Sour cream coffee cake

So since I was making a mess in the kitchen with the zucchini tea cake, I decided to make a coffee cake for my friend as well.  This was super easy and I happened to have all the recipes on hand.  

Auntie Em's Kitchen's Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

My friend Wonster lives really close to Auntie Em's and we've frequented the place for their red velvet cupcakes, which they are famous for.  Wonster however once pointed out to me that their oatmeal raisin cookies are really good too, so we picked up one to share and she was right.  Thankfully I found their recipe to try at home.  Yippee!!

 

Cocoa Brownies with Browned Butter and Walnuts

Last month, the cover page of my bon appetit magazine read "Best-Ever Brownies.  Waring: You Will Eat the Entire Tray."  Last year, I found my go to brownie recipe and thought my search was over.  But that didn't mean I couldn't take a peek at the recipe, right?  So when I read the recipe, it reassured me to know that it sounded remarkably similar to David Lebovitz's recipe.  Especially the part about mixing the batter for a full minute or until you get a nice sheen.  I have to admit though I was mildly curious about the browned butter part so I had to see for myself.

Raw Brownies

There's a great raw food eatery in the French Market in Chicago called Raw.  After putting my stomach through the grinder after Mexico City, I went through a week or so of eating or drinking liquids.  I avoided solid foods like the plague.  For about a week, I survived on juices and smoothies from Raw, all of which are super tasty and good for you.  It didn't take long for my stomach to recover and my memory to fade, before I was back to my normal eating habits.  I did however, want to try their raw sweets selection.  A friend of mine happened to be on a vegetarian diet around the same time, so I brought over a lemon square and tiramisu for us to try from Raw.  

I have to say I was pretty darn impressed.  I love Larabars now, but when I was first introduced to them, my friend would rave about how their "apple pie" really tasted like the real thing.  I tried countless flavors and all I could think was ... everything tastes the same ... it basically tastes like dates and nuts.  I'd rather you just tell me it's a date and nut bar rather than mask it as something else.  So I've never really trusted raw desserts to taste like their equivalents.  But I have to say that their lemon bar and tiramisu looked and tasted like the real thing, just a bit more dense than what you would expect.  I have a basic understanding that all raw sweets are composed of a mixture of nuts, nut butters, dates, dried fruit or cocoa powder.  Because it's so nut and dried fruit based, it can be quite rich tasting, which makes it all the more satisfying.  I never thought I'd be one to like raw anything ... but her sweets made a believer out of me.  

So inspired by my new found interest in raw sweets, I decided to try to make raw brownies at home. 

Keyshawn's Mom's Candied Yams (with Marshmellows)

Keyshawn's Mom's Candied Yams

Ingredients

3 pounds sweet potatoes or yams

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 sticks sweet butter, cubed

Peel potatoes and cut into 2-inch cubes. Place potatoes in large pot, cover with sugar, brown sugar and butter cook over medium heat until potatoes are fork tender (about 20 minutes) but not mushy.

Macaroni and Cheese with Buttery Crumbs

I am one of those weird people who have never been a fan of macaroni and cheese.  I'm not a huge fan of cheese in food.  I love eating cheese by itself, but melted cheese in pasta is kind of too rich for me.  But I know people love macaroni and cheese and it's a common Thanksgiving side dish so I decided to try to make a batch.  

Cranberry Sauce

I had no idea cranberry sauce was so easy to make.  There's really no need to buy canned cranberry sauce anymore.  Here's a super simple recipe that takes all of 10 minutes. 

Italian Sausage Stuffing

Herb-Roasted Onions

I felt like I had most of the dishes covered, the potatoes, the mac & cheese, the Brussels Sprouts, but I wanted something light and tangy.  Maybe a bit acidic to round out this otherwise pretty hearty meal.  I had my eye on this recipe for some time and it seemed pretty easy enough to make so I decided to whip up a small batch.  It was, in my opinion, the perfect accoutrement to any meat dish. 

Parmesan Smashed Potatoes

Besides turkey, you can't have a thanksgiving meal without mashed potatoes!  I have to admit I was going to just wing it and make mashed potatoes whatever I already had in the fridge.  I did a quick search of mashed potatoes recipes to get some inspiration and saw this one and realized that I had all of the ingredients already so I decided to try it.  I also used russet potatoes instead of red new potatoes and it was totally fine.  

I got so many compliments from this dish and they kept asking what was in it and I told them that it was better off not knowing.  There's a reason why this tastes so creamy and rich, but it's worth the splurge.  

Roast Turkey with Truffle Butter

I really feel like one day a year is not enough to enjoy turkey.  So I invited some friends over and set out to make a post-thanksgiving turkey meal with some sides.  Oddly enough, I think making all the sides was more laborious than the turkey itself.

Here was our menu for that evening:

Roast Turkey with Truffle Butter

Mashed Potatoes with Pan Gravy

Herb Roasted Onions

Brussels Sprout Salad

Italian Sausage Stuffing

Mac & Cheese

Cranberry Sauce

Candied Yams

Pumpkin Ice Cream Pie

Roasted Chickpeas

I'm a big muncher of all types of snacks so I am always on the look out for tasty and healthy treats.  I'm sure you're accustomed to chickpeas in salad or in hummus, but have you tried roasted chickpeas?  When you roast them in the oven, they become crisp, almost like wasabi peas.  

The great thing about this is that you can add any flavor combination that you want.  Here is a recipe I found using curry powder, but feel free to experiment. 

Flour Bakery's Famous Banana Bread

I love banana bread, especially ones that are crusty yet moist in the middle.  There's nothing like it.  

I saw this recipe online and apparently Chef Chang of Flour Bakery in Boston is famous for her banana bread so I thought it was worth trying.  I had some leftover batter so I made some mini muffins.  Don't they look scrumptious?  :)

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Bacon

I made these as a side to go with the Chicken Piccata with Pasta dish.  I loved roasted brussels sprouts and I saw these great plump sprouts at the market recently so I couldn't resist.  

Chicken Piccata with Pasta

I made this dish for my friend Yeena after she had her baby.  Anyone that is expecting soon, should sign up for MealBaby.  It's a great way to help out new moms.  

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

It's hard to believe it's almost been a month since Halloween, but if you recall, we carved a couple pumpkins this year.  I've always wanted to try roasting pumpkin seeds so I made the kiddies save the pumpkin seeds so soomeenshee emo could use them later.  I found similar recipes online.  I happen to have Lawry's seasoned salt on hand so I used that, but you can use any seasoning that you like.      

Robert's Absolute Best Brownies

I have a weakness for brownies: fudgy, chewy brownies to be precise.  I've tried making brownies from scratch before, but often times they end up worst than those boxed brownie mixes.  I was about to throw my hands up in surrender and stock emergency boxes of Ghiradelli brownie mixes, until I saw this post on Leite's Culinaria's blog for these brownies.  This recipe is from David Lebovitz's book, Ready for Dessert.  Apparently the late Robert Steinberg, who cofounded Scharffen Berger chocolate, created this recipe.  You have to believe the founder of Scharffen Berger chocolate must have a good brownie recipe or two.  

I have to admit, I didn't even use good quality chocolate in my batch, I used a standard bag of semisweet chocolate chips and these were divine and surprisingly simple to make.  Not to mention, you'll get a good arm workout as well (you will soon see why).  

Lentil Soup with Winter Vegetables

I'm addicted to Mezza's Turkish Lentil soup.  I could eat this everyday for lunch.  It's a creamy and luscious soup with tons of great flavor.  I have yet to figure out what goes into this dish but when one of my friends lost her appetite and had strong aversions to certain foods, I thought this would be the perfect soup to make for her.  I found this recipe on Ms. Martha's website and thought it might be good to try.  Here are the veggies I used.  The recipe calls for celeriac, which is also known as celery root, but I couldn't find it readily so I just omitted it.  I used celery, carrots, onions and leeks.  

Lemon-Glazed Madeleines

In Marcel Proust's novel, In Search of Lost Time, the narrator describes his encounter with short, plump little cakes, otherwise known as madeleines, in this way:  

"... a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place…at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory…"

I had a similar experience with my first madeleine cookie in high school.  My aunt had a coffee shop back in the day and she would always bring back leftover cakes, cookies and croissants for us.  Needless to say, our kitchen was always stocked with baked goods (this probably explains my sweet tooth) and I would always eat them as snacks while doing my homework.  One day, these unassuming plump little cakes must have been accidentally placed in the bag of leftovers and made their way to our house.  The scalloped edges should have clued me in, but those details were lost on me back then.  Upon my first bite, time seemed to stand still and the geometric equations that I tried so hard to ingrain in my head dissipated as quickly as the buttery crumbs dissolved on my tongue.  Madeleine cookies are one of life's great pleasures or in my case, the best distractions from geometry equations.  Proust and I are definitely in agreement there.  

Most people start their baking collection with a cookie sheet or cake pans.  My first purchase was a madeleine pan.  Believe me, if I could line my walls with these shell-shaped madeleine pans I would.  I've tried various recipes in the past, but I took a brief hiatus from baking and I lost track of the recipes I had used.  So this time around, I decided to try a different one all together.  I am a fan of David Lebovitz, and he lives in France, so I thought he would surely lead me in the right direction.  

I have to say, these were more labor intensive than I remembered making in the past, but they produce beautiful madeleine cookies and they were well worth the effort.

German Apple Pancake

So a few weeks ago, Susan went apple picking with her nieces and nephews and brought back bags of delicious apples.  Even though we were eating apples morning, noon and night, it was hard to eat them all so I was inspired to cook or bake with it and made some German Apple Pancakes.