Red (Purple!) Sweet Potato Pies

Charlie and I went shopping at the Ramsey Farmers Market the Sunday before Thanksgiving. We were looking for veggies and picking up our eggs from Farmer Matt. We got our eggs and wandered around tasting yummy things, and then we buckled down and bought some veggies and fruit.

The sweet potato bin at one of the veggie stands was getting very empty, but the bin next to it was labeled “Red Sweet Potatoes” and it had some of the largest sweet potatoes I’d ever seen in my life in it. “What’s the difference?” I asked the farmer. He told me that the red ones weren’t really orange on the inside – that they had a deeper color – but that they were good. I decided we’d try them out.

I googled them when we got home, and I kept finding results that looked very purple. I was very delighted when we peeled the sweet potatoes and found that they were bright purple!

Photo is of a large sweet potato with a bit of skin peeled away, revealing the purple flesh.

Photo is of the peeled and cut purple sweet potatoes.

We cooked and mashed them, following the recipe for Mom’s Sweet Potato Pie. We couldn’t wait to see what they’d look like, cute and tiny and purple!

Bo began to decorate the mounds of sweet potato with nuts and marshmallows.

Photo is of one of the mini red sweet potato pies.

Isn’t it amazing?

Photo is of Bo holding a tray of mini sweet potato pies.

And here they are, fresh out of the oven. They were delicious! I’d definitely get these red/purple beauties again. Yay for trying something new!

Aunt Sassy Cake (Pistachio Cake with Honey Vanilla Frosting)

This week was my birthday, and so of course we had some lovely cake. I’ve been wanting to make Aunt Sassy Cake from the Baked Explorations book for ages, but since it’s a pistachio cake, it didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would be great to show up to a potluck with, ya know, nut allergies and all.

It’s been SUPER hot here this week, so my baking plans got modified several times. I ended up making an ice cream cake instead of one of the baked cakes I had planned, but that was also delicious and wonderful and well-received.

As for Aunt Sassy Cake? Fabulous. The texture of the cake was wonderful and fluffy. The pistachio was lovely. I added a bit of cardamom to the cake batter, and the frosting I made up as I went along since we ended up being in a time crunch, but I finished it with a bit of orange zest and it was just beautiful.

We had a great day filled with delicious food. Whole Wheat Macaroni Salad with veggies from the garden, a new batch of Refrigerator Half-Sour Pickles, homemade salsa with tomatillos from the garden, and of course, Charlie sweating over the grill for us. Wonderful birthday times, as usual.

While you’re here, don’t forget to enter to win a gift certificate to my new etsy shop!

Ingredients – Cake:

1 cup shelled pistachios
2 1/2 cups cake flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 large egg
3 large egg whites, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Ingredients – Frosting:*

*Note: The recipe in the Baked Explorations book calls for a cooked frosting, which we did not have the time/inclination to do yesterday, so we made a standard buttercream, which I am including the recipe for here. If you’d like to make the Baked version, check out their book.

1/4 cup honey
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup shortening
1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste
3 cups confectioners sugar (or to taste)
2 tablespoons milk (or to desired consistency)
zest of one orange

handful of pistachios, reserved for decorating

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 325˚F. Butter three 8-inch round cake pans, line the bottoms with parchment paper, and butter the parchment. Dust the parchment with flour and knock out the excess flour.

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the pistachios until they are coarsely chopped. Transfer about 2 tablespoons’ worth of the coarse pistachios to a large bowl. Continue to process the rest of the pistachios until they are almost powdery—but not a superfine dust. Stir the pistachio powder into the reserved coarse pistachios. Sift the flours, cardamom, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together over the large bowl containing the pistachio mix. Stir to combine.

In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and shortening on medium speed until creamy, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the sugar and vanilla and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the bowl, add the whole egg, and beat until just combined. Turn the mixer to low.

In a measuring cup, make 1 ½ cups ice water. Add the flour mixture to the mixer in three parts, alternating with the ice water, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. For each addition, turn the mixer to low to add ingredients, then up to medium speed for a few seconds until incorporated. Scrape down the bowl, then mix on low speed for a few more seconds.

In a medium bowl, whisk the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks form (You can do this by hand. Don’t be intimidated, it should only take 2 to 3 minutes). Do not overbeat. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

Divide the batter among the prepared pans and smooth the tops. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through the baking time, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Transfer the pans to a wire rack and let cool for 20 minutes. Turn the cakes out onto the rack and let cool completely. Remove the parchment paper.

Next, make the icing. In large bowl, cream shortening and butter in a stand mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Keep bowl covered with a damp cloth until ready to use. For best results, keep icing bowl in refrigerator when not in use.

Place one cake layer on a serving platter. Trim the top to create a flat surface, and evenly spread about 1 ¼ cups frosting on top. Add the next layer, trim and frost it, then add the third layer. Spread a very thin layer of frosting over the sides and top of the cake and put it in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes to firm up. (This is known as crumb coating and will help to keep loose cake crumbs under control when you frost the outside of the cake.) Spread the sides and top of the cake with the remaining frosting. Garnish the cake with crushed pistachios and refrigerate it for 15 minutes to it firm up before serving.

Candles are in after the cake was cut so someone could have a to-go slice before heading to work!

Cranberry Sauce Almondies

After NaNoWriMo was over, my friend Anna and I decided we wanted to keep challenging ourselves to do more creative, wild, ridiculous challenges. Between the two of us, we wrote over 100,000 words in a month! We started making lists of what we thought would be good challenges, and some of them were food related, some of them were art related, and some of them were completely random. But the first one we decided to do was to participate in at least three out of four weeks of a bake-off (weeks of pies, dessert bars, cookies, and cakes) that was happening in December, so the next few recipes you’ll be seeing here will be from that. If you want to see more about our process, or join us for the next challenge (that we’re still deciding on!), go to our new blog, Scrawl Zoom Stir.

Ingredients

3/4 cup Earth Balance
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 egg replacers
1/3 cup almond paste
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup toasted almond flour* (Available here or toast almonds at 400*F for 10 minutes then grind up!)
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup cranberry sauce
1 egg replacer

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350*F.

In a stand mixer, mix Earth Balance and brown sugar on low speed until creamy.

In a separate small bowl, mix the water and the 1 tbsp. commercial egg replacer until frothy.

Add the egg replacer/water mixture to the stand mixer bowl and stir. Add the vanilla extract and almond paste and mix until fully incorporated.

In a separate medium bowl, combine the whole wheat flour, the all-purpose flour, the salt, the baking powder, and the baking soda. Stir.

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in the mixing bowl.

Spread the mixture into an 8×8 cake pan. Bake at 350*F for 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix the cranberry sauce (I like to use my homemade Clementine Cranberry Sauce, a little easy on the clementine for this one) with the remaining 1 1/2 tsp. of commercial egg replacer. Mix thoroughly.

When the initial 25 minute cook time is complete, remove the pan from the oven and carefully spread the cranberry sauce mixture in a thin layer evenly over the top. Return the blondies to the oven for about 15 more minutes, or until the surface of the cranberry sauce is tacky and the edges of the blondies are brown and crispy.

Cool completely before cutting. Garnish with almonds and pear slices.

Mom’s Sweet Potato Pie

It’s December! And what does that mean? I have absolutely no excuse to avoid posting on my cooking blog. (Ok, so I have a few excuses – I’m still about 10-15k from finishing my novel for NaNoWriMo, even though I technically “won,” and I’ve been having a particularly nasty flare of my rheumatoid arthritis lately, leaving me pretty wiped out.) Excuses aside, there is definitely some exciting stuff brewing around here, like the arrival of my stuff from CSNStores.com!

The first thing I want to share with you is my awesome sweet potato pie recipe, as well as reveal one of the things I chose to review that we talked about in this post.

The first thing that arrived was perfect for use in this recipe. It was a potato masher from OXO!

I absolutely love OXO products, and I’m so glad that CSN Stores carry them. OXO was actually started by a guy whose wife had arthritis in her hands, and the kitchen tools they make are designed so you can grip them easier. This masher has a really comfy handle, and it is super sturdy. I have no doubt that I’ll have this in my kitchen for a long time. The handle might be a tiny bit short if you’ve got a really steamy pot, but all in all, I am super pleased. Shopping with CSN was easy (except for deciding what to get…) and two out of the three items I ordered arrived with lightning speed.

Hmmm…. now aren’t you curious to know what the other two items were? More recipes will be coming soon with the reveal. For now, check out this awesome masher action:

Disclosure: I was given this product by CSN Stores in exchange for writing this review, though this is my otherwise unpaid, unbiased opinion.

Ok, back to your regularly scheduled programming. As a kid, I was never into sweet potato pie, but every year at Thanksgiving and sometimes at Christmas, my mom makes a sweet potato pie. She mashes up sweet potatoes with some brown sugar and butter, dumps it all into a graham cracker pie crust, and tops it with pecans. In the past couple of years, I’ve started to get more into various types of veggies like beautiful acorn squash and gorgeous yams, and the sweet potato pie really started to grow on me! At Thanksgiving this year, my immune system was particularly crummy from having just taken my RA medicine two days before, so I really wasn’t up for seeing the entire extended family (and all of the germs they might have), so we kept it low-key. I did have a serious hankering for my mom’s sweet potato pie, though, so we whipped up a slightly dressier version of our own.

Since I wasn’t sure exactly how many of the four of us at dinner would be interested in the sweet potato pie, I opted to make adorable little mini pies! This allowed me to customize them, too, since I actually prefer walnuts over pecans, and since one of the diners is diabetic and had to avoid the sweetness of the marshmallow topping. And if you’ve got vegan dinner guests, this recipe is easy to adapt. Many graham cracker crusts are actually vegan – or you can easily make one yourself. Natural foods stores also carry vegan marshmallows, which can be snipped apart with kitchen scissors to trim them down to the appropriate size for these tiny treats.

As for my thought that we might have too much… I think these were gone by the end of the night. I had to have my brother bring reinforcements of my mom’s leftover sweet potato pie when he came to visit the next day.

Ingredients

3 large yams/sweet potatoes
6 mini graham cracker crusts
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons Earth Balance (or butter)
pinch of salt (more if you used unsalted butter)
pecans or walnuts for topping
mini marshmallows for topping (optional)

Directions

Wash your sweet potatoes. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Boil the sweet potatoes (skins on!) until soft (probably about 30-40 minutes, depending on their size – test with a fork).

Remove the sweet potatoes from the water and put them on a cutting board to cool. Carefully remove the skins with a paring knife, or just grab them with a potholder and the skin should slide right off.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Mash the Earth Balance or butter, brown sugar, salt, and sweet potatoes with your awesome potato masher. (Oh, you don’t have an awesome potato masher? You can get one here.)

Divide the sweet potatoes between the mini graham cracker crusts. You’ll want to heap the sweet potatoes up and out of the crusts. Decorate with nuts and marshmallows to your liking. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes, or until your nuts and marshmallows are nice and toasted.

Kitchen Tools: SlapChop

If you go back to this entry about my palm peeler, you’ll see that I sometimes write about tools that have helped me in the kitchen, especially since the arthritis in my hands makes that difficult a lot of times. Here’s another entry like that.

Ok, so it’s an As Seen On TV item. You’ve probably all seen Vince’s spiel (if not, go here because it’s pretty amusing) about how “We’re going to make America skinny again, one slap at a time,” and how we’re going to love his nuts.

I am always hesitant to buy products like this, but several months ago, not only was I having more arthritis pain in my hands, but I was also losing some dexterity. What does this mean? Well, in this case, it meant that when I was wielding a giant chef’s knife and some veggies on my cutting board in my kitchen, I almost always cut my hand in addition to the vegetables. It was never anything serious – I never needed stitches, never lost a finger or anything, but the medicines to treat my rheumatoid arthritis make it harder for me to heal cuts in general, so it wasn’t the brightest idea to keep that up each week. It was clear that I was having difficulty.

I did a lot of product research before I bought, including this youtube video (click at your own risk, it’s gross) that does a good comparison but then quickly dissolves into SlapChopping things that should not be SlapChopped. I let Billy Mays yell at me about the features of his product, the Quick Chop (this was almost immediately after his death, but I did not let this sway me into purchasing the inferior product). They’re all about the same price – OXO also makes one, but ultimately, the SlapChop seemed like it worked the best, was the easiest to clean, and, well, I also got a Graty (for grating cheese “quickly and easily”) with my purchase.

So, you’re wondering… how does it work? Has it been the miracle I was hoping it would be?

It’s actually pretty awesome, though there are some disadvantages. You have to hit the thing pretty damn hard, which means that we haven’t completely eliminated discomfort from the process. Sometimes I look completely silly and I put an oven mitt on before I slap, to cushion the blows. However, since my problem is mostly in my finger joints, this is a definite improvement for me.

The other disadvantage is that you have to coarsely chop the items before you can use the SlapChop, and if you overfill it, it will get stuck and give you uneven pieces. The coarse chopping I can handle, though, as it was really the finer stuff I was having problems with, and once you get a hang of what fits inside the SlapChop, you’re good to go.

Now on to how awesome it is. Last night, it would have taken me ages to cut up everything I needed for the Lactose Overdose: Cream of Broccoli Soup, but instead, I was able to SlapChop the carrot, the onion, and the garlic in no time. I’ve put herbs in there before, as well as whole cloves that I need ground so that I don’t have to handle the mortar and pestle. And, of course, nuts!

Mincing garlic is the absolute best part of it. I was really having trouble with that, as it’s such a tiny thing to handle, and my hands sometimes feel clumsy and swollen. But garlic is fundamental to our cooking, and I can now just pop a few cloves in there and have them minced in seconds. It’s incredible.

Anyway, you may be wondering about the SlapChop’s confusing website. When you select one item for purchase, you get the second one free. All in all, you pay $35.85 and get two SlapChops and two Gratys (Graties? haha) so you can split the cost with a friend if you’d like. If you really only want the one, they do sell them in places like Walgreens, but you don’t get the Graty. I got the extra one because, while it says it has a 3 year warranty, I figured it would break eventually and then I’d have a spare.

Have I used it enough to be worth it, or does it just sit in the back of a cabinet?

I have definitely gotten my money’s worth. We keep it right on the counter and reach for it whenever we need it.

*As a final note, just for the record, I’m not affiliated with SlapChop in any way. I don’t work for them and I don’t get any money from them for writing this, I just like the product!

Beer Pie (with Pecans & Walnuts)

I joined an online baking community recently, and it is awesome to see what everyone around the world is baking. Since St. Patrick’s Day is coming up here in the USA, someone suggested making a beer pie. I made a bunch of changes to the recipe, like adding chocolate and walnuts, but it was a great help to have since I’ve never made a pecan pie before. Charlie loves pecan pie, though, and he said that this was one of the best things I’ve ever made. It did not last very long!

I went to our local beverage store, and I asked for a recommendation on a good stout, since that’s not what I usually drink. I was hoping to get something like Leffe Brune, but I was told that it’s only available in Belgium, which is where I sampled it. He asked me if I wanted Guinness, and I said that I wanted something with a chocolaty finish, so he pointed me to Lion Stout, a brew from Sri Lanka. I tried a sip before I put it in the pie, and it was perfect – very dark and flavorful.

As usual, I cut back on the sugar a bit, so this pie really tastes like like the chocolaty stout (so much so that I wouldn’t recommend serving this at a family event).

Ingredients

1 unbaked 9″ pie crust (I cheated here and used a frozen one from the store)
12 ounces Lions Stout (or any other dark, sweet stout)
2 tbsp Butter
1 cup light corn syrup
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 cup pecan halves
1 cup walnuts
3 eggs
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup dark chocolate chips
egg wash (if desired)
pecans for garnish

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Pour beer into a pan and heat on medium. Reduce to a syrup-ish consistency, then let it cool slightly.

Melt the butter in a separate pan.

Combine the reduced beer with the melted butter, corn syrup, brown sugar, and flour with a wire whisk until thoroughly blended. Add the walnuts and pecans.

In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs. Add a small amount of the warm syrup mixture to the eggs before stirring the eggs into the syrup mixture. (This evens out the temperatures so you don’t end up with scrambled eggs in your warm syrup.)

If desired, brush the crust with your egg wash.

Pour the filling into the crust, mixing in the chocolate chips as you pour. Garnish with pecans.

Bake in the center of the oven on a baking tray in case of spills! for approximately 40 minutes or until a knife stuck in the center comes out clean.

Cool before serving.

Plebeian Peach Walnut Oatmeal

Usually our cooked oats come out in the wintertime and summers are, as might be expected, a time for cold cereals. Last week, however, we got some wonderful peaches in our farmshare and oatmeal sounded like an amazing idea. Charlie got it started while I got ready for work, and I tossed it together on my way out the door. The results were astounding for how easy the recipe was.

Ingredients

Oatmeal… prepare according to package directions, but I’m strongly recommending that you don’t use the bullshit instant kind. Quick oats if you must, old-fashioned if you’ve got a few minutes.
Peaches, one small per serving, washed, pitted, and chopped into bite size
Walnuts, about one small handful
About 2 teaspoons, give or take, brown sugar

Directions

This one’s pretty straightforward. Since you’ve already prepared your oatmeal according to the directions on the package, you’ll just need to mix all this stuff together and enjoy it. Throw a dash of cinnamon in there if you’re feeling wild. Amazing. Definitely one of the best bowls of oatmeal I’ve ever had.

P.S. Don’t judge me about the plastic spoon! We almost never use plastic utensils or paper plates. I was heading into work, and Charlie was heading to the city to help his friend move out of her apartment. I should get one of these to avoid this problem in the future. I can leave it on my keychain. Hehe.

Summer Pumpkin Muffins (with blueberries, coconut, and cashews)

I love baking with pumpkin, but during the summer months, dense pumpkin breads with deep, spicy tastes like cloves and nutmeg can really weigh you down. Many of my recipes originate from having something in the fridge that was about to go off, and in this case, it was blueberries. I thought about mixing pumpkin and blueberries, and then when I was at work, I was snacking on blueberries and cashews together, and I thought that those were lovely together, too. I often throw coconut in with my pumpkin breads, and that seemed like a good idea too. All of a sudden, a jumble of tastes were together. now how to spice it up?

I did use the traditional cinnamon and nutmeg, but I dropped the cloves. I also reduced the nutmeg from what I usually use in a pumpkin bread recipe and added cardamom, which I usually use with citrus items to bring out a really bright flavor.

This is one of my “healthier” recipes… I used whole wheat flour, light coconut milk, cut back the oil and swapped in applesauce, and it’s vegan, so there’s no eggs.

Ingredients

3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tablespoon milled flax seed
2 tablespoons warm water
1 15oz can of pumpkin puree
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
2/3 cup light coconut milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup cashews, crushed
1 pint blueberries (make sure all the stems are removed)
flaked coconut to sprinkle on top (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two regular sized muffin tins with liners.

In a large bowl, stir together the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cardamom.

In a separate bowl, mix the flax with the warm water and stir until a goopy mixture is created. Add the pumpkin puree, oil, applesauce, and coconut milk, and stir until all wet ingredients are blended.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until all of the flour is absorbed. Fold in the cashews. Gently fold in the blueberries. Scoop into prepared muffin tins, and, if desired, sprinkle coconut on top.

Bake for 18-20 minutes in the preheated oven or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool on racks.