Hanukkah, 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!
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!
My grandma makes these killer crescent rolls – words can’t do them justice. Everyone always makes sure there are a couple on their plate. This Thanksgiving I was the Roll Patrol, keeping my ten-year-old cousin, Max, from swiping more than his fair share.
My fave meal during the holidays is Standing Rib Roast with Yorkshire Pudding. My mom has made it for years. I guess I’ll have to take over the tradition soon… 🙁
I love fruitcake. There, I’ve said it. No shame!
My dad is a man who is fairly useless in the kitchen and lackluster at the grill but for some reason has a real knack for baking (I think he picked it up as a kid in Denmark). It doesn’t happen often, mind you, but when the occasion calls for a Christmas stolen or some other bread product he can rock it.
However, my #1 holiday food is always ALWAYS going to be Dad’s sourdough sticky buns. Every year without fail he starts them the night before and has them fresh & ready Christmas morning so everyone can have a sticky bun while we’re opening gifts. And every year he makes half with walnuts and half without because I’m allergic to walnuts.
I don’t have just one favorite holiday food tradition, but I do love any and all baked goods that accompany the holidays. Which could be why I’m have a 12 Days of Cookies on my blog? Here’s the link if you are so inclined, which you should be because you read through over 400 comments to get here. 🙂 http://theunemployedlibrarian.blogspot.com/search/label/christmas cookies
My mom always used to make something she called stollen, but it wasn’t stollen like you normally think of it; it was less sweet and gooey and more bready with a few fruits mixed in. It tasted absolutely heavenly toasted with butter slathered all over it. We would eat it every Christmas morning before breakfast; it was the perfect snack for eating during the opening of presents.
She was diagnosed with diabetes, and now she doesn’t cook much of anything. I guess she spent her whole life cooking one way, and now that she can’t do it any more, she doesn’t want to try to learn any new recipes or techniques. So this year, I’ll be trying my hand at cooking Mom’s stollen for the first time.
My Granny’s pecan puff cookies. She made them when I was a kid and now they are all mine to make! Simple ingredients, long bake time and the result is a delicate little puff of a cookie. 🙂
My brother makes my grandmother’s coconut cake every year.
He hunts down real coconuts and grates them himself.
It’s always a blast from our past.
I LOVE frosted sugar cookies. They’re the devil cause I end up eating like five of them. Tip: Always bite Santa’s head off first.
My favorite is my mom’s Standing Rib Roast that she makes every Christmas!!
My favorite holiday food that I have to request, is mincemeat pie. Not mince pie, but mincemeat, which is good either hot or cold, and a great late night snack when you want something sweet and savory. Can’t wait for it this year!
Unrelated to latkes, but still awesome from the past—persimmon pudding. I need a recipe though because my great aunt made this and I can’t seem to find a duplicate.
I love my mom’s homemade candies. She makes peanut butter cups, turtles. and chocolate covered cherries that are to die for. I also love krumkake and rosettes.
Eggnog!!! Preferably with some booze in it.
i love baking during the holidays. when the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg mixes with the smell of the christmas tree, i’m a happy creature.
but strangely, my favourite thing to make/eat is baked brie wrapped in phyllo and topped with jam or chutney. it’s become a bit of a tradition at my holiday party – people always ask when the brie is coming out of the oven!
My favorite Christmas food would have to be the plethura of Christmas cookies! I can’t really say there’s anything else that stands out at Christmas time, well, beside the homemade egg nog, which I can’t have this year because I’m pregnant (18 weeks currently)!
Thanks for the giveaway and the recipe. They sound awesome! 🙂
thecozyreader @ gmail.com
Apple pie with cheddar cheese. And coffee. After my mom’s Christmas feast. 🙂
Christmas Cookies – all kinds! Salmon patties on Christmas Eve are pretty good too! Love the contests.
I love Peppermint Bark. Only time of the year its easy to find too.
We always have pound cake for the holidays. I only make it once a year though since it starts with a pound of butter and goes downhill from there. This year we also had sweet potato cheesecake for Thanksgiving and wow was it awesome. I’d be happy to add that to the tradition!
The Christmas eve combination of cookies and hot chocolate.
Favourite Christmas food: slightly burnt T-bone steaks fresh off the barbie, with potato salad, eaten off a rickety picnic table in a park in the heat of summer ^^
My mother-in-law always makes a huge spread of cookies and candies only during the period of Thanksgiving-Christmas, and I love to sample *tiny bits of ALL of it: peanut brittle of the GODS, butter brickle, caramel corn, Russian tea cakes, caramel rice krispy squares and fudge. Thank all the food gods I’m not diabetic, because her house would be death-on-pretty-Christmas-platters for me!
*Yeah – don’t let that “tiny bits” thing fool ya. :o)
I was raised by Italians, so Christmas is a time for baked ziti, various meats that have been cooked in a sauce that’s been simmering all day, and, my favorite (and everyone else’s – we had to count them out equally for leftovers): Grandma’s meatballs. Never before have you tasted such a tasty tasty meatball. Mmm…
Two of my favourite treats are: homemade gingerbread muffins. They are awesome like damn and whoa!!
The other is chicken bread. Like Kim’s mom, I use canned chicken and onion powder with cream cheese. My kids call it chicken bread because they like it on bread rather than crackers.
SB Sarah, I found some Chanukah songs on the Velveteen Rabbi blog, just in case you were looking for some more songs. I love his tag line: “When can I run and play with the real rabbis?”
turned48: ummm, not for a few years
Cream cheese and corn hands down! Its a family “recipe” but its my favorite thing.
Frozen corn + cream cheese…. microwave and mix and = yummy deliciousness
Two of my favourite treats are: homemade gingerbread muffins. They are awesome like damn and whoa!!
The other is chicken bread. Like Kim’s mom, I use canned chicken and onion powder with cream cheese. My kids call it chicken bread because they like it on bread rather than crackers.
SB Sarah, I found some Chanukah songs on the Velveteen Rabbi blog, just in case you were looking for some more songs. I love his tag line: “When can I run and play with the real rabbis?”
It’s the baking and decorating I love best about holiday food. It all kind of gets wrapped up together in one warm glow of kitchentastic madness. But! I can kind of go totally nuts over a nice plate of freshly made sugar cookies and a glass of eggnog.
I love latkes for Hanukkah. And for Christmas (even though we are jewish), we have a spiral ham and green bean casserole. Our families used to get together for Christmas eve to spend the holiday together and we always had this meal, so even though we are now 3 states away, we still celebrate with that tradition! 🙂
My favorite holiday treat is dubbed Yummy Goodness (formally Texas Crunch).
It consists of saltine crackers covered with homemade caramel, and peanut butter and chocolate chips. You put it in the refrigerator and eat it like peanut brittle. E-mail me if you’d like the recipe. It’s super fickle and only sets up right on a sunny day (kind of like fudge or other candies). My friends think the secret ingredient is crack, but it’s really just lurve.
~lAUra
case54 – I made a case of 54 batches of this stuff and it didn’t last 3 days!
Old-time Atlantans may know, but Rich’s department store (RIP) in downtown ATL had a fabulous bakery. And in that fabulous bakery was a fabulous coconut cake.
That cake meant Christmas to us. The only time we could justify the expense was for Christmas.
Since Rich’s left us, I have made the so-called recipe obtained by the AJC a number of times, but it is just not the same.
Peppermint candy cane cookies made with white and red dough.
Pineapple ham…I don’t know if it’s “traditional” but it is for my family. 🙂
This will be the first Christmas without my mom who passed away in May. She loved the sweets! Something I had become attached to is panettone! I even made it from scratch one year and was so proud of myself.
Creamed corn – recipe stolen from the Ritz. BEST EVER!
Pumpkin pie 🙂
Using leftover turkey in a turkey, broccoli, cheese, garlic, and rice casserole.
You know that Chex Mix commercial with the “Now I’m the mom” line? Makes me cry everytime because now that my mom is gone, I’m the mom… I know this because last year, when I told my brothers no cookies because my upstairs neighbors flooded my kitchen leading to mess and expense right at the holiday season, I got “We understand, it doesn’t matter, we don’t care” with the disappointed little boys undertone. So there I was in my barely workable kitchen two days before Christmas making peanut butter blossoms and pecan cresents mom’s two must have-it’s not the holidays without them recipes.
FUDGE! Love it and thank goodness only make it once a year otherwise my hips would be as wide as my house—but I would be smiling! “-)
We always have cracked crab on Christmas Eve and a baked ham dinner on Christmas Day.