Marmalade Glazed Sweet Potatoes

Marmalade glazed sweet potatoes are a bit sweet, with a lovely sharp edge from the orange marmalade and a good splash of sherry vinegar. They are just as tasty as they are pretty and would make a great addition to your holiday table. I mean, really. Look at that shine!

Over the years, when we lived outside of the United States and away from family, we celebrated Thanksgiving with various groups of friends, some American, others not. When we lived in Paris, we hosted a fun dinner with friends and neighbors. I roasted the turkey, made quite a few side dishes and pecan pies and told everyone to bring the side dish or dishes it simply would not be Thanksgiving in their houses without.

All told, we were about 20 people, children included, and the array of side dishes was downright impressive. There was one dish I was completely unfamiliar with so I had to ask. Apparently creamed pearl onions is a must-have family side for my friend, Teresa.

That was in the days before internet but years later I remember looking it up and creamed pearl onions are a New England favorite. I’ve never made them myself but I remember them fondly from that one special dinner.

In my family, sweet potatoes are one of the must-have side dishes. My grandmothers would make them sweet and sticky, pouring on the Karo syrup with lots of butter. Truly, you could eat them for dessert. 

I like them less sweet, often just with a sprinkling of brown sugar. This recipe with marmalade and sherry vinegar is a little fancier but just as easy.  

Marmalade Glazed Sweet Potatoes

This recipe is wonderful made with butternut squash or pumpkin as well. You can use homemade or store-bought marmalade for this dish. 

Ingredients

2 lbs or 900g sweet potatoes – more or less

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 teaspoon flakey sea salt or to taste

1/4 cup or 80g thin cut orange marmalade 

2 tablespoons sherry or red wine vinegar

2-3 sprigs fresh thyme, plus more for garnish

2 tablespoons butter

Method

Drizzle the olive oil in a large non-stick pan where the sweet potatoes can fit in one layer. Peel and cube the sweet potatoes and add them to the pan.

Mix together the marmalade, vinegar and the thyme leaves in a microwaveable bowl. Add in the butter and warm in the microwave until the butter starts to melt. Stir till the butter is completely melted and set aside.

Over a medium to high heat, cook the sweet potatoes, tossing or stirring occasionally, until they are browned on many sides, about 8-10 minutes. Add in a few tablespoons of water, turn the fire down to a simmer and cover the pan for 5-6 minutes or until the sweet potatoes cubes are fork tender. 

Remove the lid and add in the marmalade vinegar mixture. Over a medium heat, cook it down carefully until the sauce thickens and the sweet potatoes are well glazed. 

Transfer to warm serving bowl and use a silicone spatula to spoon every last sticky drop of glaze over the sweet potatoes. 

Garnish with thyme, if desired.

Enjoy!

Today’s SundayFunDay theme is That Holiday Feeling! Many thanks to our host Rebekah of Making Miracles. Check out all the great recipes below to get you in the holiday mood!

• Caesar Coleslaw by A Day in the Life on the Farm/
• Crackled Ginger Cookies by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Gingered Shrimp Cups by Sid's Sea Palm Cooking
• Holiday Salad by Making Miracles
• Kohlrabi, Carrot and Spinach Salad by Cook with Renu
• Marmalade Glazed Sweet Potatoes by Food Lust People Love
• Parker House Rolls by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Savory Aloo Masala French Toast Rollups by Sneha's Recipe
• Turkey and Cranberry Reuben Sandwich by Palatable Pastime

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Cheesy Shrimp Stuffed Poblano Peppers

These cheesy shrimp stuffed poblano peppers are wrapped in bacon and roasted till the bacon is crispy and the cheese is soft and melted. They make a fabulous starter or even a good main course, served with sides. 

Pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before but my meals each week are often predicated on whatever catches my eye in the market or grocery store. (These days mostly just the grocery store since I am limiting my forays into the public to once a week.) 

These shiny green poblano peppers jumped out at me and I suddenly remembered a recipe I made years and years ago around this time, from a post on my friend Christine’s blog, where she used cornbread dressing to stuff poblanos. Girl after my own Texas heart. 

When she first posted it, I had never come across poblano peppers in Dubai but then, suddenly, my supermarket had some! You’ve never seen anyone so excited over a vegetable since, honestly, I don’t know when. I know, I'm sad, but here we are. 

Meanwhile, I'm back in Texas where poblanos abound. I didn’t have any cornbread stuffing on hand but I did have queso fresco or farmer’s cheese, shrimp and bacon and who can resist those? If you are looking for a non-traditional Thanksgiving dish, try these stuffed peppers. We loved them!

Cheesy Shrimp Stuffed Poblano Peppers

For this dish I used jalapeño bacon but any smoked bacon would be just as lovely. We happen to be chili pepper freaks in our house so our motto is the more heat the better. It’s also hard to tell from the photos but my poblano peppers were about 6-7 in or 15-18cm long. The cheese is a fresh, soft, dry curd cheese highly prized for many recipes in Mexico and South America. If you can’t get a similar cheese, perhaps try a fresh goat cheese instead. The flavor will be different but still delicious. We are looking for something that will melt without melting out of the pepper. In a pinch you could use grated cheddar mixed through with well-drained cottage cheese or ricotta so it doesn’t completely melt and drip out of the peppers because no one wants that. 

Ingredients

4 fresh poblano peppers (480g total)

10 1/2 oz or 300g raw, peeled, cleaned shrimp

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tablespoons butter

5 oz or 142g queso fresco

8 slices smoked bacon 

Optional to serve: your favorite salsa

Method

Heat your broiler to high, move your oven rack up to the top position and put the peppers on a big sheet of aluminum foil on a large baking pan. 

Roast the peppers for several minutes on each side, making sure to keep a close eye on them so they just pop and char a little but don’t completely burn. 

When they are nice and scorched on all sides, remove the pan from the oven and wrap the foil loosely around the peppers, closing the steam in by crimping the sides.  Set aside for 10 minutes. 

Open the foil and gentle remove the outer peelings. Cut a slit up the middle of each pepper. Save the foil for use later. 

Sauté the garlic in the butter for a few minutes, being careful not to let it color or, God forbid, burn. Add in the shrimp and cook till they release their water, then cook a few more minutes, until the pan is almost, but not quite, dry again. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool. 

Preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C. 

Slice the cheese into slim sticks and fill the bottom of the pepper with a little of them, tucking cheese right up under the seeded core at the stem end.

Add in one quarter of the shrimp with garlic.

 Top with more cheese. 

As best you can, try to gently pull up the sides of the pepper to close the slit. Stick a toothpick in, if that helps. Use two slices of bacon to wrap around and around the pepper to hold it closed.

Repeat until all four peppers are stuffed and bacon-wrapped. 

Return the peppers to the foil and put it back on the baking pan.

Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until the bacon is cooked and golden. 

Remove from the oven and leave to cool for about five minutes. 

Serve with your favorite salsa for a generous first course or with a side salad and veggies as a main course. 

Enjoy! 

This month my Fish Friday Foodie friends are sharing recipes to serve for Thanksgiving. Many thanks to our founder and host, Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm. Check out the recipes below.

• Cheesy Shrimp Stuffed Poblano Peppers from Food Lust People Love
• Crab Stuffed Deviled Eggs from Palatable Pastime
• Cracked Crab with Lemongrass, Black Pepper, and Basil from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Shrimp Mini Quiche Appetizers from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Shrimp Turkey Centerpiece from Sid's Sea Palm Cooking
• Crispy Brussels Sprouts Salad with Seared Scallops from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Pumpkin and Shrimp Bisque from Making Miracles
• Thai Noodles With Shrimps from Sneha's Recipe

Are you a food blogger who would you like to join Fish Friday Foodies? We post and share new seafood/fish recipes on the third Friday of the month. To join our group please email Wendy at wendyklik1517 (at) gmail.com. Visit our Facebook page and Pinterest page for more wonderful fish and seafood recipe ideas.

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Walnut Butter Bundt Cake #BundtBakers

This walnut butter Bundt cake is delightfully flavored with homemade toasted walnut butter, which is super easy to make. The walnuts at the bottom of the pan are a pretty topping when the cake is turned upright. 

Recipes abound on the internet for homemade nut butters but I must confess that I have never made any. We don’t have any nut allergies and good ole Jif has been my go-to peanut butter since time eternal. If I had a dime for every jar I’ve hauled overseas in my suitcases over the last thirty plus years, I’d be a wealthy woman. 

That said, the last place I lived outside of the US was Dubai and Jif was blessedly available there. Even in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore it turned up on occasion. Anyhoo, no good reason to make my own nut butter until now. 

This month’s Bundt Baker theme is Nut Butters so I decided to be brave and try something new. I have this to say: Toasted walnut butter is fabulous. Such lovely flavor! Who knew it would be so easy to make.

Walnut Butter Bundt Cake

If you have an allergy to walnuts, I daresay you could substitute any nut you can tolerate but I highly recommend not skipping the toasting step. It adds a lot of depth to the nut butter. I used a 10-cup Bundt pan to bake this because I love the way the bottom of the Nordic Ware Fleur de Lis pan holds the extra walnut pieces in an almost diamond pattern, but it would fit in a 6 or 8 cup one as well, for a smaller taller Bundt.  

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups or 190g all-purpose flour, plus extra for the pan

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup or 75g butter, at room temperature, plus extra for the pan

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/3 cup or 75g fine sugar

2 large eggs

2 tablespoons milk

4 1/4 oz or 120g walnut pieces

Method

Turn your oven on to preheat to 350°F or 180°C. Put the walnuts on a baking pan and pop them in the preheating oven. Keep a close eye on them as the oven heats up and give the pan a shake every few minutes. Remove the walnuts from the oven when they start smelling toasted.

Grease your Bundt pan with butter and lightly flour. (As mentioned above, mine is the Nordic Ware Fleur de Lis <Amazon affiliate link with a good price. I paid almost $12 more back in 2015! Dang it.)

Process half of the toasted walnuts in your food processor until they become a fairly smooth paste. 

Beat together the butter and sugar till fluffy and pale. Add in the eggs one at a time.

Cream well until well combined before adding another one. 

Beat in the walnut butter, vanilla extract and milk.

Sift in the flour, baking soda and salt. Fold well to combine. 

Put the remaining half of the toasted walnuts into the bottom of your prepared Bundt pan. 

Spoon in the batter. 

Gently use the bottom of a spoon to smooth the top out. You don't want to dislodge the nuts.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the walnut butter cake comes out clean. If you are a person who uses an instant read thermometer, the King Arthur Flour website says the internal temperature of a baked cake should be between 200-210°F or 93-99°C.

Remove the cake from the oven and let cool for about 10 minutes. 

Loosen the cake from the Bundt pan and invert it onto a serving plate. 

Slice to serve with tea, coffee, hot cocoa or a cold glass of milk.

 Enjoy! 

As mentioned, this month’s Bundt Bakers theme is Nut Butters. Many thanks to our host, Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm. Check out the other recipes using nut butters in the batter, icing or glaze below. 

• Banana Bundt with Cocoa Peanut Butter Glaze from Sweet Sensations
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Bundt Cake from Patyco Candybar
• Easy Frosted Peanut Butter Bundt Cake from Making Miracles
• Mini Peanut Butter Bundts from Passion Kneaded
• PB & J Mini Bundt Cake from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Peanut Butter Cake With Cream Cheese Peanut Butter Frosting from Sneha's Recipe
• Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Pound Cake from Palatable Pastime
• Peanut Butter, Nutella and Banana Bundt from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Walnut Butter Bundt Cake from Food Lust People Love

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all of our lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about BundtBakers can be found on our home page.

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