Smart Bitches Hanukkah Festival Giveaway: Part Three!

imageHanukkah, oh Hanukkah, it’s time for day three of the Smart Bitches Hanukkah Festival!

Today’s prize is pretty awesome. But first, I’ve been asked for the Sweet Potato Latke recipe I mentioned yesterday. Ahoy, here it is, and the giveaway is below the fold. It’s a good thing to hold with one hand, while eating latkes with the other hand.

Sweet Potato Latkes
Makes about 24 latkes. Adapted from Taste of Home Magazine.

1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp sugar (I used Splenda bc I’m out of sugar. Worked fine.)
2 heaping tsp curry powder (MORE SPICE BABY YEAH)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp brown sugar
1 heaping tsp ground cumin
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (like hotter with slow burn as you take another bite? Add more.)
1/4 tsp pepper
scant 1/4 tsp dry mustard
scant 1/4 tsp cinnamon

2 eggs beaten (Kinky!)
1/2 cup milk or Lactaid or milkish product of your choice.

4 cups grated peeled sweet potatoes

oil for frying

Mix the dry ingredients (flour through mustard). Stir in eggs and milk until blended. Add sweet potatoes and fold with a spatula or your fingers to coat thoroughly. Keep scooping from the bottom of the bowl to make sure there is equal potato/goo distribution. The goo contains the flavor!

Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. I used enough vegetable oil that it was probably between 1/3 and 1/2 inch deep in the skillet.

Drop heaping tablespoonfuls into oil. Let set for about 30 seconds, then press gently with the back of a spoon to flatten out. In my big honking skillet I could fry about 6 or 7 at a time.

Fry for 3-4 minutes per side until golden brown. Add more oil if you need it.

Drain on rack covered with paper towels. Try to avoid eating while they’re piping hot (ow. Good luck with that).

NOTES:

I tried making bigger than heaping-tablespoon size, and they were soggy in the middle, so keep to the smaller size for browned, crispy latkes with chewy centers. The batter will get soggy at the bottom so stir every now and again to mix the potatoes with the wet stuff. Remember: the goo contains the flavor!

We’re serving with honey mustard, chipotle mayo, drizzled honey and whatever else I think will taste good.

Happy Hanukkah!

And now: Ahoy! Contest the third!

On the Third Night of Hanukkah, Smart Bitches Gave to Me: A Generation Two Kindle, and a $25 gift certificate to Amazon!

Book Cover Just leave a comment below, and tell me your favorite traditional holiday food (Christmas, Hanukkah, Solstice, Kwanzaa – Eid is over, but is there traditional food for Hijra? – and you’re entered to win. Comments close in 24 hours, but fear not, there’s another book – paper or digital – giveaway coming soon. Because Hanukkah lasts for eight crazy nights, and I have more latkes to eat. NOM.

Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Reading!

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  1. Jaime says:

    Candy Cane cookies!

  2. tea says:

    Ooh, thanks for sharing your recipe. I do it with summer squash, too, but I’m an equal seasonal opportunity latke chick.

    Roasted vegetable bread pudding is the “traditional” food I enjoy this time of year. Maybe it’s only traditional to US, but it’s an every-year kinda thing. 🙂

  3. dinazad says:

    Isn’t the holiday food you grew up with always the best? For me, that’s that very special Christmas potato salad (contains sausage, peas, carrots, pickles, onions….. and is loved even by potato salad haters) with fried fish for Christmas Eve. Vanocka (a braided, slightly sweet bread with raisins and almonds) and hot chocolate on Christmas morning. Roast goose (best bird EVER) in the evening. Then a few days of salads to get ready for New Year’s Eve (tripe soup, nice and HOT) and New Year (lentils for money, pork for luck). And possibly another roast goose. Wit copious amounts of cookies and apple strudel in-between, just in case you get a bit peckish. But I think the potato salad is my favourite. And the goose. And….

    “must24”? must I have 24 favourites?

  4. kathleen says:

    My favorite holiday food is the savory dressing…stuffed inside a turkey, goose, duck, crown roast of pork, or surrounding a ham. Doesn’t matter which kind either…sage, oyster and sausage, cornbread, or sauerkraut with white wine and fennel seeds (yes, it’s in and around the duck and surprisingly delicious with all those duck juices seeped in!). But whoa, I have to try your sweet potato latkes. It’s early morning here in Budapest, but off to the store I go!

  5. barakat says:

    A desert ate during Ramadan is Katayif/Qatayef. OMG are they wonderful. They are these tiny thin pancakes, stuffed with either clotted cream /sweet cheese or a mixture of nuts and cinnamon. The pancakes are then either fried or oven baked and drizzled with syrup. Childhood memories are made of these!!

  6. n. barakat says:

    That would be a dessert rather than desert!! Although with the chill and snow we have in Ireland at the moment, I wouldn’t mind half an hour in a desert somewherre.

  7. blodeuedd says:

    My fav food is a drink, glögg, yummy, what was called in English now again, spiced wine? It can go by many names I guess, cos I hate the alcoholic variant, just juice for me and a yummy gingerbread man

  8. Quill2006 says:

    My mom’s double-baked potato casserole.  Like double-baked potatoes, only better because you can eat more than one potato without looking like a pig.  A month’s worth of cream, cheese, butter, and salt mixed with mashed potatoes and baked in the oven until brown on top.  It’ll give me a coronary someday, but it’s totally worth it. 

    But really, if you put just about any of my family’s common holiday foods in front of me, I’m thrilled.  I was sick for Thanksgiving this year, and I missed all the food, so I’m looking forward to Christmas dinner even more than usual.

  9. Olivia says:

    I’m gonna have to go with Gingerbread! This delicious little cookie can make get into the christmas mood any time of the year! Christmas is my favorite holiday by far, and I am so happy that we are yet again approaching this these jolly days 😀

  10. toni says:

    Growing up my family always had some variation of candied sweet potatoes at Christmas dinner and I loved them! I looked forward to them all year. I grew up and married a Jewish man so I now celebrate Hanukkah with him. I adapted the candied sweet potato recipe for his tastes and served them at Thanksgiving this year and then I turned the leftovers into candied sweet potato and apple latkes for the first night of Hanukkah. They were so good, it prompted my hubby to exclaim with delight and request that I always make latkes like this forever and ever *grin*

  11. Aliyah says:

    For me its all about the stuffing and fruit cake. In the stuffing I have carrots, celery/anise, apples and really any other hard veg or fruit. The fruit cake, which I know most people don’t like, comes from a little Britis bakery in downtown Ottawa that I love. My husband is very particular about his fruitcake so this one (with dried friut, lots of nuts and brandy coated cake) must be good. No wonder I gain weight over the holidays! Ahhh well, its worth it.

  12. Ros says:

    Bread sauce to go with the Christmas turkey.  Yum.

  13. Heather F. says:

    I always love the turkey, just the way my grandma makes every year and the stuffing that goes with it! It just takes me back to the holidays when I was a kid and the Christmas’ on my grandparents farm.

  14. Pamela Sinclair says:

    Mine is the Red Velvet Cake my mom makes – truly though holiday food is so yummy – ty for the recipe too will have to try it!

  15. The Duchess says:

    Haleem is this thick spiced soup, made with chunks of beef floating in a lentil curry. It is the staple dish on our table every single evening during Ramadan. There’s just something so comforting about a bowl of spicy haleem

  16. Anika says:

    Ohhh, so much food to choose from…where to start and what to pick…can you tell that I love food? Well, I think my favourite food during the holiday season is the stuff you find at the christmas markets here in Germany. Wandering around the stands with all their christmas lights and all the neat stuff they are selling, all the while stuffing yourself with potatoe pancakes, Dampfnudeln (yeast dumplings), Stollen (a kind of fruit bread), cookies, chocolate coated grapes and strawberries and of course washing it all down with mulled blueberry wine and rum punch, hmmmmmmmm, yummmmmy……

    “returned58”? after the holiday season 58 pounds will have magically returned to my hips

  17. Dana says:

    For me, it’s buttery cookies with thick icing—red and green colored, of course. To my knowledge it’s my grandmother’s recipe, and try as I might mine are never as good as hers. But I leave some out every year for Santa, and they must be a hit with the big guy because they’re always gone by morning! 😉

    I’m going to have to give that recipe a shot! I just bought some sweet potatoes and was wondering what to do with them.

  18. sableheart says:

    Chinese New Year cake is sweet and sticky, best fried so it goes gooey and crunchy at the same time. I tried my hand at making them this year, and they worked wonderfully =D

  19. Jen M in AZ says:

    My family makes about 20-30 different varieties of cookies, bars, breads, and desserts every year, but my favorites are Mexican Swizzle Sticks.  Chocolate-cinnamon cookies made skinny with the fabulous cookie press, with a chocolate icing and non-peril sprinkles.  I am also partial to candy cane cookies, cheesecake brownies, and classic sugar cookies.

  20. hmmm… I think my favorite holiday food is divinity candy at xmas.  My grandma used to make it every year and I really miss it!

    the_happy_soul AT yahoo DOT com

  21. KCfla says:

    Mine is Toll-House Cookies. You know- the kind you made with your mom/grandma with the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag?
    My Mom was a lousy cook. Cooked everything to death, and then another 10 minutes just to make sure. But boy-howdy those cookies always came out great, and warm out of the oven with a cold class of milk ( or hot tea now that I’m older) ?
    Talk about WIn!

  22. Lobo says:

    I always loved our Hungarian beigli with poppy seeds or walnut. It is not easy to make, but my MIL bakes them with a lot of filling and she is not too heavy on the dough.

  23. Lisa V says:

    There are just too many favourite holiday foods to choose from!! For Christmas it would have to be panettone…mind you any time of the year is good for panettone!  YUMMMMMM

  24. Tez Miller says:

    I would LOVE to eat a gingerbread house! Think they’re around Christmas, but no one’s ever made/bought me one, and I’m incompetent when it comes to cooking…

  25. Bibliophile says:

    My favourite traditional holiday food is leaf bread (http://icecook.blogspot.com/search?q=laufabrauð). Every year around the end of November my extended family gather together to decorate these traditional Icelandic Christmas breads. They are hand cut with often quite intricate designs and then deep-fried until crisp. We serve them with the Christmas meal, with plenty of butter to spread.

  26. My mother in law visits us and brings “Buckeyes” from Ohio.  Yum, yum!

  27. madmiss says:

    Before I join Barakat in running away from this ridiculous weather we have here, I have to say that my favourite seasonal dish is a toss up between Spiced Beef (from a local butcher ) or Chestnut and Sausage stuffing.
    Though, I suppose, I should say it really is the Spiced Beef – For I eat Gluten Free and what some places sell as GF sausage in this country can not be turned into a decent sausage, let alone decent sausage stuffing.

  28. Jaye says:

    Fudge!

  29. Heather says:

    Ohhhh favorite holiday food. It’s so hard to just pick one. I love some good eggnog and mulled cider (though not necessarily together) or this chocolate fudge that my dad only make once a year off of the back of a container of marshmallow fluff. Or this great clove studded ham that my aunt always makes. It’s hard to choose there are so many yummy things.

  30. Margo says:

    My Dad was a fabulous cook. He made the most wonderful fresh pineapple pies. Diced fresh ripe pineapple and pastry cream and his secret ingredient sauce that he put on top.
    Yummy

  31. Galadriel says:

    Oh my goodness, those latkes sound fantastic. (And now I’m thinking of The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story by Lemony Snicket, because it’s pretty much a reflex now.)

    My favourite holiday food is probably my mother’s stuffing recipe. It requires specific ingredients and spices, so while it’s a traditional bread stuffing, it tastes way better than any other I’ve ever had. (I mean, I’ll eat it cold from the fridge, or between bread as a stuffing-sandwich, it’s so good.) It can vary from year to year, but some of the most important parts are onions, celery, sausage, cranberries, and sometimes bits of dried apricots. It’s fantastic on its own as a sidedish, but OMG, a little bit of gravy or some (real, not canned) cranberry sauce mushed in? Yum. …Good lord, and now I’m really hungry.

  32. Eskimo says:

    Desserts – omg, the desserts. Cookies, brownies, cakes. It’s the sweetest way to end holiday dinners (literally)!

  33. beccafoh says:

    Mmm, roast potatoes. The sort that are fluffy in the middle and crispy on the outside and cooked next to the turkey for extra flavour. I am so looking forward to my Christmas dinner!

  34. KateC says:

    Roast potatoes!

  35. teebee says:

    I love stuffing/dressing. Sage Oyster Dressing to be exact! I might make your latkebuilding39
    recipe this weekend though!

  36. Ann says:

    Kahlua fudge, snickerdoodles, and choctoffeeoatmeal cookies get made around the holidays. Christmas eve is for cheese fondue, with french bread and, uh, spam. I partake not of the spam, tho.

  37. Megs says:

    I am also a huge fan of stuffing. Also, pumpkin pie, which I know is more a Thanksgiving food than a Christmas one, but we always have it at Christmas as well.

  38. Alex says:

    I can’t pick just one so it’s got to be the classic combination of pigs in blankets and stuffing ducks (otherwise known as sausages wrapped in bacon and stuffing made in the shape of ducks with flaked almond beaks).  YUM!

    The latke recipe sounds utterly delumptious.  I’ve never eaten them before, let alone tried making them but I’ll have to give it a go!

  39. Meredith says:

    I love my great-grandmother’s ambrosia salad. I always think of the holidays and family when I eat it.

  40. Allison says:

    I’m the biggest fan of the relish tray. It’s like a contemporary romance! I dent even know I loved it until it was gone (in-laws didn’t do one). So I started doing it myself! Can’t be Christmas without pickles, olives, carrots, celery, veggies, and dip!

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