Mr. Elf shares his recipe for the holidays.

A family favorite for the holidays—or for any time—as a flavorful and festive accompaniment to turkey or beef. Cranberries, oranges, apples, and nuts combine for a satisfying salad or relish.

Southern Fried Apples for the Global Cuisine Challenge.
This winter recipe comes from my part of the world, the mountains of the Southern USA. These sweet fried apples are an easy and comforting dish to whip up on a cold evening, and the cinnamon gives them a warm holiday flavor. Our family loves to eat them as a side dish to pork, roasted vegetables, or bacon and eggs. I created this illustrated recipe with watercolor, oil pastels, colored pencil, and digital media. The title lettering was created by my mom Shelley in watercolor, ink, and digital media, and was inspired by the iconic print shop Hatch in Nashville, TN.

Our family recipe for Jewish apple cake passed down by my great-grandma to my grandma to me!

Easy, warm dessert, perfect for Fall season.

This vegetarian mince is perfect for the Holiday season!

Favorite Food Memories: My mom and I would make pies from scratch during the holidays. Making a pie was such a memorable activity for me being a creative child. Getting to make a mess with my hands in the kitchen and creating a yummy desert was just fantastic! I have fond memories of my mom teaching me her recipe. Even though I ended up being more of a cook than a baker, making pies is something I feel confident baking thanks to my Mom.

HandPicked Design Challenge

Fave Memory: The first year I started to love Thanksgiving! The setting: my cousin's house (first year hosting); the dinner: a simple turkey, mash, and sweet potato; the dessert: ALL the pie options, a cake, cookies and ice cream. Now THAT is a Thanksgiving made for a sweet tooth (me)!

This is my mom recipe, probably the only one she gave me!
Not because she's mean, but because she doesn't really love cooking.
In fact calling it recipe is a big word!
It's more about putting this ingredients together till having a nice dough, unless add more flour or milk
But anyway this was my first (failed) cooking experiment and also my final arrive
Create something based on what there's in the pantry, always with a smile on, and adding love as secret ingredient
I watched her making this cake so many times.. but never in the same way and never failed! and always asking how is that possible?
The perfume of this cake, a mix of apple sugar and cinnamon, bring me direct at childhood when dad, just back home, were turning the face of a heavy working day into a happy smile just smelling in the air that the apple cake was in the oven!
Even if I worked in many pastry shops, this one is the only cake I'm not able to reply because every time I try to add some perfections in it and that end just to ruin it!
If you'll try to make it, you'll ends out with a really good cake but believe me: nothing compared with my mum's one!!

Global Cuisine- 'La Flottille' is an illustration of the cutest cafe i stumbled across, nestled in the park of Versailles. I ate tarte tatin and drunk warm chocolate poured by the most wonderfully flamboyant waiter. The cafe exhibited the 1920s in every corner with its electric lamps, coffee posters and dainty vases of freesias. I am longing to go back, not for the splendour of Versailles but for those caramelised apples!

One of the memories I was trying to capture in this illustration was my Grandma Vida baking her famous and certainly most delicious apple pie in the world.
I have translated my Slovene recipe, which is good, but there is no way I can make a pie as good as she used to.

Details of the Apple Pie elements from my "Nobody Likes a Soggy Bottom" Tea Towel on Spoonflower. Blind baking your crust, peeling apples, and enjoying your delicious pie with a big dollop of whipped cream.

Mum's tatty old orange notebook, full of scribbled recipes. I never liked chunks of baked apple, but this recipe had the thin slices layered with sugar and water, dissolving the apple into a yummy jam! Swimming in custard. The perfect Sunday pud. Mmmm..