It's Finally Fall! Roasted Sweet Potato Monkey Bread

There wasn’t an autumn in California, only an endless summer and a few mornings with frost on the windshield. I wasn’t used to it, I never adapted to it. I hated it, the long drag of the same temperature. I got rid of all my sweaters the first month we moved out there. It never felt like home.

Autumn in Pennsylvania is different. Bright and dark all at once. Desaturated in the morning fog and then it burns up to reveal patches of leaves missing from the oak and apple trees in the backyard. It’s Fall now, with its promise of apple cider and corn mazes. Its promise of coffee to warm your one hand; a boy’s hand to warm your other one. A promise you can’t take for granted, because it’s a type of beauty that is a whisper, a mumble, and gone in an instant.

It’s the beginning of the time when we leave the windows open all day and night. When my mother lights apple-scented candles and the cat in the windowsill lazily watches the leaves fall to the ground. I used to ask for a pumpkin pie on my birthday instead of cake. I used to ask to stay home with her instead of going to school, to go for walks and jump in the leaves. Then come inside to fresh bread or cake or anything to warm us up.

Fall has always been magic. It’s my first time having one in four long years.

Roasted Sweet Potato Monkey Bread

Pillowy, sweet, delicate, yet filling. The very essence of comfort food.

Ingredients for Roasted Sweet Potato Puree:

• 1 large sweet potato
• 1 TB olive oil
• 2 TB brown sugar, dark
• Pinch of sal

Directions for Roasted Sweet Potato Puree:

1. Preheat oven to 425*F
2. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil
3. Cut your sweet potato in half and cover each side with oil, sugar, and salt
4. Roast for 15 minutes or until tender and caramelized
5. Remove from oven, allow to cool
6. Scoop contents into a food processor and blend until smooth; alternatively, smash with a fork
7. Use for below monkey bread recipe

Ingredients for Roasted Sweet Potato Monkey Bread:

• 2 cups lukewarm water
• 5 teaspoons active dry yeast (my absolute favorite brand to use is Red Star Yeast)
• 1 ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup white sugar
• Roasted sweet potato puree (see above, yields about 1-1 ½ cups)
• 1 egg
• 4 TB melted butter
• 1 TB pure vanilla extract
• 5 – 5 ½ cups AP flour
• ½ cup dark brown sugar
• ¼ cup walnuts or pecans
• 1 cup mini marshmallow

Directions:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, pour in your water, yeast, salt, and sugar. Allow to sit for 5 minutes until the top of the water is marked with bubbles
2. Turn mixer on medium-low and add puree, egg, butter, and vanilla. Mix until all is incorporated
3. Turn mixer speed down to low, add flour one cup at a time. You may need a little more or a little less of the flour, depending on altitude. You will know when you have enough when dough is not sticky and pulls slightly away from the sides of the bowl
4. With floured hands, change the paddle attachment for the dough hook and turn on medium speed to knead for 3 minutes
5. When three minutes are done, turn out onto a floured work surface and knead by hand for an additional five minutes until springy and elastic
6. Place in a well-greased bowl to rest for one hour with a tea towel to cover
7. During this time, preheat oven to 350*F and grease a standard bundt pan with a lot of butter and flour. Pour ¼ of your brown sugar and a few marshmallows and nuts into the bottom of your bundt (which, when inverted, will be the top)
8. When hour is done, punch dough down (it will inflate quite a bit) and use a sharp knife or bench knife to cut into small one-inch balls. To do so, cut dough into fourths, then cut each of these fourths into eight equal pieces (for a total of 32 pieces). Roll each one in your hand into a ball and place into bundt
9. Repeat this for the remaining dough, alternating layers of dough with remaining sugar, nuts, and marshmallows
10. Allow to sit for 10 minutes to rest a bit then pop into the oven to bake (here, I suggest placing on a cookie sheet to avoid any messes in your oven—the marshmallow can get sticky!)
11. Bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown and puffed. Your house will have the aromatic, yeasty smell of fresh bread and a slightly caramelized smell of brown sugar
12. Remove from oven and allow to cool for about 10 minutes. With oven mitts, invert bundt onto a plate and gently remove pan, leaving only your doughy hodge podge of marshmallow, sugar, and bread
13. Serve as immediately as possible, but definitely with a day or two 

Thank you to Red Star Yeast for sponsoring this post. I believe in using quality products when it comes to baking and I am always confident my dough will rise beautifully with Red Star! Check out the active dry yeast I used for this recipe and others on their website, follow them on instagram and like their Facebook!

Oat Pancakes with Spiced Orange Caramel Sauce: In Partnership with Falk USA

I grew up slowly and then all at once. A cicada soul, a heart that I kept in soil, in old husks. Jewel-toned eyes and an incessant buzzing. I was old and feeble, gravity left me awkward on 6 feet or two wings.

 A year ago I was buying my car in Colorado, six months ago I was chasing Milo in melted snow and getting my hair cut. Nothing ever felt like home, and I thought that boys were archipelagos, their sternums small islands to cradle my head and then crack when they woke up and stretched. I’ve moved more times for love than for opportunity, more times because of strangers than for myself. And each time, I would recreate a space, a home, a candle in the window to signal I’m waiting. And each time the wick got wet, the light went out, I stopped keeping my window open.

And when I went to drop a check in the mailbox, I got stung twice. And when I forgot to tell my brother, “Happy Birthday,” no one seemed to notice. He’s having a boy in December and I’m not sure if I’ll be around. If I’ll miss it, if I’ll even be in the same city, time zone, or country in time for it. He’ll name him Matthew. He won’t look like me or my sister or my dad.

But right now, I have to pack. Gone for two weeks, to New Orleans for work. Two bags and four suits. A boy to follow. Creating another home, however brief this one will be. In a flooded bayou, a Pittsburgh Marriot, or a Chicago terminal. And before it all hits at once, I made pancakes to relax and enjoy a moment at the table, staying warm in front of the stove. These were covered in caramel from a recipe my mother gave me, and topped with peaches. The orchard down the road is only a mile away and my mind doesn’t wander too much farther than that on mornings like these.

Oat Pancakes with Spiced Orange Caramel Sauce

Ingredients for Pancakes

• 1 egg, separated + 1 additional egg white
• 2 TB honey
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 1/3 cup whole milk
• 3 TB butter, melted
• 1 TB vanilla extract
• 1 cup AP flour
• ½ cup oat flour
• 1 TB cornstarch
• 1 TB baking powder
• ½ teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1 cup oats

Directions for Pancakes

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, whip your egg whites on high until stiff peaks form. Set aside
2. Put yolk in a large measuring cup. Add honey, buttermilk, milk, butter, and vanilla and whisk with your egg yolk until fully homogenous. Mixture will be a pale, pale yellow
3. In a large mixing bowl, sift together flours, cornstarch, baking powder, salt, and sugar (do it twice if you want them even fluffier). Stir in oats with a fork to gently aerate the mixture without deflating
4. Using a wooden spoon, create a well in your dry mixture and slowly pour in the wet mixture, stirring as you do so. Do no over stir!
5. Finally, take a rubber spatula and fold in the egg whites you have set aside and gently stir until just incorporated
6. Put a tab of butter in a skillet or griddle on medium heat and all the butter to melt and the skillet to heat up
7. Using a half-cup measuring cup, scoop your batter into the middle of the pan. Do this one at a time, so you do not crowd your pan
8. This is a thick batter with oats, so the pancake will be rough on the edges and a little softer in the middle. Your pancake is read to flip when the edges begin to brown and bubbles dot the top of your pancake
9. Using a wide spatula, flip your pancake and cook for an additional minute or two—like salmon, this side will take less when flipped
10. Repeat with remaining batter, may have to re-butter your pan

Recipe for Spiced Orange Caramel Sauce (adapted from my duck fat caramel)

•  3 cup light brown sugar
• 1 ½ cup half and half
• 1 cup unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon orange zest
• Squeeze of half an orange

Directions for Spiced Orange Caramel Sauce

1. In a premium saucepan (my favorite is, of course, my Falk saucepan), heat your sugar, half and half, and butter and allow for butter to melt without stirring more than once or twice to coat the sugar
2. Allow to simmer your mixture and bring to a gentle boil. It will begin to thicken and caramelize slowly and will take on a nutty smell, about 5-8 minutes (faster in a copper or cast iron pot)
3. Begin stirring and your caramel sauce will be thick, yet very pourable (if you are using a thermometer, it should be at around 235-240*F, but it is not necessary to use one for this recipe, as you want the caramel to be viscous)
4. Quickly stir in remaining ingredients and remove from heat
5. Allow to cool slightly before pouring over your pancakes
6. Can keep in an airtight container or jar for up to 2 weeks in your refrigerator

Assembly: Put your stack of pancakes on a plate. Chop a peach into roughly equal cubes and roll in 1 TB of sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. Top your pancakes with this peach mixture. Then, pour over your desired amount of caramel sauce. Serve immediately. 

This post was created in partnership with Falk USA copper cookware. Since 1958, this brand has established itself as one of the most trusted names in the culinary world. With its timeless designs and its multi-use products, every kitchen can benefit from Falk--I know mine has. You can learn more about Falk USA by visiting their website, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Peach and Cornmeal Cake: Inspired by the local flea market

I go to flea markets now and fill a spare closet with things I don’t need.  A blanket from the 1800’s, a cookie jar from Jerusalem. I get cash out of the ATM and buy a coffee to keep my hands idol while I’m walking around. I chat with my mom as she buys toys for her first grandchild, my unborn niece. She’ll be spoiled before she gets here, we joke.

They’re interesting places, flea markets. But, then again, everything has been interesting moving back, feeling like a stranger with a shared zip code. We mill through someone’s trash. I found a love letter to a woman named Ellen once. A lady wanted ten cents for it. Nothing is kept, most things are fingerprinted or cracked; and yet, still I come back. I bring others, I buy gifts.

It’s the promise that I can buy someone’s heritage, someone’s family history. That my own is easily supplemented with that of strangers. That, somehow by buying these jars and napkins and old, old butter knives, I can authenticate myself in this town of mine. At its heart, it’s imperialistic. At its heart, I am lonely here, a foreigner who moved back into his childhood home in February of this year.

 But I’ll stay in this house until the baby is born. Until she can wear the sweater I got her. Until she plays with the blocks my mother found in a cardboard box marked a quarter by a vendor’s red truck. They’ll spell out her initials – LGW, Lana Grace Williams. And I’ll keep making cakes in the meantime, from old cookbooks I found on card tables next to a pile of tangled costume jewelry. And I’ll make my own memories while I’m home. They may not be much, but they’re ours to keep.

Peach Cornmeal Cake

This cake is inspired by one such recipe I found in an old spiral-bound community cookbook. It's probably the simplest cake I have ever posted. Makes one 6-inch cake.

Ingredients:

• 1 ¼ cup AP flour
• ¾ cup fine-ground cornmeal
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ cup whole milk
• ½ cup crème fraiche
• 1 TB white vinegar
• 1 TB honey
• 1 TB pure vanilla extract
• 2 TB butter
• 2 TB shortening
• ½ cup sugar (I used the amazing Sweet Revenge Sugar for an aromatic and mellow flavor to the cake) for this recipe, but regular white would be fine
• 1 egg + 1 yolk
• 2 TB dark brown sugar
• 1 peach, sliced

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375*F
2. Prepare a 6-inch round cake pan with parchment paper and butter
3. Sift together AP flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt in a medium-sized bowl. Set aside
4. In a measuring cup, whisk together milk, crème fraiche, vinegar, honey and vanilla extract and set aside
5. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream your fats with your sugar, scraping down the sides of the bowl once or twice with a rubber spatula
6. Add egg and yolk, mixture will look a little curdled
7. Alternate between the flour and your milk mixtures until a thick batter forms
8. Scrape again with your rubber spatula
9. At this point, sprinkle your brown sugar at the bottom of your prepared pan, right on top of the parchment
10. Arrange your peach slices any way you’d like
11. Gently pour batter over your peaches and smooth top. Tap the bottom of your cake pan gently on your counter a few times to settle any air in the batter
12. Bake for about 45-50 minutes, until golden brown and slightly puffed

This cake was made through a partnership with Sweet Revenge Sugar Co. All opinions are my own.

In the thick of summer and routine: S'mores Popovers

“Today I woke up to my mom knocking on the door with coffee, she wanted to watch an episode of I Love Lucy with me. The door was open and the cats watched squirrels through the screen door's mesh. Milo sat on my lap and I had some toast. It's been a good day so far.”

I wrote those words to my friends yesterday, in the morning before I worked outside for five hours. I wrote those words to have others share in my experience, to bear witness to the new life I’m living. How I’m not so scared anymore, not running away. I won’t be moving for a while, but I’m sure as hell happy about my decision to be here.

New rituals. That’s how I am living now. In between the concept and the creation, there is this part of me that remains languid, relaxed in this new routine. Wake up, drink coffee, kiss my mother good morning. Check emails, feed the outside cats, feed Milo, and take it a little slow. Get frustrated, take a nap, bake a cake. I go down on my lunch breaks to see my mother again. We talk about my sister’s pregnancy, we talk about how I would beg her to draw stick figures for me when I was little. We don’t ever talk about her mother, her childhood, when she lost her job, but the gaps in conversation do all the talking for us both.

I mowed the lawn for two hours, long expansive lines that waver on the small inclines of the backyard. We cut down trees yesterday, piled them up and set them on fire. The pit my friends and I would roast marshmallows around is now a burn pile for old trash, dead wood, sick grapevines, and junk mail my dad wants rid of.  Melted bottles and pale, pale ash.

My parents moved on, took over the things that were once ours, made it their own. The house wasn’t kept how I left it when I moved out seven years ago. My old bedroom now houses a cat that is too old and sick from surgery. The quilt my great-aunt made me hangs like a tapestry in the stairway. And the pool we received from donations when my brother had cancer now has a wrap-around deck. Unfinished, only half painted, the wood a little rough and the towels snag.

This is my routine now, to be complacent with where I am. How I live. What I am doing. I’m raised in the meeting point of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and the Appalachian Mountains.  I smelled the apple trees’ smoke on my clothes and there was soot underneath my nails. And I didn’t know why my eyes were watering so bad, but I didn’t bother to wipe them right away.

S'Mores Popovers

While you do not need a specialty pan for these, they do make for a nice presentation and a more consistent baking. With a popover pan, this recipe yields 9. With a muffin pan, it yields 12-15.

Ingredients

• 1 ¼ cup AP flour
• ½ cup graham flour (I love Bob's Red Mill's for this recipe)
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 3 TB brown sugar, dark
• 2 TB molasses, dark
• 1 TB clover honey
• 1 TB pure vanilla extract
• 4 eggs, room temperature
• 1 ½ cup whole milk, room temperature
• 3 TB unsalted butter, melted
• ½ cup store-bought marshmallow fluff
• ½ cup milk chocolate chips
• 1 graham cracker, processed to dust for toppin

Directions

1. Sift flours, salt, and brown sugar in a small bowl
2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together molasses, honey, vanilla, eggs, milk, and butter until yolks are broken and liquids are a pale yellow
3. Whisking slowly, add flour mixture to wet
4. Whisk rapidly until bubbles begin to form
5. Let rest at room temperature for 30 minutes
6. Preheat oven to 450*F, prepare popover pan (or muffin tin) with cooking spray
7. When resting is complete, spoon mixture into pans ¾ of the way full
8. Top with a spoonful of marshmallow fluff and a few chocolate chips
9. Bake for 20 minutes at 450*F
10. Reduce heat to 350*F and bake for an additional 15-17 minutes (do not open the door, but check through your window to see tall sides that are golden brown)
11. Remove from oven, cut a slit into the popovers immediately to allow steam to escape
12. Turn popovers out of pan, sprinkle with a little graham cracker crumb and a few more chips and serve warm

Have all that graham flour leftover? Try making these graham crackers and milk waffles

And have you nominated Fig+Bleu for the #Savblogawards? If not, would you please?

Popsicle Week 2k16: Summer, and this Mango Chili Popsicle

There are more seasons than four.  Summer is a procession of seasons. The Dandelion Season, the Firefly Season, the Stone Fruit Season. They’re signifiers, signaled by the Appalachian muezzin of the spring peeper’s call. They get us through the long stretches of daylight. The sun doesn’t set until 9:04 tomorrow.

I spent the better part of last week drunk, asleep on a couch and laughing with my family. We spent the week in North Carolina, in a house that used to be owned by my brother that is now a second home to my parents. I ate strawberries with my fingers and fed my dog the egg yolks my mother wouldn’t eat. I got a sunburn that turned my shoulders copper. I didn’t cry when I said goodbye to anyone in particular, but I cried a hell of a lot when I found out my sister was having a girl.

It was 2 hours to the beach each way and the ice melted in the cooler by the time we got there. My grandfather in his jeans, smoking a pipe on the beach. Anachronistic, misplaced, his very presence sitting in the lawn chair representative of every conversation we have together. My mother and aunt tanning on a quilt made by a great aunt, falling asleep with canned margaritas in their hands. We stayed until the gulls came too close. My uncle complained that the seashells were nicer in Florida. My mother complained the taffy was cheaper last year, but she bought four boxes anyway.

This is summer to me. The laughter, the sweat, the incandescent horseflies that reflect the pool tarp. Lazy, awkward, uncomfortable. Each moment was one I used to treasure when I was still in school; and if I didn’t have these small signifiers, they’d all bleed together into one long season.

And between Canned Margarita Season and Fireworks Season, there is Billy from Wit and Vinegar's Popsicle Week. Last year, I made Caramel Corn popsicles, and this year I opted for mango and chili. A chorus, a solstice, the melting of velvet on the tongue. Make these to combat the summer heat; make these to celebrate it.

Mango Chili Popsicles

Makes 4 popsicles (as that is what my mold yields), but the recipe can easily be multiplied.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup coconut cream solids (I had to use 2 cans of full-fat coconut milk for this)
• 1 mango
• 1 TB olive oil
• ¼ cup honey, separated
• 2 TB brown sugar
• ¼ cup confectioner’s sugar
• 2 TB orange juice
• ½ TB vanilla
• ½ TS paprika
• 1 TB chili powder, plus more for sprinkling
• 1 TB white sugar, for sprinklin

Directions:

1. Prior to beginning, refrigerate your cans of coconut milk for 8+ hours until solids separate
2. When ready, making sure not to shake the cans, gently spoon out the coconut cream and put into a bowl
3. Turn your broiler on high and prepare a baking sheet with aluminum foil
4. Slice your mango in half and coat with olive oil, one tablespoon of honey, and the brown sugar
5. Broil for 5-7 minutes until top is browned
6. Remove and allow to cool briefly before spooning fruit into the bowl of a food processor
7. Pulse 10 times or until smooth
8. Add confectioner’s sugar, orange juice, vanilla, paprika, and chili powder
9. Pulse once or twice to combine
10. Finally, add your coconut cream and blend for one minute to aerate the mixture slightly
11. To make this extra smooth, put mixture through a sieve into a measuring cup (for easy pouring)
12. Pour into your molds (this makes four)
13. Mixture is thick enough to add popsicle stick before setting into freezer for 6+ hours
14. When ready to eat, dip mold in hot water for 5-10 seconds and it should slide out
15. Sprinkle with more chili powder and some sugar and enjoy immediately –this is a soft popsicle and will melt fairly suddenly
16. Enjoy!

Make sure to check out all of the other exciting popsicles this week!