Gooey Almond Bars

The final version of gooey chocolate almond bars in Wednesday’s post came about after weeks of experimentation. These gooey almond bars are the result of an offhand comment and a family discussion.

When I made the chocolate almond bars for Rich’s parents, they were blown away by them. As far as they were concerned, the recipe was fine as it was. Until I suggested that maybe we make them with a butter crust instead of chocolate. At least Rich’s mother and I were intrigued. The rest of the family wasn’t so sure. We took a vote and the chocolate won by one, with the votes splitting along gender lines. Of course, I was the baker, so I got veto power.

I decided to take pity on the men and made the batch of bars half and half, with one end of the crust chocolate and the other end butter. Of course then we all had to have one of each to make an informed judgment.

The butter crust only enhanced the almond flavor, highlighting the decadence of the bars without competing with the almond at all. The filling was velvety and rich, with a strong almond flavor. And it had the crackly crust on top reminiscent of gooey butter cake. The crust was just a bit softer than the chocolate and the filling was a little gooier. The different bars were baked in the same pan, with the same batch of filling for all. It was amazing, at least to me, how eliminating the cocoa from half of the recipe changed the character of the bars so much. I am still not sure which I like better, and it mostly depends on which flavor I am eating at the time.

Which do you prefer – chocolate and almond together, or almond by itself?

Download or print the recipe here.

Gooey Almond Bars
From The Cook’s Life
Makes 16-20 bars

If you have some on hand, you can substitute 7-8 ounces of almond paste for the almonds and powdered sugar in the filling. Just cream it with the butter until smooth and then proceed with the recipe.  Grinding the almonds fresh makes the filling slightly creamier, with a stronger almond flavor.

Crust:
¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
½ cup granulated sugar
1¼ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup (½ stick) butter, melted
1 egg

Filling:
¾ cup whole almonds (blanched or natural, I used blanched)
¾ cup powdered sugar
½ cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 tablespoon amaretto liqueur, optional
2 eggs
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease an 8-inch square pan or 7 by 11-inch pan and set aside.

Make the crust first. Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl or the bowl of your mixer. Add butter and egg and mix until smooth. Press or spread into prepared pan. Set aside. Set bowl aside for mixing the filling.

Grind almonds and powdered sugar in a food processor or blender until finely ground. Transfer to the bowl you used to mix the crust. Add butter and mix until combined and smooth. Add sugar, extracts and amaretto and beat until well mixed. Add eggs and beat again. Stir in salt and flour and mix gently. Pour on top of crust and spread to edges.

Bake for 25-35 minutes. The 8-inch pan will take longer than the 7 by 11 pan. When bars are done, filling will be golden brown on top and almost set. The center will still jiggle slightly when you shake the pan. If top starts to brown too fast, lay a piece of foil lightly on top of the bars to shield them a bit.

Let cool in pan on a wire rack until room temperature. Cut into 16-20 bars. Bars keep for several days at room temperature. Freeze for longer storage.

Crispy Mashed Potato Cakes

I’m not sure what I was thinking the other night when I made dinner. I made enough mashed potatoes for an army, or at least for another family, or two. While I was mashing them, before we had even sat down to eat them, I was already trying to figure out what I would do with the leftovers. Not sure what that says about me, but I’ll go with frugal.

My mom sometimes made mashed potato cakes when we had enough potatoes left over. She didn’t do it often, but they were always good. We didn’t usually have enough to make many, usually enough to have one or two each, with other leftovers for lunch, or with eggs for breakfast. Mom liked hers with maple syrup, which I always thought was a little weird. Her mother made mashed potato cakes for breakfast when she was a girl and served them with syrup. Who am I to argue with Mom’s tastes of childhood?

We had so many mashed potatoes that I decided to make potato cakes as a side dish to go with fish for dinner the next night. Cheese goes well with potatoes, so I threw some of that in, along with an egg to hold it all together. You can certainly leave the cheese out, or use more than I did. And you will have to adjust the seasonings to your tastes. Our potatoes weren’t very salty to begin with, so I added a little salt. If I had had some on hand, I would have mixed in roasted garlic. I used just a touch of garlic powder instead, since the short cooking time wouldn’t have worked well with chopped raw garlic. Fresh herbs would have been marvelous, but I didn’t have any, so we did without.

Just a little butter on the griddle and our potato cakes fried up golden brown and crispy, with soft, cheesy centers. Calvin couldn’t stop talking about how much he liked them. And it was a good thing, since we had enough left over for several lunches, even after having them for dinner. Did I mention I had made a lot of potatoes?

Note: I had enough potatoes to make a double batch of the potato cakes, which made almost twenty. I am giving you a recipe for half that, since most normal people don’t have four cups of mashed potatoes left over – except maybe at Thanksgiving. If you do find yourself with lots of mashed potatoes, just double all the ingredients in the recipe and start frying.

Download or print the recipe here.

Crispy Mashed Potato Cakes
From The Cook’s Life
Serves 4-6 (8-12 potato cakes, depending on size)

1 tablespoon butter
1 egg, beaten
2 cups cold mashed potatoes
½-¾ cup grated cheddar cheese (I used white cheddar, any cheese will work)
⅛-¼ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon garlic powder
⅛ teaspoon black pepper

Preheat oven to 300 degrees and lightly grease a large baking sheet, or line it with parchment paper. This is to keep the first batch of potato cakes hot while you cook the second batch. If you have a griddle large enough, you can cook them all at once and skip the oven.

Melt butter in a large skillet or griddle over medium heat. While pan is heating, mix egg, mashed potatoes, cheese, salt, garlic powder and black pepper together until thoroughly combined.

Spoon small amounts of mashed potato mixture into the hot pan, flattening them with your fingers or the back of a spoon. Use a little less than a quarter cup of the mixture per cake. Or make them smaller. Don’t make them bigger or they will be too hard to turn.

Cook 3-4 minutes, or until first side is golden brown. Carefully turn mashed potato cakes over and brown the other side, another 3-4 minutes. The cakes are fragile – use care when turning them.

Remove the potato cakes to the prepared baking sheet and keep them warm in the oven while you cook the second batch.

Serve the mashed potato cakes hot. Leftovers reheat well in a lightly greased skillet.

A Trio of Vanilla Pound Cakes

Saturday was the day to do side by side tastings of our three vanilla extracts. We started with French toast for breakfast, with three egg dips for the bread – one with Madagascar vanilla, one with Mexican and one with Tahitian. I must say we couldn’t taste much difference between the Madagascar and the Mexican. The Tahitian was slightly more fragrant and slightly deeper in flavor. All in all, not an exciting taste testing experience. That isn’t to say that the French toast, dripping in butter and sprinkled with powdered sugar, wasn’t a nice way to start a weekend morning.

Later in the day I was thinking of what we could have for dessert. Saturday is our dessert day around here. I try to keep my baking confined to the weekends, at least for desserts, since I don’t have enough willpower to resist the pull of sugar and butter if there are baked goods sitting around. I decided on vanilla pound cake, so I could continue our taste testing.

The original pound cake recipe made two large loaves. I knew that we didn’t need two loaves of buttery vanilla goodness in the house. I decided to cut the recipe in half, and then divide the batter into thirds and use one type of vanilla in each. We would end up with three small loaves of pound cake – just enough to have a few tastes each before they were gone.

The recipe called for ¾ teaspoon of vanilla to make the two large loaves. If I cut the recipe exactly in half, as written, I would be using an eighth of a teaspoon of vanilla in each little loaf. That just didn’t seem like enough to me. After some discussion within the family, we decided on a teaspoon per third of the batter. For normal baking that would mean a tablespoon in the whole cake – not a small amount, but not crazy either.

The cakes baked up beautifully – golden brown, buttery and fragrant with vanilla. I was careful to keep them in the same order in the oven and on the cooling racks so I could keep track of which cake had which vanilla in it. “Madagascar, Mexican, Tahitian,” became the chant of the hour. Alphabetical order, you know.

We gave them their full time to cool and then we sliced each one. We were careful to keep them in order on our plates so we could do a proper taste testing. There was no doubt which one held the Tahitian vanilla. It smelled exactly like freshly made ice cream cones in an ice cream shop. We have noticed this with everything we have made with it so far, including pancakes and waffles.

The actual taste testing results were pretty similar to the French toast. The Mexican and Madagascar vanillas were pretty similar to each other, and to regular vanilla. The Tahitian was more fragrant and had greater depth than the other two. Of course, I couldn’t decide after my three pieces, so I had to have another set of three. In my defense, I had the end pieces to start, so they were smaller than what Rich and Calvin got. And the larger amount of crust, with its extra caramelization, interfered with my ability to taste the vanilla properly.

Final results – while we have yet to meet a vanilla that we don’t like, the Tahitian won hands down. The other two weren’t a lot different from our bottle of McCormick’s from Sam’s. We probably will buy one bottle of Tahitian vanilla when these three are gone.

I hope you are all as interested in our vanilla adventures as we are. Did I mention that we are already half done with the three bottles that were Rich’s Christmas gift? We didn’t open them until a few days into January – we have used six ounces of vanilla in a month. We have done a little more vanilla baking than we would have done normally, but I think that is pretty representative of our usual vanilla consumption. There are worse vices to have than an obsession with vanilla, right?

Download or print the recipe here.

Vanilla Pound Cake
From The Cook’s Life
Makes 1 loaf

I recommend letting the cake stand on its own, so the butter and vanilla can shine. But you can add a dusting of powdered sugar or a drizzle of chocolate or caramel sauce, if you like.

½ cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3 eggs
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Lightly grease an 8 by 4 inch loaf pan and set aside.

Beat butter and cream cheese together until fluffy. Add sugar and vanilla and beat again until light and fluffy and no longer gritty. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Stir in salt and flour, taking care not to beat.

Spread batter in the prepared pan and bake for 50-60 minutes, or until dark golden brown around the edges and golden brown on top. A toothpick inserted in the middle will come out clean when the cake is done.

Cool cake in the pan, on a wire rack, for about 10 minutes. Then run a knife around the edges and turn cake out of the pan onto the rack. Let cool to room temperature before slicing to serve. Keeps well for several days in an airtight container at room temperature. Freeze for longer storage.

Family Time, Chocolate and Butter

We have had two weeks of treats and indulgences. Our Christmas gifts from and to each other included several versions of sea salt caramels, dark chocolate bars, cinnamon and chili chocolate, mint chocolate bars, several variations on peppermint bark and a few other kinds of chocolate. We had a full turkey dinner for Christmas, complete with butter in just about everything (yes, my butter-loving mother-in-law did most of the cooking). I made both pumpkin pies and a pecan pie (of which I proceeded to eat about half). We had chocolate pudding cake one night and blueberry almond muffins for breakfast one day. And that was just the week we were in Florida with Rich’s parents.

The fun and indulgences didn’t end when we got home – flourless chocolate cake, homemade eggnog and almond Swiss cheese dip, along with a few meals out and working our way through all those chocolates we gave each other. We also fit in a few family game nights and celebration dinners.

My jeans (and arteries) are asking me to get back to a normal diet, with at least a few vegetables. We are gradually weaning ourselves off the treats and back to healthy eating – we had roasted vegetables and whole wheat pasta the other night. Oatmeal has been on the breakfast menu for several days and we are trying to get back into our workout schedules, though that has been less than successful. I am scared to get on the scale and may put that off for a few weeks more.

It was a wonderful time off, full of family time, lots of relaxation and plenty of days when we weren’t sure what day of the week it was. I love days when I can sleep as late as I want and hang out in my pajamas until late in the morning. Conversely, I also love days when I can get up early just because I feel like it, not because I have to.

Today it is back to work for Rich and dentist appointments for Calvin and me. Tomorrow is back to school for Calvin and back to the normal routine for me. I guess the glory days had to end sometime. Though I am already thinking about what to bake this weekend – maybe whole wheat bread. The thought of anything rich or sweet just doesn’t appeal, for some reason.

Almond Shortbread Cookies

We first discovered these cookies a few years ago. Rich had signed up for an email Twelve Days of Cookies list from The Food Network. We got some delicious sounding recipes, but I think the almond shortbreads were the only ones we actually made. And of course, we changed the directions right from the beginning. After we made them the first time, we also doubled the original amount of almond extract to heighten the flavor. They are buttery and rich like shortbread should be, with a little extra something from the almonds.

The original recipe called for pressing the whole batch of dough into a pan and then cutting the finished cookie into wedges. Since we mail a lot of our Christmas cookies to relatives in other states, long, fragile wedges weren’t going to cut it. One of us had the brilliant idea to press the dough into muffin cups. We tried both the standard size, and minis and we decided the minis were cuter (and sturdier for mailing). We have never made them as a big cookie, so let me know how you like them if you try them that way.

We usually only make these at Christmas time and we look forward to them all year. I’m not sure why we only make them at Christmas. Part of it is we are so tired of cookies by the time New Year’s rolls around that we make anything but cookies until about St. Patrick’s Day. They also have that mystique around them that only seasonal treats have. But I think we need to break out the almond shortbreads more often – and the Russian teacakes, the gingersnaps and the chocolate doodles…  Can you tell I’m not tired of cookies yet?

Download or print the recipe.

Almond Shortbread Cookies
Adapted by The Cook’s Life
From The Food Network
Makes 60 cookies

½ cup whole raw almonds
2/3 cup granulated sugar, plus more for sprinkling
14 tablespoons butter (1¾ sticks), cut into 1-inch pieces, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ teaspoon almond extract
½ teaspoon salt
1½ cups all-purpose flour

Special equipment: mini muffin pans or regular muffin pans

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. No need to grease the pans – the dough has enough butter in it to make greasing unnecessary.

Pulse the almonds and 2/3 cup sugar in a food processor until mixture resembles coarse sand. Add butter, vanilla extract, almond extract and salt and pulse until combined. Add flour and pulse until a soft dough forms.

Divide dough among mini or regular muffin cups, using about 2 measuring teaspoons of dough per cup. You can also use a small (size 100) cookie scoop.

Flatten each cookie with your finger – dampen your finger with water if the dough sticks. Sprinkle each cookie lightly with granulated sugar.

Bake cookies for 8-12 minutes, depending on size. The regular muffin tins will take less time since the dough is thinner. When done the cookies will be golden brown on the edges and bottoms, and be just starting to color on the tops.

Cool cookies about 5 minutes for them to firm up before removing them from the pans. Cool to room temperature on racks. These taste best at room temperature, not warm.

Store in a tightly sealed container for about a week, or freeze for longer storage.

Russian Teacakes

I like cookies. Well, to be honest, I like pretty much all baked goods. But I do like cookies a lot. And my favorite cookies are Russian teacakes, also known as Mexican wedding cookies. I love the shortbread texture, with its slightly crumbly, buttery richness. Add pecans and an icing-like coating of melted powdered sugar and you have cookie perfection, as far as I’m concerned. And they are quick to make, which is icing on the cake – or cookie.

These are easy cookies to make – the dough comes together in minutes. Be sure to only bake one pan at a time, and don’t put more than twenty cookies on each pan. They need to be coated with powdered sugar while they are hot, and if you bake more than twenty at a time, they will cool before you get them all coated.

My mom likes these cookies as much as I do, and she figured out that if you put the powdered sugar in a plastic bag, you can shake the hot cookies in the sugar and get them done quickly, and with little mess. Don’t do more than three or four cookies at a time, or you won’t have enough room to move them around to cover them thoroughly. And shake them gently, or the cookies will break. Or shake as hard as you like, since the cook gets to eat the broken ones.

Download or print recipe here.

Russian Tea Cakes
From The Cook’s Life
Makes 4-5 dozen cookies

1 cup butter, room temperature
½ cup powdered sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
½ cup finely chopped pecans
2 cups flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup powdered sugar, for rolling

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat butter, ½ cup powdered sugar and vanilla until creamy. Add pecans, flour and salt and mix well.

Roll into small balls, ¾ inch or smaller. Bake 15-20 minutes, or until slightly golden and set, and cookie bottoms are golden brown. Do not bake more than one pan at a time or you won’t be able to coat them all with powdered sugar before they cool too much.

Roll cookies in powdered sugar while still hot. You can put the powdered sugar in a plastic bag and gently shake 3 or 4 cookies at a time until covered. Don’t shake too vigorously or the cookies will break apart – they are fragile until cool.

Carefully place coated cookies on racks to cool completely. You can dust with additional powdered sugar after they cool, if desired.

These keep at room temperature for weeks, in an airtight container. Freeze for longer storage.

A Taste of Childhood – Snickerdoodles

Snickerdoodles are one of those old-fashioned recipes that should never go out of style. Sure, you have your chocolate explosion this and your caramelized toasted nut that, but you can’t go wrong with recipes that have lasted through the generations. There is something to be said for cookies (and pies and cakes) that celebrate the unadulterated flavors of butter and sugar.

My grandmother (mom’s mom) made snickerdoodles often when I was growing up. They were some of my favorites, with no nuts or chocolate that I might not like. Yes, I went through a period when I didn’t like chocolate. I chose Creamsicles over Fudgsicles, butterscotch chips over chocolate and ate only the insides of Oreos. It was a short time (and I was very young) when I thought chocolate was too dark and strong. It was actually in Grandma’s kitchen when I first ate chocolate and liked it. We had stopped by for something and she was taking chocolate chip cookies out of the oven. I had a warm cookie, complete with gooey chocolate, and I haven’t looked back since.

Back to the snickerdoodles – Grandma kept them in a 3-pound coffee can with a plastic lid. The aroma wafting out of that can when she opened the lid is indescribable. Cinnamon and butter mixed with that “something” that is the magic of cookies. There was nothing like finishing Sunday dinner and having Grandma leave the table and come back with that cookie can.

The recipe uses mostly ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen. You might have to buy cream of tartar, but it is right in the grocery store along with the spices. Trust me, these cookies are super easy and taste nothing like anything you can buy, even in a bakery. These rank among some of my absolute favorites, even in my current chocolate-loving days. What are your favorite homemade cookies?

Download or print recipe here.

 

Snickerdoodles
From The Cook’s Life
Makes 80 small or 60 medium cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
1½ cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt

Topping:
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Beat butter and sugar together until completely combined and no longer gritty. Add eggs and beat again until light and fluffy.

Add flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt. Mix well.

Chill for an hour or up to several days.

If your dough is very cold and hard after chilling, let it rest on the counter for a few minutes to soften while the oven preheats.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment, or lightly grease. Mix together topping ingredients in a small bowl.

Roll dough into small balls, about 1-inch in diameter, or use a 2-teaspoon cookie scoop to portion out the dough. You can make larger balls for larger cookies if you like. Roll balls in topping mixture.

Place coated balls on prepared baking sheets, leaving room for the cookies to spread. Bake 7-8 minutes for small cookies, or 8-10 minutes for medium cookies. Cookies will puff up first and then flatten in the oven. Bake until lightly browned on the bottom, but still soft and a little puffy.

Let cookies cool on pans for about two minutes. Remove cookies to a rack to cool completely before storing in an airtight container for several days. Freeze for longer storage.

Cinnamon Chip Scones

 

I promised a recipe for cinnamon chip scones a couple of weeks ago, when I made cinnamon chips. I have finished my experiments (at least for now) and I think I have come up with a recipe that is worth sharing.

After much poking around the internet and my cookbooks, I still really have no firm definition of a scone. Some are really just biscuits with a little sugar, some have eggs, some have lots of cream and butter and others are just not worth making (dry, crumbly, too much flour, too much sugar – I won’t bore you with more details). I can’t say I am a fan of most scones in coffee shops – usually they have been sitting around for hours, drying out. But homemade scones are pretty much the bee’s knees.

After lots of experiments with different recipes ­– none of which really impressed me – I decided to start over. I began with my biscuit recipe, but used regular milk instead of buttermilk, and added a bit of sugar. I tried skim milk, whole milk, and on one memorable occasion, cream. The cream version was exquisite, but milk made perfectly delicious scones. The whole milk scones might have been slightly richer, but the difference from skim milk wasn’t huge. If you normally have only skim milk on hand, use that and your scones will be fabulous. You could add an additional tablespoon or two of butter if you want more richness.

I used my homemade cinnamon chips in these, but you could use commercial cinnamon chips, chocolate chips or raisins. I tried making some into rounds and made the rest into my usual triangles. I used both my muffin top pan, and a cake pan, trying to contain any cinnamon chip leaks (my scones were too small for this to make a difference). Really, a baking sheet is fine, as long as you make sure not to bake them too long, which will dry them out and burn the leaking cinnamon chips.

Skip the coffee shop scones that are just a way to make you buy more coffee. Make your own and pat yourself on the back while you scarf down your fluffy, anything-but-dry scones.

Cinnamon Chip Scones
From The Cook’s Life
Makes 8-10 large scones

If you are in the mood for a treat, use cream instead of milk as the liquid in these scones. You might need slightly more than ¾ of a cup – maybe a tablespoon or two. Use the larger amount of butter if you want a richer scone.

1 ¾ cups flour*
3 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup sugar
4-6 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces
½ cup homemade cinnamon chips or other mix-ins of choice
¾ cup milk (any kind you have on hand – see headnote)
1-2 tablespoons extra milk
2-3 tablespoons cinnamon sugar

*I used 1 cup white whole wheat and ¾ cup all-purpose flour. Feel free to use only all-purpose flour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and lightly grease a baking sheet, or line with parchment paper. Set aside.

Mix flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Cut in butter until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs, with a few larger pieces of butter. Stir in cinnamon chips. Add milk, mixing gently until most of the flour is moistened and a shaggy dough forms. Add an extra tablespoon of milk if there is a large amount of dry flour left.

Transfer dough to a floured surface and knead a few times, no more than ten turns, adding sprinkles of flour as necessary to prevent sticking. Divide dough in half and pat each half into a circle about 1 inch tall. Cut each circle into 4-5 triangles and place on prepared baking sheet. If you want round scones, divide dough into 8-10 pieces. Gently form each piece into a ball and flatten to a 1-inch thick disk.

Brush tops lightly with milk and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Bake for 8-12 minutes, depending on size, until bottoms are lightly browned and tops are just starting to turn golden brown. Cool slightly. Serve warm.

Download the recipe here.

Fried Apples

Over the last few weeks I have been longing for fall weather. I need long no more – today’s weather is all fall, though not brisk, sunny fall weather. It is dreary, damp and chilly – just the day for fried apples.

My parents made variations of fried apples when I was growing up. There was never a recipe, just a technique – apple slices cooked in a little butter, sometimes with white or brown sugar and cinnamon, and sometimes not. Depending on the apples, they were sometimes soft and saucy, other times browned and caramelized, with very little sauce.

My grandmother (Mom’s mother) made cinnamon fried apples for an accompaniment to Sunday dinner sometimes. I loved them because she made them with a handful of Red Hots to give them color and flavor. I was always amazed how red they got and how quickly those hard little candies melted into the mix.

I am skipping the fire engine red candy to bring you a recipe that you probably can make without a trip to the store. Apples with a touch of brown sugar, butter and cinnamon – the apples are the true star of the show here. If you go apple picking this fall, make sure you make some fried apples out of your bounty; preferably on the day you pick them. I don’t usually consider fruit a dessert, but if you make fried apples out of apples that were on the tree just hours before, they are good enough to (almost) push apple pie out of the way for a day.

Try these as topping for biscuits, toast or pancakes or as a side dish with dinner. I like them warm, but they are pretty good right out of the fridge, if you have any leftovers.

Fried Apples
From The Cook’s Life
Serves 4-6

Adjust amounts to suit your tastes, but be careful with the sugar – it is easy to add too much and make them too sweet.

4 medium apples, any variety
2 teaspoons butter
1-4 tablespoons water, if necessary
1-3 tablespoons brown sugar, to taste
1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)

Peel, core and quarter the apples. Slice each quarter into approximately ¼-inch slices. Heat the butter in a 10-inch skillet over medium heat until melted. Add the apples and cook, stirring occasionally until soft, 15-30 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low if the apples start to get too brown. Time will vary depending on the apple variety. If apples start to stick to the pan, add a tablespoon of water. If want a saucier consistency, or your apples aren’t juicy enough, add up to 4 tablespoons of water to the pan as you cook the apples.

Taste one piece and decide if you want to add a little brown sugar, a lot, or none. Add cinnamon, if desired. Cook, stirring constantly, about 5 more minutes. Serve hot, or at room temperature.

These reheat well in the microwave or in a pan on low heat. Add a little water if apples start to stick when reheating on the stovetop.

Download the recipe here.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Butter and Maple Syrup

Roasted sweet potatoes sound like a fall and winter dish, I know. However, this year’s crop is just coming to grocery stores and they are fresh, sweet and cheap. What more can you ask from a vegetable?

Sweet potatoes are a perennial favorite in our house, and I am always looking for new ways to make them. Usually I bake them whole, then peel and make Spiced Mashed Sweet Potatoes. This summer I have experimented with making sweet potato chips, with mixed success. After many tries, I think I have a method figured out and I will post on those as soon as I am sure.

The other night I thought I might try roasting them, like when I make oven French fries. I do know from experience that sweet potatoes don’t usually crisp in the oven (please share if you have found the secret to crispy sweet potato oven fries), but I figured roasting would caramelize the sweet potatoes and add that extra layer of flavor. I decided to wait until after they were fully cooked to add the maple syrup and butter so there would be no chance of the toppings burning in the oven.

All of this sounds gourmet and fussy – but it’s not. Peel the sweet potatoes, chop them into cubes, throw them on a baking sheet and roast until soft. I tossed the finished sweet potato chunks with butter and maple syrup and tried to keep my hands off until I got the bowl to the table. They are that good. Calvin and Rich gave them gold stars and I am adding them to my side dish rotation. Not bad for something I thought up on the way home from the grocery store.

Please post in the comments and let me know how you like them, whether you make them now, or wait for cooler weather.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Butter and Maple Syrup
From The Cook’s Life
Serves 4

Try to find smooth, straight sweet potatoes to make peeling them easier. The amounts of butter and maple syrup make a thin, mildly sweet coating on the sweet potatoes. If you want more of a sauce, double the amounts.

2 large sweet potatoes or 4 small ones
1 tablespoon olive oil
Dash salt (optional)
1 tablespoon butter (or less), cut into about four pieces
1-2 tablespoons maple syrup*

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a large baking sheet.

Wash and peel the sweet potatoes. Cut into ½-inch cubes and place on baking sheet in a single layer. Try not to crowd the sweet potato cubes – use two baking sheets if necessary.

Drizzle the sweet potatoes with olive oil and sprinkle with a pinch of salt, if desired. Roast for 15 minutes. Use a spatula to turn and stir the cubes. Return the sweet potatoes to the oven for another 10-15 minutes, until soft and browned in spots, but not blackened.

Move sweet potatoes to a serving bowl and add the butter and maple syrup. Stir gently until butter is melted and sweet potatoes are evenly coated with butter and maple syrup. Serve immediately.

*I used Grade B real maple syrup. Feel free to use Grade A, which is more mildly flavored, or imitation maple syrup. Use what you have on hand.

Download the recipe here.