St. Patrick's Day is this coming Thursday, and that prompted a special Saturday dinner: corned beef with a mustard-brown sugar glaze, colcannon, soda bread, and roasted carrots, followed by chocolate Guinness cupcakes with Bailey's Irish Cream frosting. So good.

I Yam What I Yam
Just weeks ago I was talking with a friend about baking sweet potatoes, and she mentioned that she loves to bake them, and I said I do, too. She said she and her husband enjoy them, “but I can’t believe he doesn’t eat the skin.”

Eat the skin? “I don’t eat it either,” I said.

Why not? It just never occurred to me. I love to eat the skin of a baked russet, but a sweet potato? Well, I gave it a try, and it’s delicious (and packed with vitamins and nutrients).

Savory and sweet, the sweet potato is also found in recipes for biscuits, pie, pound cake, and waffles.

Here’s a link to get you started with some recipes.

I wondered if yams are something different . . . turns out they are sweet potatoes, just one variety of the colorful tuber. Sweet!

This is a Calendar of Days post: Cook a Sweet Potato Day

We were young twenty-somethings, just settled in a new apartment when a large box arrived—an unexpected box. It was a gift from my husband’s grandparents who had just returned from a trip back to Ireland, the country they had both emigrated from years before.

Inside we found a lovely tea set.

To say we were delighted and surprised would be an understatement. We were at the time, living together, unmarried, with no nuptials planned anytime soon. It was, it seemed, a blessing of sorts.

A sign that they had faith in our union?

Perhaps, though its first service would be steeped in panic, sweetened with kindness and humor.

It was soon after receiving the box that we received word that “Big” Nan was coming to visit my husband’s parents. Nan stood nearly 5’3”, petite and utterly charming. Her Irish brogue as sweet as the apple crisp I would present at our first tea service.

Upon hearing the news I suggested we invite Nan for tea. And yes, my husband agreed. He promised to call his mother and arrange a date. But there was no rush, Nan would be visiting for nearly a week, plenty of time to make arrangements.

Or so we thought.

It was Friday, late afternoon when the call came. “Nan and I want to stop by for a visit,” my mother-in-law said, “and we’re on our way.”

What? I couldn’t refuse them, but I was alone. Their son/grandson had just left. Ten minutes earlier he jumped into the passenger seat of his buddy’s 1970s AMC Javelin and pulled away. This was before cell phones. No way to get in touch, no way to bring him back.

I was on my own. And if nothing else, I had to serve tea.

With a 20-minute window to pull things together I peeled a few apples, spread them in a baking dish, dotted them with butter and brown sugar and turned the oven on. Though I’ve overcome my early shyness, this was a stretch for me. I was nervous.

Stumbling through my first tea service, I forgot to put out forks for the apple crisp, only recognizing my omission when I saw sweet little Nan politely eating her dessert with one of the souvenir spoons I had laid out for stirring our tea.

Oh, we laughed, and they gushed over the dessert, the apartment, and how nice it was to visit. Their kindness soothing my nerves.

It was a lovely visit.

And then they, too, pulled away . . . 10 minutes before the return of my Irish sweetheart.

This is a Calendar of Days post.

January is Creativity Month, and if you remember our post from Monday, this is Letter Writing Week . . . talk about having your cake and eating it too! Mail lovers rejoice.

Getting mail is always fun, and now it’s even better. I discovered this gem at a local craft show this past December and just had to have one. They are designed by the very creative Holly Karolkowski of Art for Small Spaces.

Holly's creativity doesn't end there. She's also the creative genius behind Lost Monster Designs . . . take a peek! Contact Holly for cake and monsters!

My slice is going out later this week for a January birthday . . . sweet!

Oatmeal: Like it or lump it?
Guest Post by Lisa Parker, Cakes for All Seasons

Lumpy oatmeal, with plenty of butter, a dash of crunchy kosher salt, heavy cream and brown sugar. That’s what I’d like my last breakfast on earth to be. In the meantime, I’ll settle for lumpy oatmeal with plain yogurt.

Why lumpy,  you ask?

Well, when my parents were courting, my father was an Air Force pilot stationed at Loring Air Base in northern Maine.  My mom’s family lived on a potato farm not far from the base. When dad got off duty, he would often stop by the farm very early in the morning and have breakfast with my grandparents. Gram made lumpy oatmeal that he adored. When mom came downstairs, ready to leave for work, Gram would announce that “Bill came by for breakfast.” I always loved that story.

My other favorite way to eat oatmeal is, of course, in cookies.

I have a recipe for chocolate chip cookie with oatmeal in it that I’ve made over the years with golden raisins, cranberries, nuts and toasted coconut. Adapted from a wonderful little cookbook called Diner Desserts by Tish Boyle, it is my go-to recipe for big, yummy cookies.

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Lisa Mae’s Kitchen Sink Oatmeal Cookies

Have all ingredients at room temperature.

brown sugar, firmly packed - 1 1/3 cups (10 oz)
granulated sugar  - 1/3 cup (2.3 oz)
unsalted butter - 1 cup (8 oz)
salt - 3/4 tsp

eggs, large - 2
vanilla extract  - 1 T

all purpose flour - 1 3/4 cups (8.75 oz)
baking soda, - 1/2 tsp
baking powder - 1/2 tsp
rolled oats (not instant) - 2 cups (6 oz)

Kitchen sink options:
2 1/2 cups (12 oz) or more of any combination of the following:
chocolate chips, white chocolate chunks, dried cranberries, raisins, toasted nuts, toasted coconut, dried cherries, chopped apricots, or replace some or all of the oatmeal with your favorite granola, you get the idea!

Directions:

Cream the sugars and butter until light and fluffy. Add the salt here to make sure it’s mixed in really well. I use kosher salt because I like the little crunch it gives when you bite into it.  

Add the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla, mixing well after each egg is added. I use pure vanilla extract. My current favorite is Mexican vanilla. It smells like heaven and adds a rich, creamy flavor.

Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder and oatmeal. I sift in the baking soda because it’s often lumpy and doesn’t always mix in well. My tiny strainer is perfect for this.I weigh my flour. If you don’t have a scale, use the “dip and sweep” method presented by Dédé Wilson of Bakepedia.com.

If you put the oatmeal in last, it helps keep the flour from making a dusty mess. You can also put your “kitchen sink” additions in here. Mix until everything is uniform. The more you mix, the tougher your cookies will be so don’t over mix. Dump the dough out onto the counter to make sure there aren’t any globs of butter and sugar at the bottom of the bowl. If there are, mix them in by hand until it’s a uniform mass.

Now that the dough is mixed, it’s time to scoop.  My favorite kitchen tools are my assorted sized scoops. They make uniform cookies, pancakes and muffins. Since I sell my baked goods, I make notes on the yields of recipes using different sized scoops so I can accurately price my desserts.

Cookie recipes often instruct you to chill the dough for at least an hour and then scoop. It’s so much easier to scoop the dough when it’s soft then chill the portions. Put the scoops on a tray, close together. Once they are firm, you can wrap them up in packages, label and freeze for another time.

To bake, pre-heat the oven to 350F, and place the dough portions on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper leaving room between them to spread.

If the dough is just out of the freezer, allow it to warm up to room temp. If just out of the fridge, allow to sit out while the oven pre-heats. Flatten the dough balls with the palm of your hand. 

Bake until they are as done as you like them! I bake mine for 12-15 minutes depending on the size of the dough ball. I like a big cookie, soft in the middle, just baked through. If you you like them crisp, pull them out of the oven halfway through, flatten them some more with a metal spatula and return to the oven to finish baking.  

Cool and enjoy!

If you don’t eat them all right away, put in an airtight container. Adding a crust of bread to the container will help keep the cookies from going stale. 

Lisa Parker has been playing with desserts for years. After 20 years of baking desserts and playing with cake, she attended the French Pastry School in Chicago and graduated, with honors, from the L'Art Gateau program. She creates “delicious, joyous cakes and desserts” for wedding couples, party planners, and party goers in southern and coastal Maine, southern New Hampshire, and the Mt. Washington Valley.

Lisa can be found at Cakes for All Seasons where she says, “Let’s meet, I’ll bring the treats!”

Of Shortbread and Serendipity
Guest Post by Lisa Parker, Cakes for All Seasons

It’s Shortbread Day and I’ve been invited to write a post about one of the simplest of cookies. As often happens when I pull out my cookbooks and start browsing online, I stumble upon something new, in this case, an essay in The New York Times about cultivating serendipity, and my shortbread journey takes an unexpected turn. I veer off the path of writing about how different ingredients affect the flavor and texture of shortbread and start thinking about flavored versions of the cookies.

One cookbook leads to another and I find a delicious new recipe to add to my repertoire.

I came upon Dorie Greenspan’s recipe for Brown Sugar-Pecan Shortbread Cookies in her 2006 cookbook Baking: From My Home to Yours. Of the three recipes I baked yesterday, they were the favorite and are an upscale version of the beloved (store bought!) pecan sandies of my youth. The square cookies look nice but I’m already thinking of how I can dress them up for a sweets table. They’ll be pretty baked in my madeline pans—shortbread seashells for a seaside wedding. Say that five times fast!  

The next time you bake an old standby, try tweaking the recipe a bit and see where the journey takes you.

Whether you bake or not, there's great truth in that sentence.

Struggles. We all have them. Finding a way out, or at least some relief, can sometimes be the biggest challenge of all.

Ruth Reichl's new book "My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life," due out later this month is a response to losing her long-time job as food editor at Gourmet magazine which closed after a 69-year run. It's a story of loss and finding a way back. Get the cake recipe here and read the full article about Reichl in The New York Times here. 

I get it. My go-to recipe is oatmeal cookies . . . I like them with raisins, nuts, and chocolate chips. My husband prefers the classic oatmeal raisin.

It's in the gathering of ingredients, mixing, baking, and then sharing my baked goods that I find relief. And my go-to recipe is Quaker Oats Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (though I do prefer to leave out the cinnamon). 

If you're interested in giving it a go, the recipe is printed under the lid . . . you can lift the lid in the store without breaking the seal, check the ingredients, grab what you need, and go home and bake. Brilliant packaging.

Relief is not confined to the kitchen. You might prefer setting out on a bicycle, or knitting, treasure hunting, or baking a chocolate cake or a batch of cookies. Relief is found in the doing.

Focus on one thing or mix it up, but whatever you do, find the power of pursuits.

And if you want the recipe for Mexican Hot-Chocolate Cookies pictured above, here it is!