Some Mid-October Snackable Bakes
It’s mid-October, peeps: not even sure how that happened - but here we are. And so I was thinking of recipes for this letter that are very October-friendly and I think I found some. Funnily enough, they are all recipes that I developed for Food52 over the years; and funnily enough again, I was motivated to include them here due to the fact that I received an email from Food52, listing my most popular recipes as of late, and these are they (save for the Instant Pot PB Chocolate Cheesecake - but I’ll share that soon, too, I promise!).
Anyway, it’s a good time to think about recipes calling for apples, sweet potatoes and carrots (though carrots kind of make sense year-round), and these 3 really are fab and - you guessed it: easy. We’ll start with the recipe calling for carrots and - wait for it - chocolate (as this happens to be a chocolate carrot cake). If you have never had a cake with chocolate and carrots you are in for a treat. Just like zucchini which melts into a chocolate cake, carrots behave similarly.
The cake is incredibly moist and due to the finely grated carrots, the texture is divine with a soft, tight crumb. And the cream cheese frosting is its perfectly tangy foil. Also the cake is one of the single-layer snacking variety, which in my book, means it’s extra great. The recipe is here.
Next up is a sweet potato sheet cake with an incredible toasted marshmallow frosting. This cake is kind of in the pumpkin sheet cake family and is equally as moist (yes, moist is a theme here) and as vegetal as its pumpkin cousin. You can easily make mashed sweet potatoes in the microwave, so don’t worry about spending time roasting them in the oven, which can take a hot minute (pun intended). Poke them all over with a fork and cover them in a damp paper towel and place them on a microwave-safe plate and microwave for 8 minutes, flipping the potato over at the halfway mark and re-wetting the towel if need be. Add on an extra minute or two, if necessary, until fork-tender.
The frosting is a Swiss Meringue - which is honestly a little more work than I like to do when topping a cake (if developing this recipe now, I’d probably try to top it with a 7-minute frosting - a Swiss meringue hack of sorts). But it tastes like marshmallows and once toasted, basically wins the best frosting ever award - so yes, any extra work is 1000% worth it. The recipe is here.
Finally, let’s chat about apple crisp - individual ones, to be exact. I love a crisp more than a pie - crazy I know, but also true - as the crispy, buttery, sweet topping with the tangy soft fruit is textural perfection. Moreover they are easy-peasy and here, I add cranberries, which adds more tang and flavor and loads of gorgeous color . . .
The recipe is here. Oh, and if you like crisps and all, but apple pies are your real jam, give a listen to my interview with Claire Saffitz on my baking podcast, She’s My Cherry Pie, as we talk all things fruit pies, apple specifically.
Finally, just a friendly reminder that my paid newsletter has tons of info about my new easy peasy savory baking book, including an exclusive recipe from the yet-to-be-published book in each letter. I submitted the manuscript recently and am now working on some of the edits I received back, such as . . . oops, would LOVE to tell you more, but you’ll have to subscribe. ❤️
See you in 2 weeks!