A fried croissant fresh from the kitchen at Burney’s Sweets & More practically glows under a halo of glaze — like a doughnut, but a little bit more everything. Crispier on the outside. Softer on the inside. And a more perfect vehicle for all kinds of fillings: cream cheese, chocolate, lemon, blueberry. Tom and Doris Burney stumbled across the idea in the mid-’90s, and the croissant transformed their struggling bakery in Lumberton into a sweet success story. By the time they opened a shop in Elizabethtown in 2011, news of the famed croissant had customers lined up around the block. Eventually, their son Michael left the auto industry to run Burney’s with his wife, Gina — “I traded one type of grease for another,” he says. His parents passed on a love of cooking, along with family recipes for classic desserts like coconut cream pie and a 15-layer cake. Many vacationers at nearby White Lake look forward to those treats all year, timing their visit to Burney’s just right for croissants hot from the fryer and glistening with glaze.
Burney’s Sweets & More
106 M.L.K. Drive
Elizabethtown, NC 28337
(910) 862-2099
burneyssweetsandmore.com
To commemorate our 90th anniversary, we’ve compiled a time line that highlights the stories, contributors, and themes that have shaped this magazine — and your view of the Old North State — using nine decades of our own words.
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Us? An icon? Well, after 90 years and more than 2,000 issues celebrating North Carolina from mountains to coast, we hope you’ll agree that we’ve earned the title.
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