"sugarhighfriday" news and stories

Chandra over at Lick The Spoon has posted links to all of the entries of last Friday's Sugar High Friday event, "Candy is Dandy...But Liquor is Quicker." The idea, as you can probably guess, was to create and blog about a sweet recipe that involves alcohol. According to Chandra, there were 40 entries in this, the 18th round, of SHF. As some of you may remember, I submitted a sweet potato pie with bourbon, pecans and maple syrup. Some of my favorites were the gelled sparkling wine from Pint and Fork, the Frangelico honey panna cotta from A Blithe Palate, and the chocolate sake cakes (right) and raspberry spumante spoons from a belly in the wind.

The 18th (I think) round of Sugar High Friday is being hosted by Chandra of Lick The Spoon. The theme is one not unfamiliar to us here at Slashfood: cooking with booze. The official title is "Candy is Dandy...But Liquor is Quicker." My contribution is a sweet potato pie with bourbon, topped with pecans and maple syrup. The recipe comes from Alton Brown and his episode of Good Eats dedicated to sweet potatoes. A transcript of the episode, including the pie recipe, is available through the Good Eats Fan Page. That recipe doesn't include bourbon, but I happened to have a bottle of Baker's on the shelf, and, well, you know, it seemed like a good idea. Since this was the first time I made this recipe (or sweet potato pie, for that matter), I didn't want to tinker with it too much, so I only used two tablespoons of bourbon, around half a shot. It could probably have used a little more, as the bourbon flavor is rather faint. Still, it's one of the best sweet potato pies I've tasted. I'm not ashamed to say that the crust was store-bought. I'm still an amateur in the baking department, and, since I always manage to make a huge mess anyway, I figured I'd make it easier on myself. Truth be told, I still managed to scorch a pot and dirty an extra pie pan. But that's all in the past now. What I'm left with is my favorite type of pie, and a killer version at that.

[Photo: Nick Vagnoni]

Sugar High Friday is one of the most enduring of the food blog events. This month Sam of Becks and Posh has set the day as Sugar Low - after the excesses of the Holidays, this is most welcome. And most welcome to me following my excess of cookies, sweets and doughnuts recently.

Fruit Salad in a Passion Fruit infused non-sugar sugar-syrup may not be the most inventive of ideas but with half my stuff packed away in boxes (I mean just HOW long does it take to move?) I am really not in the mood for too much creativity. Still, chilled slices of Clementine and Sharon Fruit combined with yellow plum and sugar syrup were delicious. The syrup, incidentally, was made by dissolving 200g of the sugar replacement in 300ml water, brought to a boil with a large squeeze of lemon juice and then allowed to cool after the addition of the passion fruit.

[Photo Andrew Barrow]

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When I read Andrew's post on Sugar High Friday I chuckled to myself. Mwa ha ha, I said evilly. I've been practicing for this event for over a year!

Yes. You see, last August when I became pregnant, I consulted with a midwife about how to reduce the possibility of having a second c-section. Her advice, given my particular situation, was to try to keep the baby's weight down by switching to a very low-carb, almost no-sugar diet during the last few months of the pregnancy.

I was completely unsuccessful in my attempt to either (a) keep the baby's weight down or (b) avoid a c-section. So this will NOT be a post about pregnancy diet strategies. It is, however, a post on how to bake delicious things with no, or very little, refined sugar. Because I'm a bit of a sugar freak. I adore baking, and there's nothing that makes me happier than curling up at the end of (every) meal with something sweet. I thought, at first, that it was impossible to go without sugar.

Happily, I was wrong.