The Top Part of the Pop Tart

Muddle Puddle Battle pg. 302

In celebration of Kendall’s birthday and the second season premier of Girls- we gathered at kitchen 43 to mush up all the colorful berries we bought from Earth Fare. We learned about the loveliness of superfine sugar and how it really does dissolve better than regular old sugar. The black pepper was a nice touch along with the lime garnishes, tequila and club soda. It was beautiful to make and tasted pretty good too! We quickly ran out of tequila and added whatever was around. It all tasted pretty darn good and was perfectly paired with a birthday cake (we bought one), a quick birthday song and a room full of awesome ladies hanging out.  

Big Breakfast Latkes pg. 31 and Big Cluster Maple Granola pg. 26 

We decided to meet on a Sunday morning and eat breakfast while making some extra granola to get us through the week.  

Most of the ingredients, Lindsay W. got from Trader Joe’s, so we just needed a few things from Earth Fare. We bought dried tart cherries instead of just dried cherries and it gave the granola an interesting tartness that may or may not have been called for in the recipe. 

For the latkes (which none of us had properly had before I think), we used a box grater to shred the potato. When the time came to wring out the moisture, I thought again, really? Is that necessary? But it absolutely was. We were surprised to see how much liquid came out of those potatoes. The end result was a latke that was near perfection in my book. The slightly sweet taste of the onion, the finely shredded potato and the egg mixture that held it all together made it so much better than the regular potato pancakes I make several times a week as a meal. We opted to top our latkes with an egg like Deb Perelman has in the picture.It doesn’t list chives as an ingredient, but it’s in the picture. Having the egg as a topper made it a meal, without it, the latkes (as tasty as they were) would have left us wanting a little something more.  

We doubled the recipe for the granola so we could have something delightful to eat in the morning the next week.  We learned all about wheat germ, what it is and how to use it because the recipe calls for it to be included. We used several baking sheets in the oven and what came out was a nice, crunchy granola sprinkled with coconut, cherries, walnuts and salt. It wasn’t chewy and didn’t clump together like Deb’s does in the picture, but we were still happy with our homemade granola.