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!
I hate to admit it but I love, love , love jellied cranberry sauce.
My grandmother (who lived with us) made tons of different kinds of cookies that we all ate way too many of throughout the holidays—I think my favorite were the liebkuchen. I’m going to attempt to make them myself this year.
I’m a fan of making some seriously boozy bread pudding. Soak the raisins in bourbon, mix the raisin-flavored liquor into the sugar sauce, etc.
Ya gotta have the whole holiday meal! Ham, yams with marshmallow, green beans, macaroni salad, dressing, and rolls! (Make that a triple serving of dressing!) Then pumpkin pie.
Oh goodness, I love me some Eggnog! It’s just so…Christmas, in my mouth! But it looks like I need to investigate, becuase I’ve never heard of candy cane cookies and I’m pretty sure I need to know about them.
My favourites would be Baba’s/Mom’s Cinnamon Buns and Petishky. My mom used to make them every x-mas and now I do after learning from Baba.
Christmas sugar cookies! Love those. I miss my mom baking Christmas cookies. Yum.
Not traditional in the Xmas sense but its what my family started when they immigrated to Australia in the 60’s…. we all get together in the blazing sun and every year its all these Greek dishes (like spanakopita, keftethes, tzatziki etc) but the main thing is the Lamb on a spit with all these spices that only my dad and uncle seem to have a grasp of. Memories of when I was a little girl and all the kids would have to have a go and turning the spit (back before mechanisation lol). I miss that so much now as live too far away and for the last few years have had to work through Xmas 🙁
Stuffing with home made gravy on in. Mmmmmmm. So nummy.
I live just outside Vegas, so when my friends and I go to movies we always go to a theater in a casino for a matinee movie and then, usually, hit the buffet for dinner. (Park once, stay for hours) Depending on the buffet menu, there’s very often turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, and sweet potatoes scattered around. I almost always get turkey and stuffing, and yet it’s still a tasty treat.
race89 – no I’m not racing 89 anythings.
I’m going to be boring and say my mum’s roast turkey. Not being a country with Thanksgiving, Christmas is my one chance a year for a really good roast turkey. The last couple of years we’ve had Christmas dinner with my in-laws and they go for a ham instead. This year we’ll be with my family and I’m already thinking, “yum”.
But a nice barbeque with salad and fresh strawberries is always a lovely way to finish a sunny Christmas day as well.
I don’t know how traditional it is, but every Christmas Eve we have prime rib with twice-baked potatoes. It is probably the only time of the year that I eat prime rib, but it is yummy!
My Dad’s cornbread dressing is my favorite part of any holiday meal. Last year he made a vegan version just for me that was just as awesome as the original. 🙂
My favorite holiday food is latkes. But I won’t complain about donuts for dessert!
My favorite traditional holiday food is pumpkin pie. I just love it when the holidays get here and the pumpkin pie starts appearing. I love those miniature pecan pies too, and Christmas cookies – all those great goodies that are only made during the holidays.
Thank you for posting this….Now I can try to make something new…
My Mother’s recipe for candied pecans. It’s really simple, whip an egg until fluffy, coat the nuts, cover in sugar and spices, then roast. This year I’m adding some walnuts.
My Mother would make peanut brittle. But that is not easy at all. Cooking candy to the right hardness? Not this year.
I had 5 siblings, all much older than me so by the time I was a teenager, they were married with kids of their own. My parents used to have this big holiday party and my favorite dish was this hot clam dip in a french bread bowl. Loved that thing, but now I’m gluten intolerant and it just doesn’t taste the same without the french bread.
Thanks for the recipe. We love sweet potatoes and I’m always looking for new ways to fix them.
Favorite holiday food (and it’s very hard to pick a favorite!) might be our Christmas morning muffins. They’re this muffin recipe that my mom got out of a Bon Appetit magazine in the late 70s, and we make them every year on Christmas morning. Maple amazing goodness!
Petticoat Tails
For our family, it’s all about the mac and cheese. One year no one made it, and there was almost a mutiny. Been a part of our tradition ever since.
Casn’t wait to try the recipe! Thanks for sharing it, my treat after Thanksgiving is the Turkey Hash. Old recipe but still yummy and wonderful – with cranberries – mmmmm. Those latkes sound like a delight!!
Christmas—my grandmother’s oyster bread dressing. The best in the world. I’ve tried for years and I can never quite recreate it, but I make a good copy, if not perfect. It’s a mix of raw oysters, white bread, celery, onions, chestnuts, eggsm turkey broth (nothing else gives it the right taste) and sage and thyme—really simple, but it comes out like a savorty bread pudding.
gingerbread cookies (the ones I make
)
My family is Norwegian and we enjoy Fattigmands – or Fattigmands Bakkelse (Poor Man’s Cookies). They’re a mixture of flour, sugar, cardamom, eggs (likes of yokes), cream and … brandy. Cut them into diamond shapes, pull one tip of the diamond through the middle, then deep fry for a few minutes and sprinkle with sugar. YUM.
I’m with the pie people. Pumpkin pie with tons of whipped cream.
My favorite holiday food is my mom’s red hot cinnamon applesauce 🙂
So many yummy things to chose but I would have to say my Grandmother’s shortbread cookies. She lived to be nearly 102 and baked them every Christmas until the last couple of years. Lots and lots of happy memories around those cookies.
Latkes are by far my favorite holiday food! I mean, you get to fry things; you get to eat sour cream; and you get to eat applesauce. How can it get any better?
we don’t really eat traditional food in my house, but for Christmas, my mother generally makes a badass beef roast!
I love making sugar cookies in christmas time. I usually make them about a week before Christmas and hubby and I spend an evening decorating them and talking about Christmas memories, both from our childhood and our time together. This year I think we’ll make a double batch and wrap them up in cello wrap for Christmas gifts for coworkers to help share the holiday spirit.
Spiced cider & gingerbread.0
My mom’s version of the family applesauce cake. Her addition, generous overpouring of rum. It cooks out, but still, yum! Applesauce, walnuts (or pecans), raisins. My great-grandmother’s recipe also called for citron but I’ve never had that version. Just the one where mom read “1/2 a cup or so rum” where instead of the 1 1/2 Tablespoons of the original recipe.
Wow, that’s a toughie. Maybe my English Trifle for Christmas dessert. Or there’s the sherry cakes from my mother. So easy and yummy. And my dh makes really great hot buttered rum. But I could NOT live without my Holiday Chai tea from Stash. So that may be it 🙂
Every Christmas morning my family has eggs benedict for breakfast. For the Hollandaise sauce we use my Grandfather’s recipe which has now been past down to my brother. I think I look forward to breakfast more than gifts :- if people can believe that.
I love fruit cake. Not the healthiest snack in the world, but oh so good when the fruit has been soaked in sherry for a month!
Cornbread & sage stuffing, turkey & my sister’s homemade cranberry sauce. For dessert – chocolate meringue pie.
Any baking. Particularly, hot butter biscuits from the oven.
I love Arroz con gandules, pasteles and lechon asado (Rice with pigeon pea, pasteles and roast pig). I also love to drink coquito and eat tembleque as dessert. These are typical christmas food in my country (Puerto Rico).
Hard to decide…
My mom’s carrot cake, served most from Thanksgiving to Christmas, is wonderful.
A lot of my family loves my Kung Pao Turkey with Pumpkin Seeds at Thanksgiving, though this year I tried a more standard roast turkey (though still with an Asian fusion flavor) which came out well.
My grandma—and now my cousin—make fine good old fashioned potato latkes.