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 favorite traditional holiday food? Hmm.. it would either be buckeyes (yummy!!) or homemade iced sugar cookies. And/or pumpkin pie that my family refuses to make until the holidays.
I made s’mores cookies all afternoon for a cookie exchange tonight. Turned out surprisingly well.
My favorite Christmas food is ham with creamy mashed potatoes, macaroni salad and green beans. For dessert, it has to be a chocolate pie or a pumpkin pie with plenty of cool whip and ice cream.
Our traditions include a traditional roast beef dinner on Xmas eve, cookies throughout the season, and my aunt P’s deviled eggs (every holiday alluded long, aunt P brings deviled eggs!).
I made lebkuchen for the second to
E ever this year and it’s joining the cookie repertoire!
Italian beef made by my mom. mmmmm
Only one food? 😀
First place is a tie between my paternal grandmother’s Spritz cookies and my stepmother’s sweet potato pie. But I also enjoy latkes and will definitely try your recipe!
Russian Tea Cakes. I’ve seen them called Snowballs, or by other names, too, but they’re essentially little round cookies that aren’t particularly sweet on their own, but are rolled in powdered sugar. Mmmmmm.
Reading all the responses has made me really hungry and I’ve noted down a few to try that I’ve never heard of before but my fav holiday food has got to be Yule Log which wasn’t something we had back in Oz (or at least not in my family!)
It’s chocolate cake with chocolate icing scored to look like a log which is dusted with icing sugar (snow).
I’m a huge chocolate cake fan and I will eat this over just about any other desert at christmas.
Baking the special cake for my family that has been a tradition since my grandparents- it is a Waldorf Astoria cake. For a long time my dad made it for his parents as his mother did before so it is nice to keep the tradition where I get to bake it for the family.
Every Christmas morning we do a casserole we call, originally, Christmas Casserole. It’s sausage, eggs and cheese that are mixed up and let sit the night before, so that Christmas morning all we have to do is pop it in the oven. It smells like Christmas morning to me now.
Oh, definately my grandma’s homemade perogies- her saurkraut ones are the best!
What’s a holiday without pie? Pecan, pumpkin, apple, doesn’t matter. Pie, and more pie! And whipped cream on your pie, and leftover pie for midnight snacks, and breakfast with coffee, and who cares what kind of pie, as long as it’s holiday pie.
My favorite christmas foods are home made chex mix and white trash candy mix.
Anything someone else cooks!!! Ha! Favorite seasonal treat are the Archway Wedding Cake cookies. Yum. (holy moly 560+ comments!)
Mmmm nummy.
Tis the season for holiday baking and some chocolate covered cherry cookies always make their way onto my baking schedule, peppermint pinwheels and anise-almond biscotti are likely, and I’ve learned to make a Greek celebration bread called Christopsomos that is supposed to be a Christmas bread anyway.
My aunt makes these little peanut butter marshmallow squares that all us “kids” still fight over. I doubt they’re traditional to anyone else but it’s not Christmas till someone gets elbowed in the gut trying to get to the cookie tray first.
There are many I could easily choose, but I’ll have to go with (fruit) mince pies – I start making them in November, just because I can! Though if I lived in a colder climate I suspect I’d start on the mulled wine even earlier than that.
Best holiday food? Oh, it has to be Julia Child’s Sticky Cake which tastes just like my grandmother’s fruitcake.
Thanks for the latke recipe! I’ll try it.
Cornbread dressing at Thanksgiving.
I don’t know if it’s traditional or not, but my mom always made blue cheese balls rolled in walnuts growing up. Terribly fattening but oh so delicious.
My Aunt Glenda’s cornbread dressing is the one dish everyone in our family fights to get. It is a labor intensive dish, but Christmas dinner would not be complete without it. I also pay her on the side for making pecan candy just for me. YUM!
My dad isn’t a fan of fowl, so MY favorite Christmas dinner is chicken fried steak, fried potatoes, and green bean casserole. The parents are from Texas, thus the steak and potatoes, and we are Southern too, thus the green bean casserole.
Roast Turkey will all the trimmings and then trifle for dessert. Yum!!
I guess my favorite holiday food would have to be mashed potatoes. I’m vegetarian, so I can’t eat ham or turkey or whatever, and mashed potatoes are the only consistent thing I eat at the holidays. That said, I do love them!
Apple-cranberry-almond tart… nomnom 🙂
I would have to say that my favorite Christmas food is… Ham. It’sthe only time we have it. Seriously, I love me some ham. It’s just so good.
Roast/grilled leg of lamb, jammed full of garlic cloves, marinated/slathered in yogurt and teriyaki. For any and all holidays!
Mole rojo if we have to have turkey, or mole de cacahuate if I’m feeling lazy.
Penuche.
Tangerines.
Can my most favorite be my least favorite too? I love Polish cream cheese cookies but I hate like fire to make them. They’re really pastry- the tricky kind that must be just the right tempture to roll out. Too cold and it’s a brick too warm and it’s a gooey mess. I miss my mom- I’ve only been able to to get them right a few times and my sister won’t even try.
FIY after rolling them out you fill them with poppyseed or apricot pie filling. We’ve always cheated and used canned because the pastry was tricky enough.
My aunt’s chex mix. It’s spicy, but not too spicy and has bagel chips and cashews she only makes it for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Sweet and Sour cabbage, Prime rib medium rare and Polish wedding cheese cake.
These are just a few of my favorites.
I love Glühwein—mulled hot red wine w/ some added schnapps for fun 🙂 Hmmmm
mmmmm…Monster cookies! They are a glorious concoction that is made of many many yummy things like…a dozen eggs, one pound of peanut butter, pretty much a whole tub of Quakers quick oats, m&m, chocolate chips, and enough flour to make a flour castle out of. They are such a pain to make that my mom and I only make them once a year, but boy are they worth the wait!
My family is of Mexican heritage and it doesn’t feel like the holidays until I have had a tamale. During the holiday season, families will make tamales by the dozens. Usually everyone(mostly women) will pile in to the kitchen to make them, which can be an all day thing. The tradition is called having a “Tamalada”. At these tamaladas, we laugh with each other (and at each other), we gossip, sometimes fight and ofcourse, we eat. The ideabis to make enough to freeze them and have them last through the holidays. Inevitably, you make more than the freezer can hold and end up having to give some away to family and friends. Inevitably, those same family and friends have had their own Tamaladas and are trying to pawn tamales off on you.
I like to make the “wreath” with sliced crescent roll dough and spinach dip on top. Yummy, fatty, festive party nosh.
Left over Turkey sandwiches.
Cookies! Long-standing family tradition involving many, many varieties (seriously; we were once all together on a train in Germany, on a family vacation, and we were planning out the cookies for the following Christmas.. and it was awesome). Favorite single type? Probably classic sugar cookies. With decorations, of course—and made using the Traditional Familial Cookie Cutters.
Candy Cane ice cream!
My favorite holiday food is stuffing. It’s carbs galore but oh-so-delicious!!!
My father-in-law’s (“Pops”) italian Christmas cookies and italian bread. Cookies are not too sweet and perfect for dipping in coffee or tea, and the bread is just ohmygawd. Oh that man is good in the kitchen! Lucky for me, so is his son!
My favorite holiday food: My mom’s peanut butter kisses cookies. In other words, peanut butter cookies rolled into a ball with Hershey’s Kisses stuck into the top.
It’s not the holidays without them. I miss her every time I look at the recipe, but I still have the cookies.