Potato Cakes with Cran-Apple Sauce
HoneyCrisp Apples available from The Fruit Company®.
After eggplant dip and sweet potato soup, you’ve decided against traditional mashed potatoes. You need to vary the textures, and you have it on good authority that The Fruit Company® has an excellent Smashed Potato Cake with Warm Apple Sauce recipe on their blog. There are a few groans from your guests when they learn of your decision. Some worry that without mashed potatoes, there won’t be anything to be thankful for.
So you reassure them. You tell them everything is going to alright, tell them to trust you. When that doesn’t work, you tell them the mashed potato cakes will be fried. Suddenly, everything is gravy again despite the lack of gravy.
Potato Cakes with Cran-Apple Sauce
Recipe courtesy of The Food Network.
Ingredients
- 3 Golden or Red Delicious apples, peeled and chopped (we used HoneyCrisp)
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
- 1 cup apple cider
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 cup prepared whole berry cranberry sauce, store bought or homemade
- 3 cups smashed or leftover mashed potatoes*
- Water or milk, as needed to thin potatoes
- 2 cups grated Cheddar
- 2 scallions, finely chopped
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, eyeball it
- Coarse salt and pepper
- Drizzle vegetable oil
- Butter pats
- Paprika, to garnish, optional
Directions
Place apples, lemon juice, cider, sugar and cinnamon in a medium pot over medium high heat and cook down into a thick sauce, stirring occasionally, 15 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in cranberry sauce to warm through and combine.
Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium heat.
Place potatoes and water or milk in a bowl and cover with plastic. Microwave 2 minutes on high to slightly reheat and loosen potatoes. Stir them up with the liquid to make them workable again. Combine cheese, scallions and nutmeg with potatoes and adjust salt and pepper.
Add a drizzle of vegetable oil and a pat of butter to your preheated skillet then score the potatoes and cheese mixture in half. Using the first half of the potatoes, make 6 (3-inch across and 1/2-inch thick) potato cakes and space them evenly around the pan. Cook the cakes until golden all over, 3 minutes per side, then remove and garnish with paprika, if using, and repeat with remaining ingredients.
Serve potato-cheddar cakes with warm cran-apple sauce for topping.
Note: Although the recipe calls for 2 cups of grated cheddar, we advise against a 3/2 potato to cheese ratio. If you use that much cheese, the potatoes flatten out on the pan and you’ll be left with something resembling pancakes.
A Bountiful Feast: Next Recipe (Pomegranate Molasses Glazed Turkey)
Although you advise against the 3/2 ratio for potatoes to cheese, there was not a recommendation for another. How about 3/1?
Wondering…
Pam
3/1 would work much better. Going without cheese, well that just doesn’t seem right.