The Sweet Outdoors
Picnics, potlucks, backyard barbecues . . . summer is the season for fresh-air meals with family and friends! But living the al fresco life doesn’t mean abandoning the kitchen, even in a heat wave. Our easy, tasty recipes can be created in a flash and are guaranteed to impress guests or hosts. Naturally, each one contains just the right proportion of sweetness!
Playing with fire
Turn on the grill, but don’t settle for the same old chicken, hot dogs, or burgers when you can make them mouth-watering. Brush on our Zesty Barbecue Sauce —made tangy with mustard and lemon juice—or baste with Smokey Barbecue Sauce, a complex blend of ketchup, beer, liquid smoke, hot pepper, and C&H Pure Cane Dark Brown Sugar. If your family loves ribs, they’re sure to savor our classic Barbecued Spare Ribs recipe. It was developed in 1948, just in time for the debut of our Dark Brown Sugar, and it’s been a customer favorite ever since!
Another customer favorite, always on our most-requested-recipe list: Cedar-Planked Salmon, easy to prepare on a ready-made cedar plank. (Find the planks at fish counters and hardware stores.) Don’t skimp on the brown sugar: you’ll want to cover the entire fillet. The combination of sweet and smoky is irresistible!
And talk about classic: For steak lovers, nothing beats our Grilled Spice-Crusted Steak with herb butter. The sugar goes into the spice crust along with coriander, garlic, and three kinds of pepper.
 Looking for something more adventurous? Try our Caribbean Grilled Chicken and Pineapple, a sweet-and-savory combination of chicken breasts, lime juice, spices, and fresh pineapple. (Substitute canned pineapple if it’s easier.) Our C&H Pure Cane Washed Raw Sugar adds balance and a subtle but satisfying texture.
Traveling farther around the globe, our Chicken Saté with Peanut Sauce, grilled on skewers, reveals its Indonesian origins in its flavors: ginger, lime, lemon, soy sauce, coconut milk, peanut butter. A quarter-cup of C&H Pure Cane Washed Raw Sugar rounds out the flavor profile.
Our recipe for Rosemary Balsamic Caramel-Glazed Chicken Thighs, developed for us by Chef Emily Luchetti, calls for baking in a 350° oven, but you can grill the chicken directly on a well-oiled grate with the grill cover on. The recipe doubles and triples easily to feed a crowd.
 Salad days
Salads and side dishes turn even a weekday cookout into a banquet. Be sure to exercise common sense when using mayonnaise dressings in hot weather; see our Quick Tip, below, for food-handling advice.
A picnic isn’t a picnic without a classic All-American Potato Salad, and ours is one of the best we’ve tried! For a variation, use a combination of small red and purple potatoes—and leave the peels on. For a colorful and healthful twist on an old favorite, mix up our Country Cole Slaw, which adds carrots, green and red peppers, and a dash of hot-pepper sauce to the shredded cabbage. Country Macaroni Salad also gets a color and flavor boost from chopped vegetables; a couple of teaspoons of C&H Pure Cane Organic or Granulated Sugar mellows out the dressing.
Part salad, part dessert, our Summer Fruit Salad features fresh seasonal fruits gently tossed with a tangy, creamy dressing. And speaking of fruit, Baked Beans Hawaiian—which of course isn’t a salad at all—contains a sweet surprise: chunks of canned pineapple.
 Desserts and drinks
For impressing a crowd (or just your nearest and dearest), nothing quite beats a home-baked pie filled with summer-sweet fruit. Two of our favorites: Blackberry Pie with Tender Pie Crust (milk is the secret to the crust’s tenderness) and Peachy Peach Pie, a Kansas State Fair contest winner. But if you’d rather keep it quick and cool, we won’t argue! Our Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes require just a little baking (for the cupcakes) and are definitely worth the effort to assemble. Keep them in mind for summer birthday parties!
 Planning a Fourth of July get-together? These Red White and Blue Cookie Squares, made with fresh blueberries and raspberries and filled with Neufchatel cheese—lighter than regular cream cheese—are festive and scrumptious. Or bring out the ice-cream maker and whip up some refreshing Peach Pistachio Ice Cream or sophisticated Cuban Coffee Ice Cream with Chocolate Salsa. Easiest of all? Our No-Bake Fresh Fruit Tart, a snap to make with a packaged graham-cracker crust, a lightly sweetened cream cheese filling, and plenty of fresh summer berries, cherries, and grapes.
The perfect accompaniment to your outdoor feast? An icy, fruity beverage like our Tropical Lemonade, Minty Strawberry Lemonade, or Hula Freeze. Check out the Beverages section of our website for even more great ideas!
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To ensure food safety—always a high priority in hot weather—always marinate foods in the refrigerator, not on the counter. Pack foods directly from the refrigerator to the cooler, and use a separate cooler for drinks so the one containing perishable foods won't be constantly opened and closed. Transport the cooler in the air-conditioned car, not the hot trunk. For more tips on barbecuing and food safety, read the U.S.D.A.'s fact sheet.
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 Chef Allen Susser
In southern Florida, Chef Allen Susser is known for serving guests innovative seafood dishes at his namesake restaurant, where his signature "new world cuisine" blends the bounty of South Florida ingredients with Caribbean and Latin flavors.
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 Meet Michelle Stern, a Great American Bake Sale Rock Star!
Share Our Strength's Great American Bake Sale, an ongoing campaign against childhood hunger in the United States, continues to inspire bakers throughout the country. We wanted to share with you the story of one of those bakers, Californian Michelle Stern, who has already made a big impact this year.
Michelle knows a thing or two about kids, food, and giving back to her community. She writes the popular What's Cooking blog and owns What's Cooking, which offers cooking classes to children of all ages in the San Francisco Bay Area. The cooking school—part of First Lady Michelle Obama's Chefs Move to Schools initiative—encourages kids to become invested in their communities and to help the less fortunate. So it was no surprise that Michelle Stern would become an enthusiastic supporter of the Great American Bake Sale for three consecutive years. Also no surprise: Her efforts have been so successful that she has made the roster of Bake Sale Rock Stars, each of whom has raised more than $1,000 with his or her team.
Here's how Michelle puts it: "Share Our Strength has a mission to end childhood hunger. I have a mission to teach children and their families that they can use food and cooking as a vehicle to help the less fortunate. It is a perfect partnership — I can teach the kids valuable skills and we can experience the pride of service together as we share our culinary creations with others."
This year, Michelle joined forces with local parents to organize "Music for the Hungry," a food-and-music celebration held in a Bay Area park. The musicians included several teachers from Michelle's cooking school; in addition to delicious baked goods provided by Michelle's students and other volunteer bakers, the group sold barbecue and tamales. "I am pleased to say that it was a smashing success!" Michelle reported. "We raised over $2,500 and had a day filled with music, delicious food and community." Check out her blog for photos of the event (including a photo of some delightful themed cupcakes!).
How far will that $2,500 go? It costs only $25 to feed one child three healthy meals every day for a month, so Michelle's contributions, and those of other GABS participants, are clearly making a difference.
It isn't too late to organize a bake sale in your own community: The Great American Bake Sale continues through October 2010. Need ideas or motivation? Share Our Strength's Bake Sale Neighborhood web page offers tips, recipes, a member forum and an events calendar. And there's more: C&H Sugar, a co-presenter of the Great American Bake Sale, has created a Bake Sale Center on our website with recipe and presentation ideas, bake sale tips, pricing suggestions, sign templates, and promotional tools.
So what are you waiting for? This summer, team up with C&H Sugar, Share Our Strength, and your neighbors. Start baking to end childhood hunger!
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