Roasted Potato Wedges with Alabama White Barbecue Sauce - Sweet Hallelujah, This Stuff is Good!!

Christy from Southern Plate posted a recipe for Alabama White Barbecue Sauce way back in October. It looked delicious to me, but I never did make up my mind to actually try and make it. Sometimes I'm like that - I'll fall in love with a recipe and want to try it, but it gets pushed to the back of my mind and just doesn't end up happening. Well, this evening I decided that I would try it! I made some roasted potato wedges for dinner with the express purpose of serving them with the white barbecue sauce.


And Oh Lawdy, my life will never be the same.

Alabama White Barbecue Sauce

2 C Mayonnaise
1 1/2 T salt
2 T black pepper
6 T white vinegar
6 T lemon juice
4 T white sugar

Mix all ingredients together and stir well. I did 1/4 this recipe because it was just me and the kids tonight.


What did I think of this sauce? Well, I'll just copy and paste my comment on Christy's post:

"So I finally got around to trying this sauce. And let me tell you, I CAN’T BELIEVE I WAITED THIS LONG TO TRY IT!!! This stuff is incredible! It’s vinegary, it’s lemony, it’s peppery, it’s mayo-y, it’s deliciously flavorful, it’s indescribable! I made it to go with some roast potato wedges (which are actually still in the oven right now!) and tasted a bit on my finger. Then I went crazy looking for things around the kitchen that I could dip in it because I suddenly couldn’t wait until the potatoes were done. I dipped popcorn and saltines and they were great! Then I dipped my fingers some more. ;-)

And all this was before realizing that I had forgotten the sugar. I added it, and wouldn’t you know it was even better than before!

Yeah, long story short, you have made an Alabama White Barbecue Sauce lover out of this Idaho/Utah gal."

And a short while later I wrote:

"Mmmmm… I’m eating it with the potato wedges now… I’m in heaven…"

So yes, the Alabama White Barbecue Sauce was a total success. Despite (or perhaps because of) its distinct and powerful flavor, both Zaylee and Thomas loved the sauce. Zaylee even kept asking for it "I need more white!" It was cute. They ate their potatoes with the sauce and some ketchup as well. I kept mine purely unadulterated - just the potatoes and the perfection, er, I mean, white sauce.


Oh yeah, the potatoes. Really easy - I cut up three potatoes into large wedge-like chunks. Then I tossed them with oil, and a bit of salt and pepper, and put them in an 8-inch baking pan. Baked at 425 for 30 minutes, turning with spatula after the first 20. Super easy and uncomplicated. After all, I only made them to complement the white barbecue sauce. :-)

Apple Dapple Cake

Sorry, I meant to post this last night but we had a bit of excitement. My little boy had been fussing all day, and I realized I hadn't seen him walk or stand all day. So we spent yesterday afternoon/evening at the ER, where we learned that he has a probable buckle fracture. Poor little guy! We think it happened on the trampoline Sunday night - so if you have a one-year-old, exercise caution in letting them play on the trampoline with other kids! :-)


Now, back to the cake. This is the most delicious apple cake I have ever tasted, bar none! If you have the ingredients in your home, go make this cake as soon as you finish reading the post. If not, go buy them and then make the cake!

I found this recipe on Southern Plate, and have been wanting to make it for quite a while. General Conference was the perfect special occasion for this fantastic cake. Everyone loved it - it was moist and rich and flavorful, and just plain delicious! When my husband bit into it, the first words out of his mouth were "Wow, Southern Plate strikes again!" because so far everything we make from Southern Plate turns out delicious. Seriously, I can't say enough about this cake, it was just so good!

Apple Dapple Cake
1 cup oil
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
3 c. all purpose flour
1 t. salt
1 t. baking soda
1 cup pecans, chopped (I omitted these because we didn't have them, but they would be fantastic!)
3 cups raw apples, peeled and chopped fine

Mix oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda. Add to first mixture. Fold in pecans and apples. Bake in tube or bundt pan at 350 for 1 hour.

Boy, that cake looks really good right now, doesn't it?


But we're not quite done yet! ;-)

Sauce
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
3/4 cup margarine (1 1/2 sticks)

Mix and cook 3 minutes after it begins to gently boil, stirring constantly. Pour over hot cake while cake is still in pan. Let cake cool completely before removing.

Don't try to take a picture while you're pouring the sauce over the cake. If you're as uncoordinated as me, you'll end up with a picture like this...


...and caramely rich sauce all over the burner where your cake was, because you accidentally poured it right through the hole in the bundt pan. Oops.


But in the meantime, while you're cleaning the goo off the burner, you can cheer yourself up by looking over at the goo on the cake - oh it looks sinfully delicious!


I made this on Friday, and we ate it on Saturday afternoon. By the time I thought to take a picture of the whole cake, it had already been sliced into and several pieces were long gone.


By Saturday evening, there were only three or four slices left. By Sunday afternoon, the cutting board where the cake had resided was empty, with only a few moist crumbs left as evidence of the glory that had once been there. Having eaten some of the last bits of cake on Sunday, I can say conclusively that this cake gets even moister and richer the longer it sits. I'm drooling just thinking about it.


That's my piece. Go make your own.




This post is being submitted to I Love Baking, a blog event created by Ben of What's Cooking?

Summer Produce, Autumn Flavor!

Yesterday Jeff and I talked about how fun it would be to try to make a pumpkin pie using summer squash in place of the pumpkin. So today, that's what I did. This really is a neat idea - we are still having a bumper crop of crookneck yellow squash, and are looking for unique ways to use them. This pie allowed us to use up several squash, and have a taste of autumn at the same time!

This pie really did end up tasting delicious. It was slightly different from a real pumpkin pie - in color, texture, and flavor. But it was wonderful in its own right. So if you've got a lot of summer squash to use, and are in the mood for fall flavor, give this pie a try. You'll be glad you did.

Summer Squash Custard Pie (or Mock Pumpkin Pie)
Several yellow summer squash
Single pie crust, partially baked (see below)
2 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (or use 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. ginger, and 1/4 tsp. cloves)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 can evaporated milk (not sweetened condensed)

Cut up summer squash and place in saucepan. Add water, not quite covering the squash. Heat to boiling and cook until squash is tender. Drain. Place squash in blender and puree. If necessary, add water 1 tbsp. at a time. Add as little water as possible, because too much will change the texture of the pie. Allow squash to cool.

While squash is cooling, prepare your crust. Any regular pie crust recipe will work, or use frozen. Partially prebake crust to keep it from getting soggy: Line crust with a double thickness of foil. Heat oven to 425 and bake foil-lined crust for 10 minutes. Remove foil and bake an additional 2-4 minutes until crust is just barely starting to brown. Press down any bubbles with a fork. Don't prick the crust, though; you don't want filling leaking through.

To make filling, lightly beat eggs in medium mixing bowl. Measure 1 1/2 cups pureed squash, and add to bowl along with remaining ingredients. Mix well, and pour into crust. To prevent spillage, place crust on oven rack and then pour or spoon in the filling. Place a large baking sheet on the rack under the pie to catch any spills that might occur while cooking.

Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then turn heat down to 350 and bake an additional 45 minutes, until butter knife inserted near center comes out clean. You can line the edges of the crust with foil for the first 30 to 45 minutes of baking time to prevent over-browning. I didn't, because I didn't really have an edge of crust to protect.

Let cool on wire rack two hours before slicing and serving. Pie can be kept at room temperature for 2-4 hours after this, but then should be covered and stored in refrigerator.


I really wanted to serve this with whipped cream or ice cream. But we don't have any at the moment. That's okay - this was good even without it!


See how nicely it held its shape? This pie was just beautiful.


I'm submitting this recipe to the I Love Baking blog event. Yum!

Banana Chocolate Chip Biscotti

On my poll I got an equal number of votes for Banana Chocolate Chip Biscotti and Freeze them for later. So I'm doing both. I used one banana for the biscotti, and the other two are being saved for a special treat that I just need to get around to making.

Banana Chocolate Chip Biscotti
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/2 cup mashed very ripe banana (1 medium)
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips (miniature recommended)

Heat oven to 250. Grease large cookie sheet.

Beat sugar and butter in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed, or mix with spoon. Beat in banana, vanilla, and eggs until smooth. Stir in flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir in chocolate chips.

Divide dough in half. Shape each half into 10 x 3-inch rectangle on cookie sheet with greased hands (dough will be sticky).


Bake about 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool on cookie sheet 15 minutes.

Cut crosswise into 1/2-inch slices. Turn slices cut sides down on cookie sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown and dry on top. turn cookies. Bake about 10 minutes longer or until golden brown. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.


Many people enjoy these dry, crunchy cookies dipped in their coffee. I'm not a coffee drinker, so I enjoyed mine with a glass of milk. This would also be really good with some hot chocolate! Another fun option would be to dip these halfway in chocolate - yum!

I'm entering this in the I Love Baking foodie event. Obviously I love baking - I'm still running the oven despite the August heat!

S'more Cookie Fingers

***** This recipe is being entered into the SITS (Secret is in the Sauce) Recipe Contest! The winner will receive a $100 Williams Sonoma gift certificate and a new digital camera. If you want to enter the contest, click here. *****


Happy National S'Mores Day, everyone!

To celebrate this very important National Holiday (while using the ingredients on hand, which did not include full-sized marshmallows, phooey!) I decided to get creative and invent my own s'more-inspired dessert. I tossed around the idea of making a s'more pie (baked crust filled with a mixture of mini-mallows, chocolate chips, and graham cracker chunks, then heated in the oven until the marshmallows puff and the chocolate is soft and gooey) but decided I didn't want to do a pie crust. My reason is so lame - I didn't want to have to clean shortening off a measuring cup and pastry cutter!

My next idea was to make some sort of cookie. I eventually decided to make a cookie and top it with chocolate chips and mini-marshmallows. Sounded great, and all that was left was to find the right cookie recipe.

Looking online, I found a recipe for Cookie Clay Dough - it tastes like cinnamon grahams, and is made for the express purpose of being shaped. Little plug for this recipe - it is so awesome! It's healthier than some other cookie doughs, because it's made with whole wheat flour (ignore all the sugar and butter...). It's also really fun, because you can plop it on some wax paper in front of your kids and they play with it like Play-Doh (make sure they wash their hands first), then you bake their creations and they get to eat them! The other reason this recipe is so great is that the raw dough tastes incredible! If you have powdered egg product, use that instead of the raw egg because you're going to want to just snack on this dough without ever baking it! Or if you don't care about the salmonella risk, eat it with the egg (just so you know, I'll probably get salmonella after today, but it would be worth it for that dough).

S'more Cookie Fingers
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter (1 cube)
1 tsp. vanilla
1 egg (or 2 tbsp. dry egg powder and some water)
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Topping:
Chocolate chips
Miniature marshmallows

Cream together the sugars, butter, vanilla, and egg (if using dry egg, add the powder with the dry ingredients). Add flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Mix well. If using the dry egg powder, now add 2-4 tbsp. water until the dough has a Play-Doh consistency. I used a regular egg, and ended up adding about a tablespoon of water at the end because it's really dry here.

At this point you can give the dough to your kids and say, "Look kids, edible play dough! Have at it!" They'll love you forever. But if you want to make cookie fingers, here's what I did.

Shape the dough into sixteen "boats" on ungreased baking sheets.

Fill the boats with about 7-8 chocolate chips.

Bake for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and press 6-7 mini-mallows onto the chocolate chips.

Return to oven and bake for 3 more minutes, until the marshmallows are puffy and a tiny bit golden. The marshmallows look kinda like big white caterpillars, don't they?

Let cool in the pan for about 3 minutes, then remove to wire racks. The best time to eat these is right after you remove them from the pan - they're still a bit warm, the chocolate is soft, the mallows are gooey and stretchy, and it tastes so good! Once they've cooled, you can pop them in the microwave for a few seconds to get that warm, gooey texture again.


This will also be my sweet entry for the second August edition of I Love Baking. Who can resist a big round-up of delicious baked goods twice a month from all over the blogosphere?

Italian Herbed Tomato Bread

****This recipe featured on Key Ingredient's blog, The Back Burner. Check it out here.

This post is for a new blogging event called I Love Baking, created by Ben of What's Cooking. The round up for I Love Baking will be posted bi-weekly (every two weeks). If you ask me, August isn't the ideal month to start an event that involves heating up the entire kitchen by turning on the oven, but I love baking enough that I decided to join in the heat anyway!


Italian Herbed Tomato Bread
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup chicken broth or stock
1/2 cup V-8 or tomato juice
2 tsp. Italian seasoning
2 tbsp. sugar
2 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. oil
1 tbsp. active dry yeast
3-4 cups flour (I did 2 cups white, the rest was whole wheat)

Combine liquids, Italian seasoning, sugar, salt, and oil in saucepan. Heat until tepid (95 to 115 degrees). Pour into large mixing bowl. Add yeast and stir.

Add flour, one cup at a time at first, mixing well. As the dough thickens, add flour more slowly, stirring until the dough is kneadable. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead until smooth and elastic, adding dough sparingly to keep the dough from sticking.

Cover with plastic wrap or a damp cloth and allow to rise in an oiled bowl until doubled in bulk. I happened to be cooking our dinner in the crock pot, using a plate as a lid, so I just set my bowl on top of the crock pot, and the dough rose quite nicely!


Punch down, and shape into two small loaves or one large loaf. Place in greased loaf pan(s). Cover and allow to rise again until the dough is not quite as large as you want the finished product to be. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes (35 for larger loaf).

I created this recipe as I was making it today. I have a "universal recipe" formula for yeast bread that lists ingredient types and amounts, and I get to decide on the exact ingredients I use. We happened to have a small amount of V-8 and chicken broth in the fridge, so in they went! I was very pleased with the savory and flavorful results of this baking experiment.

Universal Recipe Formula
1 to 1 1/2 cups liquid (water, juice, broth)
Up to 1/4 cup fat (oil, butter)
1 tsp. to 1 tbsp. yeast
Up to 2 tsp. salt
Up to 1/4 cup sugar or up to 1/2 cup honey (use less for savory breads)
3-4 cups flour (up to 1 cup low-gluten, like whole wheat, rye, soy, etc)
1/2 cup optional additions (grated cheese or vegetables, fruit puree, raisins, oats, etc)
Up to 2 tsp. flavoring (herbs or spices)

Combine everything except yeast and flour. Heat to tepid. Stir in yeast. Continue as directed above.


You know, I think this would work awesome as a pizza crust!