I owe you all a huge apology. It is with a heavy heart that I must let you know that I kept this savory, tangy, and unbelievably tasty cast iron home fries recipe from you all for two years. I legitimately have no excuse and won’t even try to make one up, so I am sorry. But now that I’ve apologized we can all move on and focus on how these Cast Iron Home Fries with Creamy Garlic Dressing need to be at your next brunch. Or weekend breakfast. Or breakfast for lunch, because who says brunch food has to be either breakfast or “breakfast for dinner”?!

When my brother-in-law gave me the Brunch at Bobby’s cookbook I immediately gravitated towards this recipe in the side dish section. Something about the colors of the dish and the crispiness of the potatoes made me want to make (and eat) it ASAP. I’ve had a lot of home fries over the years, but never one with a dressing. Genius! The dressing allows the potatoes to have so much more flavor and really pack a punch.

This side dish could easily be made into the star of brunch by serving it with poached or fried eggs. The thought of the runny yolks mixing with the creamy dressing is causing my brain to overload with excitement right now. Deep breaths. Phew.

I originally made these potatoes to go with the Eggs Benedict over Cheddar Scallion Waffles with Crispy Chorizo, Smashed Avocado, and Green Chile Hollandaise I made for a Southwestern themed brunch. The boldness of these potatoes held up to the outrageous-ness of the eggs Benedict perfectly. I adjusted a few things from the original recipe to save some time and fit my personal preferences, including roasting the garlic for the dressing to add a more mild and caramelized flavor. Enjoy!

Cast Iron Home Fries with Creamy Garlic Dressing

 

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Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

for the garlic dressing

• ½ cup mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 4 cloves of roasted garlic (see note)

for the home fries

• 3 pounds russet potatoes, about 3 large potatoes
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil, plus more as needed
• 1 bell pepper, I used ½ red & ½ orange for some variety
• 1 small head radicchio
• 3 scallions

Directions

for the dressing

1. In a small bowl, mash the roasted garlic. Add the mayonnaise, vinegar, and mustard then whisk to combine. Season with salt and pepper then let sit for 30 minutes to allow the flavors to settle. If you will be letting it sit for more than 30 minutes, cover the bowl and place in the fridge until ready to serve.

for the home fries

1. Scrub then clean the potatoes. Pierce them each 5-6 times with a fork then place the potatoes on a microwave safe baking dish and cook in the microwave for 5 minutes. Carefully flip the potatoes over then microwave for another 5 minutes. You should be able to poke a fork or paring knife into the potato with no resistance. Add more cooking time if needed, or alternatively use the “potato” setting on your microwave. Once the potatoes are cool enough to handle cut them into a 1-inch dice.
2. While the potatoes are cooking, prep the rest of the vegetables. Removing the seeds, cut the bell pepper into a thick dice. Halve the radicchio then thinly slice. Thinly slice the scallions, discarding the dark green parts.
3. Heat 1 tablespoon of the vegetable oil in a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add the diced bell pepper and cook until the pepper starts to soften. Add the remaining oil then the diced potatoes. Spread the potatoes so they are in a single layer and cook until they have begun to get crispy on the bottom, about 5 minutes. Carefully toss them and continue to cook until crispy, about 5 more minutes. Add more oil or increase the heat of the stove if needed. Remove the skillet from the heat.
4. Move the potatoes and bell pepper to a large bowl or serving dish. Add the sliced radicchio, dressing, and scallions then carefully stir to combine. Feel free to not use all the dressing depending on your personal preference. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve while warm or at room temperature.

Notes

- To roast garlic: preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Leaving the skin on the garlic bulb, cut the top off the head of garlic so that almost all the tops of the cloves are exposed. Take a small piece of tinfoil big enough to wrap the garlic in. Place the garlic in the center and partially fold up the sides. Drizzle the exposed garlic with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Seal the foil to make a little packet of the garlic and roast for 35 minutes. Once it’s cool enough to handle, you can squeeze out the roasted cloves.
- To prep ahead: roast the garlic, make the dressing, microwave the potatoes, and prep the vegetables. Then in the morning you will only have to deal with the cast iron skillet portion of the recipe.
- Cooking the potatoes: the original recipe from Bobby Flay called for the potatoes to be boiled whole for about 25 minutes, or until cooked through. I went with the microwave method to save time, but feel free to boil the potatoes if you prefer.

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Lauren Uncategorized 0 Comments

Normally when I think of muffins my mind goes to sweet baked goods. Cinnamon-crumbed, definitely chocolatey, maybe even citrus-infused, but definitely not savory. Until March. Now I am fully on-board the savory muffin train, even if it’s just to make these Irish Cheddar, Bacon, and Potato Muffins over and over again. Yes, these muffins are that amazing.

The smell when they came out of the oven was so hypnotizing that Matt and I each ate one as soon as we could get the muffin paper liners off without burning ourselves (or at least until it was just minor pain). Then, the flavor was so outrageous that we were each forced to have a second one. It wasn’t our fault; we were hypnotized!

When I first saw the March muffins in the Food Network Magazine’s Muffin of the Month article, I thought they sounded heavy, but instead they are light and fluffy, while still being loaded with gooey cheese and bacon. Bacon doesn’t need a descriptor; everyone knows how bacony delicious bacon is.

In addition to the cooked bacon, there is a very small amount of bacon grease in the actual muffin batter so it helps bring that bacon flavor to every bite. I cooked a package of bacon on the griddle on a Sunday, which gave Matt and I some bacon for breakfast (a treat since we don’t cook bacon that often!), the three slices of bacon and one tablespoon of bacon grease I needed for this recipe, as well as cooked bacon for sandwiches and salads for lunches throughout the week.

Perfect as a grab and go breakfast, these Irish Cheddar, Bacon and Potato Muffins are even better after being warmed briefly in the microwave. Please do yourself a favor and make these muffins! Then do me a favor and bring them to my house so I can eat them with you! Enjoy!

Irish Cheddar, Bacon & Potato Muffins

 

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Yield: 12 muffins

Ingredients

• 1 large Yukon Gold potato (8 ounces)
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1¼ cups buttermilk
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1 large egg
• 3 slices bacon, cooked with 1 tablespoon bacon grease reserved
• 4 ounces Irish cheddar cheese, diced
• ¼ cup chopped fresh chives (about ½ a bunch)

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line a 12-cup cupcake pan with paper liners and set aside.
2. Cook the potato in the microwave. Poke the potato 5-6 times with a fork and wrap in a damp paper towel. Cook until the potato is just cooked through, about 4-5 minutes, being sure to turn it once during cooking. Let the potato cool. Once you can handle it carefully peel off the skin and grate the potato. Lightly season the grated potato with salt and pepper; toss to combine.
3. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and ¼ teaspoon salt. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, melted butter, egg, and tablespoon of bacon drippings. Pour the mixture into the well of the flour mixture and stir until just combined. Carefully fold in the grated potato, bacon, cheese, and chives.
5. Evenly divide the batter among the prepared paper liners. The batter should fill each to the top. Bake for 22-25 minutes, or until the top of the muffin is golden and a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean. Cool the muffins in the pan for 5 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack to completely cool.

Notes

Every time a recipe calls for buttermilk, I use this trick instead: Put a tablespoon of lemon juice in a liquid measuring cup. Add milk until the desired amount of buttermilk is reached (in this case 1¼ cups). Let sit 5 minutes. You can use whatever kind of milk you have in your fridge - I use nonfat milk. If the recipe calls for more than 1¼ cups buttermilk, you will need to use a little more lemon juice.
I used Kerrygold Dubliner cheese.
I had a hard time getting the paper liners off of these muffins. It was definitely worse when they were hot, so let them cool completely before eating. I plan to experiment during future baking of these muffins to see if I can adjust the recipe to get them to stick less or if it would be better to bake them directly in the pan with cooking spray. I will keep you all posted!
To fully savor these muffins, reheat them in the microwave for 15-30 seconds before eating.

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Recipe from January/February 2018 issue of Food Network Magazine.

Lauren Uncategorized 0 Comments

Happy February! If you missed the last post, I am baking, photographing, eating, and posting each of the Food Network Magazine’s 12 Months of Muffins. February’s muffin does not disappoint: Double Chocolate Salted Caramel Muffins. Yup, you read that correctly. Chocolate and caramel – life is so sweet.

Chocolate muffins are basically cupcakes disguised as acceptable breakfast food so I was ecstatic to see some chocolate muffins in the monthly muffin list. Not that I don’t consider cupcakes acceptable breakfast food, but I need to keep up appearances. The cupcake, I mean muffin, batter is chocolate with chocolate chips in it, hence the “double chocolate.” The muffin is moist with little pockets of gooey melted chocolate chips.

What takes these muffins over the top is the dulce de leche in the center. The recipe name says “Salted Caramel” because I wanted to stay true to the original Food Network wording, but what we really have here is some smooth and heavenly dulce de leche. Dulce de leche is sweetened milk that has been slowly cooked until it caramelizes. In my opinion it tastes much creamier than regular caramel sauce because of the milk. You can buy or make your own for this recipe. I made my own because I didn’t want to go to the store and I already had a can of sweetened condensed milk, which is all you need to make some!

The dulce de leche is dolloped right in the center of the half baked muffins. My muffins developed a little air pocket in the center, which was from some of the dulce de leche getting absorbed into the muffin after it was done baking aka making it super moist and decadent. I hope you enjoy these muffins for breakfast, dessert, and everything in between!

Double Chocolate Salted Caramel Muffins

 

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Yield: 12 muffins

Ingredients

• 1½ cups all-purpose flour
• ¾ cup sugar
• ½ cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• ½ cup vegetable oil
• ½ cup thick dulce de leche
• Flaked sea salt

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line a 12-cup cupcake pan with paper liners and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the chocolate chips (leaving 3 chips aside) and stir to combine.
3. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs. Add the milk and vegetable oil then whisk until smooth. Pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture and stir until just combined.
4. Evenly pour the batter into the prepared paper liners. Each muffin cup should be filled ⅔ to the top. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the edges of the muffins have started to set, but the center of each muffin is still liquidy. Remove the muffin pan from the oven and working quickly, dollop 1 heaping teaspoon of dulce de leche into the center of each muffin. Return the pan to the oven. Continue to bake for 10-15 more minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the muffin comes out clean. Make sure to insert the toothpick into the muffin itself and not the dulce de leche.
5. As soon as the muffins are out of the oven, use a grater or microplane to grate the chocolate chips you set aside over the tops of the muffins. Sprinkle the top of each muffin with the flaked sea salt. Let the muffins cool in the pan for 5 minutes then move the muffins to a cooling rack until completely cooled.

Notes

The batter is supposed to rise and bake over the dulce de leche. Some of my dulce de leche stayed on the top of my muffins because I probably let them cook too long before dolloping on the dulce de leche. They taste delicious either way so don’t worry too much about it.

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 Recipe from January/February 2018 issue of Food Network Magazine.

Lauren Uncategorized 0 Comments

Back when we were seniors in college Matt bought me a subscription to the Food Network Magazine for my birthday. We had only been dating a year and a half, but Matt was already well-versed in my food obsession. The first official Food Network Magazine issue had only come out a few months before my birthday in 2009 and I’ve been subscribed to the magazine ever since.

Every month when it comes in the mail I get so excited and quickly start scouring it from cover to cover; pointing out recipes to Matt and devouring all the latest food news. After going through it multiple times, I tear out all the recipes I want to make and add them to my growing recipe binder collection. The binders have page numbers and even a table of contents (remember, I like to organize and make lists 😉), but then they tend to just sit there. I always want to make something from them, but then I find a new recipe I want to try from a blog I read or a new cookbook or something on Pinterest and I rarely get back to the Food Network Magazine recipes that I just had to try.

So this year I have decided I am going to make an active effort to cook from the magazine. When the January issue showed up with a Muffin of the Month section I knew I had found out just where to start! I will be posting each month’s muffin at the start of each month for 2018. 2018 is the year of muffins! Who knew?

First up, January’s Pomegranate Orange Muffins. I love a good citrus muffin and these did not disappoint! They are moist on the inside, slightly crispy on the outside, and pack the perfect amount of clementine punch. Prettiness and the short prep time also give January’s muffins serious bonus points.

You don’t taste the pomegranate seeds that much since they are just pressed onto the top so feel free to substitute. Matt and I thought raspberries or blueberries would make a nice alternative; I will have to try one of those next time because I will definitely be making these muffins again!

Pomegranate Orange Muffins

 

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Yield: 18 muffins

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1½ cups sugar
• 1½ teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon aluminum-free baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 3 clementines
• 1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
• 2 large eggs
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
• ½ cup pomegranate seeds (or raspberries or blueberries)
• ½ cup powdered sugar

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line 2 cupcake pans with 18 paper liners and set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Whisk to combine then make a well in the middle of the flour mixture.
3. Wash 2 of the clementines then cut them into 8 pieces each, leaving the peel on. Blend the 2 cut clementines and the milk in a blender until smooth. Add the eggs and blend until incorporated.
4. Pour the egg mixture into the center of the flour mixture. Add the melted butter then mix until just combined. You want the batter to still be lumpy, but without any pockets or streaks of flour.
5. Scoop the batter evenly among the paper liners filling each cup about ¾ full. I found a cookie scoop to be the least messy way to divide the batter. Divide the pomegranate seeds (or raspberries or blueberries) and put some on the top of each. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out with no batter on it and the muffins are golden. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes then move the muffins to a cooling rack until completely cooled.
6. Cut the remaining clementine in half. In a small bowl, combine the powdered sugar and the juice from half the clementine. Stir until the glaze is thick, but drizzle-able, adding more juice from the other half of the clementine if needed. Drizzle the glaze on the muffins then let the glaze set for 10 minutes.

Notes

If you only have 1 cupcake pan, buy another! Just kidding, put 6 of the liners aside until the first 12 muffins bake and the pan cools.
The original recipe calls for aluminum-free baking powder stating aluminum may react with pomegranate and make the batter blue. I made sure to use aluminum-free baking powder, but I still had a little blue on my muffins around the edges of the pomegranate. I have not yet experimented with non-aluminum-free baking powder to see if the batter would have been even more blue-tinged, but just a word of caution!

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Recipe from January/February 2018 issue of Food Network Magazine.

Lauren Uncategorized 0 Comments

It is hard to believe that I am writing this post and it is even harder to write it. One month has passed since my family and I lost my grandma, Babu. For those of you who don’t know me personally or haven’t read my Vanilla Bean Ice Cream Mother’s Day post, Babu and I were incredibly close. These past few weeks without my best friend have felt surreal. As most people who have dealt with loss have experienced, the ache does not get smaller, you just get better at handling it.

Babu loved hearing about my cooking and the food blog. She would always ask me what I was making for dinner and would listen to me read her my latest posts over the phone. Several times I had prints made of the food photos I knew Babu would like and mailed them to her. Babu would share them with her friends in her building and report back to me with which ones everyone wanted to try the most. Not only did Babu encourage me to follow my food passions, but she also helped foster those passions by baking with me and of course our many, many lunch dates.

In my family it is hard to mention coffee cake and not think about Babu. When she lived with us she always made sure there were slices in the freezer. She would make a coffee cake, always waiting to let me help glaze it, then cut it into big slices, wrap them in plastic wrap and pop them in the freezer. I would come home from school, microwave a slice for 30 seconds and it would taste like it just came out of the oven. There would be one slice left and the next day the freezer would be stocked back up with a fresh cake.

After Babu moved back down to Delaware I came to look forward to having some every time I went to visit, especially when we would do our annual beach trip. Since I always knew I would have some on these trips, I never made this cake on my own. When I was thinking of what I could make that would help celebrate Babu on Lemon & Mocha, once beach week started approaching I knew it had to be her coffee cake.

It was difficult knowing I couldn’t ask Babu any questions before I started baking or knowing that this would be my first beach trip without her, but I know she was there with me the whole time- cheering with me when the cake came out of the Bundt pan perfectly and laughing with me when I totally left too much batter for the final layer. I hope that this simple cake can bring you as much joy as it has brought me over the years and that you can share it with someone special, too.

Babu's Coffee Cake

 

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Yield: 10-12 servings

Ingredients

for the cake

• 1 Duncan Hines yellow cake mix
• 1 package instant vanilla pudding (3.4 ounce size)
• 4 large eggs
• ¾ cup vegetable oil
• ¾ cup water
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• ¼ cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

for the glaze

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

for the cake

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a Bundt pan and set aside.
2. Combine the cake mix, pudding mix, eggs, vegetable oil, water and vanilla extract with a hand mixer or in the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix until well combined.
3. In a small bowl, combine the sugar and ground cinnamon.
4. Evenly pour ⅓ of the batter into the prepared Bundt pan. Use a spatula to even the layer. Sprinkle half of the cinnamon sugar mixture evenly over the batter. Repeat with ⅓ of the batter and the remaining cinnamon sugar. Top with the last ⅓ of batter.
5. Bake for 40-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack. Apply the glaze while still warm, but not hot.

for the glaze

1. Combine the powdered sugar, milk and vanilla extract until smooth. Spoon or pastry brush the glaze over the warm cake.

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Lauren Uncategorized 1 Comment