magazine, I knew my family would love it, and they did.

This is a quick and easy way to make your pancakes or waffles a little different.

I used real maple syrup for this, but I think you could easily use the regular type of pancake syrup that you buy in the store.

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Peanut Butter Pancake Syrup is a post from: Lynn's Kitchen Adventures ©2011 LynnsKitchenAdventures - All rights reserved.

I have tried several hot fudge sauces over the last few years. I started trying to make my own hot fudge sauce in order to avoid the store bought version that is full of ingredients that I cannot pronounce. The homemade version may not be healthy, but at least I know what is in it.

I recently tried a new recipe for homemade hot fudge sauce that came from an Everyday Food Magazine. This recipe contains corn syrup, which is something I try to not use very often, but I figure hot fudge sauce is not something I make or serve often. I decided that since this recipe was easy and looked good, I would give it a try even though it contained corn syrup and let me tell you the corn syrup is the trick.

This was by far the best hot fudge sauce I have made. I used this in a pudding dessert that I made and we also used it over vanilla ice cream. This was so good. My whole family loved it. I could have eaten this by the spoonful. I doubt I will ever buy hot fudge sauce again. If I can find a recipe this easy and this good, why buy it.

This hot fudge sauce would also make a really nice holiday food gift. You can make a large batch of this up and then place it in a pretty or unique jar for a really nice gift. I can’t think of anyone that does not like hot fudge sauce.

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Homemade Hot Fudge Sauce is a post from: Lynn's Kitchen Adventures ©2011 LynnsKitchenAdventures - All rights reserved.

My family loves the Mexican Pizzas that I make. Since they are a copycat type recipe, I have been buying and using the taco sauce you buy in a jar at the store. We liked the famous fast food restaurant brand best, so that is what I was buying, and it worked well.

Every time I bought the sauce though, I would think about how expensive and unhealthy the bottled version was. I knew I could come up with a version at home. I searched for a recipe online, but did not find anything that was exactly like I wanted. I found a few recipes I liked, but none were quite right.

So, I changed some things and came up with a version that turned out really well.  I think this sauce is better than anything I can buy and my husband says that it is as good as the sauce you get at the fast food mexican restaurant type places.

Recipes like my Mexican Pizza are my quick and easy recipes. I like to be able to make them fast. So, when I make sauces like this or my enchilada sauce, I like to make large batches and freeze it in small containers. This way I don’t have to make up a batch every time I need it. Doing this ends up saving me a lot of time.

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Homemade Taco Sauce is a post from: Lynn's Kitchen Adventures ©2011 LynnsKitchenAdventures - All rights reserved.

Back in March, I posted about making homemade vanilla extract.  I know several many people thought this was a strange idea.  I am pretty sure my sisters thought I was a bit crazy for making it.  But I really want to make most of our food from scratch and making homemade vanilla is so simple to do. I figured it was an easy thing make myself.

I started using my vanilla a few months ago and I love it. I really, really like the homemade vanilla. It has such good flavor.  You can just tell by smelling it how much better it is.

One tip though is that I really should have let it sit longer. I was out of the store bought vanilla and I really hated to buy more when I had some almost ready to go.  I started using it when it was about 4 1/2 months old and I really should have waited a while longer.  The longer it sat the better it got.  So, I am enjoying it even more now that it has sat longer and developed an even better flavor. It now has a much stronger flavor than it did when I first started using it.

I have been enjoying the vanilla so much I started my second batch.  I even have a friend from church now making it for herself. In fact we ordered vanilla beans from amazon and split them in order to make them cheaper for us to buy. I was not sure about ordering vanilla beans through amazon, but I read the reviews and decided it was worth the savings to give it a try.  I was really happy with them, especially since they were so much cheaper.

One other thing that I did different this time was to use more expensive vodka.  I know nothing about vodka, so last time we just bought cheap vodka.  After talking to a friend and reading comments and emails from several of you, I realized I should not have used the cheapest vodka. So, this time I used better vodka and I think it will make a difference.

I can’t imagine why I would ever go back to store bought vanilla.  This is so simple to make and it is so much better.

Do any of you make your own vanilla?

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Homemade Vanilla Update is a post from: Lynn's Kitchen Adventures ©2011 LynnsKitchenAdventures - All rights reserved.