WHERE IS YOUR COAT? IT’S FREEZING OUT or Manny/Danny’s Sweet Potato Chocolate Chip Cookies

February 11, 2014

WHERE IS YOUR COAT? IT’S FREEZING OUT or Manny/Danny’s Sweet Potato Chocolate Chip Cookies

“Just a Bohemian guy, pulling up his own sweet potatoes for dinner.” – Lenny Kravitz

The first time I met Danny Bertaux he was wearing shorts. It was January. I asked him why he wasn’t wearing pants and he replied, “it’s not cold out.” Apparently that response triggered the Jewish mother in me and suddenly every time I saw Danny I felt obligated to bombard him with questions such as: “Where is your coat?” “Why are you wearing flip flops?” “Do you own a scarf? (Yes) Then where is the scarf?”

At the time I didn’t realize Danny was much younger than me, but either way I felt compelled to take care of him (and also get him to understand that mesh basketball shorts and snow do not mix)

I am not the only person who feels this way. Just yesterday some of the ladies in the cast were talking about having to actively suppress the urge to “mother” Danny in certain ways. I guess he just gives off a vibe that makes you want to put the H. Jackson Brown Jr. quote: “Life is slippery. Here, take my hand,” into action.

It’s not that Danny acts young. He doesn’t talk obnoxiously out of turn, or anything. He just has a youthful energy about him that is positive and infectious. He’s the type of person who can wear a shirt that says: “Musicians know how to score,” and you don’t want to hit him in the face. You actually find yourself wanting to tap him on the shoulder and say, “hey, nice shirt.”

So, in honor of Danny I used a recipe from Joy the Baker to put a twist on a classic for a cool dude.

INGREDIENTS:

- 1 sweet potato

- 2 cups flour

- 1 ½ tsp baking powder

- 1 tsp baking soda

- 1 tsp ground cinnamon

- ¼ tsp ground cloves

- Here you can use either ¼ tsp grounder coriander, but I recently bought a winter baking spice mix from Whole Foods which has brown sugar, lemon zest, allspice berries, vanilla bean, etc, so I just ground a bit of that in there. Also, this lets me feel better about spending fifteen dollars on a jar of spices from Whole Foods.

- 2 large eggs

- 1 cup packed brown sugar

- ½ cup vegetable oil

- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract

- 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS:

- Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit

- Clean that sweet potato! And then poke it a few times with a fork and put it on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.

- Bake for around 40 minutes and then allow it to cool until it’s easy to pick up and handle.

- Peel off the skin from the sweet potato and then mash it all up. I chose to do this in a very light colored blue bowl, because color contrast is important to me, and because I was listening to Zoe Deschanel at the time and wanted to feel girly.

- Reduce the over to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Prepare your other baking sheets by lining them with parchment paper.

- In one large bowl whisk together your flour, baking powder, baking soda, and your spices.

- In another bowl, whisk together your eggs and your brown sugar until it’s thick, gloopy, and pale in color. (This takes elbow grease, so don’t wimp out after the first few minutes)

- Carefully whisk your oil and vanilla into the brown sugar/egg mixture.

- Fold in the mashed sweet potato using a rubber spatula.

- Add the egg/sweet potato/sugar/etc mixture to the big bowl with the flour in it. Fold all that together using the spatula. Make sure that there are no excess bits of flour floating around.