Kosher Baking A-Z

The transition of summer into fall is my absolute favorite time of year. Because of back to school, you’re thinking. Well, in part, perhaps, but there’s much more: this is when the oppressive mid-Atlantic cloak of humidity vanishes, the air crisps up at night, the leaves turn all the gorgeous colors of the rainbow and the October sky is the brightest blue of anytime else during the year. Don’t even get me started on
the anticipation of Thanksgiving, my favorite meal. But I digress…

Autumn flavors are sentimental, powerful, infinitely memorable. Pumpkins , hearty soups and stews, and desserts with deep, warm fall spices leave delicious lasting impressions. Some time ago I discovered an easy shortcut to infusing warm, spicy flavor into autumn desserts: concentrated chai tea. Left undiluted, this product packs a sweet, spicy punch and instantly adds depth of flavor to desserts such as cakes, muffins, quickbreads and custards – just substitute it for some or all of the other liquids in the recipe.

In honor of the official start of pudding season in October, I recently made rich Baked Chocolate Chai Custards with Spiced Cream (gluten free). The perfect dessert for this time of year, these custards contain the richness of chocolate, the warmth of exotic spices , the comfort of a soft pudding and best of all, the ease of preparation. Enjoy!

Baked Chocolate Chai Custards with Spiced Cream

Cakes in jars are the perfect dessert to bring outdoors for Sukkot or to bring over other people’s homes.  They are very sturdy, they can be sealed and they are easy to transport. Make your favorite cake recipes and assemble it in a jar.  Pint sized jars should serve 2 people and half pints would be better for individual servings.

To Assemble Jars:

• Using a circle cutter, or the mouth of a glass: cut out 16 circles of cake from the chocolate cake. Press a circle of cake into the bottom of a mason jar. Drop in a heaping teaspoonful of Frosting. Flatten with a spoon. Pipe a swirl of another frosting in a circle on top. Add another circle of chocolate cake. Place another spoonful of Frosting on top of that. Finish with a swirl of Frosting.

Notes for making pareve evaporated milk
Many special desserts call for evaporated milk—which isn’t available pareve and is hard to find chalav yisrael. To create your own, pour 2 cups soy milk or rice milk into a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, and immediately lower heat to low. Keep heat on low for approximately 2 hours, or until the liquid is reduced to 1 cup. The milk should boil, and it should be lightly steaming.

Try this German Chocolate Cake in a Jar and then experiment with your favorite varieties.

These perfectly-portioned desserts cap off any meal in grand style—and they’re easy and quick to prepare!

Fantastic Pistachio Parfait

This parfait is great in any form. If you dont have individual molds, you can pour the parfait into an 8-inch square pan and cut into cubes when it freezes. Or—freeze it in any large pretty silicone mold.

Black and White Dream Cups

The trick in this recipe is the presentation….the rest is extremely easy and fun!!

Chocolate-Coffee Layered Cream Dessert

A very simple and classy dessert. It’s easy to make and you can make and freeze it ahead of time.

Cashew Ice Cream “Sandwiches”

The cashew ice cream in this recipe is superb, but even so, I sometimes like to serve it with an interesting variation on a theme—here, I made ice cream sandwiches , but you can always use the ice cream recipe on its own.

Rosh Hashanah is the time when we ring in the Jewish New Year, and we want to do it in as sweet a way as possible. As a symbol of the sweet new year we hope is to come our way, we dip an apple in honey, and make a bracha loud and clear. We also have the custom to drizzle honey over the challah, and eat honey cake for dessert. One helpful tip I discovered while making honey cake is to briefly microwave your honey (for about 10 seconds) before measuring it for your recipe. This makes the honey come out of the container much more quickly. To save yourself a sticky mess, spray your measuring cup with some non-stick cooking spray before measuring your honey.  Now try one of these new honey cake recipes.

Mom’s Honey Cake

This basic honey cake recipe freezes well, so you can save any leftover for Succot. Just make sure to test for doneness, because cooking time can vary from 15-45 minutes depending on your oven.

Orange Honey Cake with Orange Mousse

Break out of the box with this honey cake recipe, which fuses orange and honey. Apples will be so jealous!

Hazelnut Honey Cake

Nuts, honey, and wine: all of the Rosh Hashanah essentials packaged into one delicious dessert. What could be better?

Honey Cake Muffins

This year, cupcakes and muffins were increasingly popular, with more cupcake shops opening and more unique and healthy options of muffins available. Take the trend home with these perfectly portioned Honey Cake Muffins, perfect for dessert and a sweet breakfast on Rosh Hashanah.

Easy Honey Cake

Moist and easy to bake, this cake is a winner. For a smoother, more uniform taste and consistency, combine all wet ingredients first.

Now, I know you will have a SWEET New Year.

Get more Honey Cake Recipes here.

During the High Holidays everyone in our family eats sliced apples and honey, the traditional New Year snack, just like all the other Jewish people we know. But we also have another tradition that goes way beyond that.

I’ll call it the Hoffman Family Annual Apple pie/Apple cake Event. My Mom and her sister, my Aunt Beck, were very close and loved each other lots, but sisters will be sisters and they had this baking rivalry thing. So, before the holidays each of them would bake her special holiday dessert and announce to all who cared to listen that the pie – or cake, as the case might be – was better.

It was kind of fascinating for them to be competitive about a recipe, because although my mother loved to cook and was really good at it, Aunt Beck wasn’t much of a food person and never thought of herself as a kitchen type. In fact, my grandma, (Rachel Hoffman), who lived with Aunt Beck, did most of the cooking.

But somehow the sisters got themselves into this apple thing. Aunt Beck conceded her little sister’s culinary talents. With this one exception.

Aunt Beck's Famous Two Crust Apple Cake

Aunt Beck’s family always raved about her apple cake.

My mother was the pie baker, so naturally my brothers and I favored the pie.

To tell you the truth, all loyalties aside, both desserts were really delicious, as are the memories of all those years when our families would visit each other and sample one or the other of them.

These days, before the Holidays come, I make both the pies and the cakes because I am in competition with no one. And the result is not only two delicious desserts but also delicious hours spent remembering my Mom and my Aunt.

Before my baking project I go to a local orchard to buy apples, always Rhode Island Greenings, which my Mom always said were the best for putting into pie or cake. In the occasional years when this variety wasn’t available I used a mixture of orchard apples, older varieties that aren’t as sweet as the ones available today in the supermarket (such as Winesap, Gravenstein, Northern Spy, Idared, Jonagold, Stayman, Gravenstein, Newton Pippin and Baldwin). If I couldn’t get to an orchard I would use Granny Smith and slice the apples thinner. Or Golden Delicious and/or Braeburn but cut down on the sugar in the recipe.

Actually, I will confess, I make more pies than cakes. Probably because that’s what I saw my mother do and for me at least, this is tradition. But also because my grandson Zev, who is kind of a picky eater, loves my apple pie more than almost anything so of course I want to have some for him when he comes to visit.

But there are always several of each, pie and cake, in my freezer, and we use them up during the course of an entire year (yes, when well-wrapped they will still be tasty in a year’s time). By September they’re done.

And then I start all over again.

Dear Jamie,

Welcome to Israel, and Mazal Tov on your aliyah!!  If your community is anything like ours, it will be a while before you have to cook – between the food deliveries and the overwhelming hospitality, you will hardly have to turn on the oven.  But sooner or later, you will want to cook again. That’s when the reality of what you have just done will come crashing down on you.  Recipes just won’t work the same.  Ingredients, oven, climate – it’s all different.  Nowhere is this realization as stark as in the baking arena.  Even veteran bakers have been reduced to quivering, teary blobs of jello (or jelly, as they call it here!) after disastrous initial attempts to make familiar recipes.  So with your sanity in mind, I am here to offer a few tips to make your transition a little easier.

1. If you consider margarine a necessary evil in some recipes (as I do), you’ll be tempted to figure out the conversion between American sticks of margarine and their Israeli counterparts, the 200 gram bar.  Don’t! Your handy Nefesh B’Nefesh metric conversion magnet tells you that one ounce is equal to 28.3 grams.  It’s true, but when it comes to margarine, FORGET THE MATH!  Just consider the bar of margarine, 200 grams, the equivalent of one cup or two sticks.  I don’t know why, but it works.
2. The eggs that are considered “extra-large” by American standards are the same size as Israeli size “large,” so stick with large here.
3. Baking soda is called soda l’shtiyah here (literally, soda for drinking?!), and it is sold both with the spices in plastic bottles, and with the baking supplies in little envelopes.
4. Baking powder – this is a tricky one.  Avkat afiyah is sold in little envelopes, which is annoying, but the real problem is that it doesn’t work the same as American baking powder.  There is a scientific explanation (double acting versus single), but bottom line, you have to use less or your cakes will collapse after baking.  It is generally fine for cookies, though.  If you don’t want to refigure all your recipes, make this one of the few things you import.
   
5. Powdered sugar also comes in silly little envelopes of 100 grams (roughly 2/9 of a pound or just shy enough of a cup to be a problem – seriously!), unless you find a specialty store with larger bags.  Otherwise, consider all the opening of envelopes exercise you wouldn’t get otherwise – see, the Israeli lifestyle is super-healthy!
6. Pure vanilla is not readily available in supermarkets, though imitation vanilla is.  You can make your own, or you can buy it in specialty stores for rather high prices, so this might also be an item you import.
7. Oatmeal is formally called shibolet shual, but you will also find it labeled Kvaker.  Like Quaker, with an accent.  Seriously.  First time my mother-in-law asked me to get some from the makolet, I thought I was being Punk’d.
   
8. Flour in a one kilo is actually perfect for the smaller storage space we tend to have here.  You may want to opt for an electric sifter, but for those of us interested in speed, a hand sifter with a matching bowl makes short work of a bag of flour.  You can buy pre-sifted, pre-checked flour; it only costs about 3 ½ times as much.
9. If you ever need to replace your liquid measuring cup, be aware that it will not list cup measures, just ounces, milliliters, and 20 ounce (as opposed to the US standard 16 ounce) pints. You’ll have to do a little basic math to calculate cups and fractions of cups.
10. It just takes time – eventually it will all come together and you will not even be able to remember how you did things in the “Old Country”!
    

So in the interest of making your Rosh Hashana preparation a little easier, here are a couple of recipes that work beautifully here.  The first is a sweet challah recipe featuring the fantastic Israeli granulated fresh yeast, Shimrit, and the second is an apple cookie recipe that will be perfect for your yom tov table.

Wishing you and your family a klita kala (easy absorption)and a happy and healthy New Year in your new home!

For the rest of you, let us know in the comments any questions you have on cooking in Israel, I hope to offer a few more articles with tips and tricks and would love to know how I can help.

Dvoras Simple Sweet Challah

Apple Oatmeal Cookies

I get a lot of phone calls about baking emergencies. Sometimes the caller needs advice on a substitution or shopping source for a missing ingredient or piece of equipment. But often, it has to do with a disaster and the desperate search for a solution. We’ve all been there – the bundt cake that breaks on its way out of the pan, the cookies that spread into one giant slab on the baking sheet, the undercooked brownies discovered too late – and we all know the awful feeling of “What am I going to serve for dessert?!”

The truth is, there is rarely a way to “fix” a baking disaster back into what you had initially envisioned (gluing a cake back together with frosting is fun, but not necessarily beautiful). You can, however, turn the mishap into something even more fun, creative, and delicious.

An easy fix for a broken cake is turning it into the base for a trifle. Chocolate cake matches well with chocolate mousse and whipped cream, and can even be enhanced by cherry pie filling for a Black Forest trifle or cookie pieces for a “Milk and Cookies” effect.

Vanilla cake is delicious with sliced strawberries or other fruit along with a whipped cream topping. Lemon curd or vanilla pastry cream can really elevate this.

If your cookies have all run together, you can try cutting them into sticks while still warm, but if they break or are slightly overbaked, use them as a parfait base – sprinkle with non-dairy creamer or coffee (or more fun, coffee liqueur!) and layer with whipped cream and a drizzle of chocolate syrup. Individual serving cups look terrific for all of these and make your guests think you worked extra hard!

Another fun way to salvage a broken cake is cake truffles – crumble your cake, mix with prepared frosting to make a consistency that will hold together when rolled into a ball, place walnut-sized balls on a waxed-paper lined pan and chill until cold and firm. Dip the truffles in melted chocolate and top with a drizzle of more melted chocolate or sprinkles. This is also a good solution for undercooked brownies – if they have already cooled when you discover they are mushy, you can microwave them briefly to ensure the batter is cooked through, and then scoop the brownies and roll into balls, dredging in powdered sugar, cocoa, sprinkles, or chopped nuts.

If your cake sinks after you set it to cool, you can always sprinkle slices with powdered sugar and call it a torte – no one will know if you don’t tell them!

But if there is no way to fix your disaster, it’s great to have a no-fail recipe in your back pocket that you can throw together in no time. This blondie recipe fits the bill; it mixes in one bowl, requires no softening of ingredients, and can take lots of different add-ins to make it something special and different every time.

I love baking non-dairy desserts.  Most recipes I come across are dairy, though.  So I challenge myself to develop perfect non-dairy versions. Sometimes turning a recipe from dairy to dairy-free is as simple as replacing the butter with margarine.  But unfortunately, that doesn’t always work.  When developing a recipe, I never start from scratch.  I always take an existing, tried and true, recipe and tweak it.  I try to look for recipes that don’t need too much changing.  I prefer to try and change two ingredients or less.  For example, if a recipe calls for butter, milk, and sour cream, I usually stay away from it.

General Substitutions

In order to tweak a recipe, you always need to replace the dairy ingredient with an equivalent non-dairy ingredient.

• Butter is a fat so it needs to be replaced with another fat like margarine, vegetable shortening or oil.
• Milk can usually be substituted with soy milk.
• Buttermilk has a little zing to it so it should be substituted with an equal amount of soy milk plus a teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice.
• Sour cream should be replaced with an equal amount of tofutti sour cream.

Cookies

Here is my usual cookie process.  If a cookie recipe calls for butter, I try replacing it with an equal amount of margarine.  Sometimes it works out and I do a little cheer!  If the cookies spread too much, I will chill the dough sufficiently before baking and try again.  If the cookies still spread too much I start over.  This time I replace the butter with half margarine and half vegetable shortening.  Vegetable shortening is a little more solid at room temperature than margarine so it usually helps to give cookies a nice shape.

Cakes

For cake batter I usually replace butter with equal amounts of margarine or vegetable oil.  Since cake gets baked in a pan, I don’t worry about it holding its shape in the oven.  The milk gets replaced with soy milk.  I usually have success with most recipes.

Challenges and My New Secret Weapon

My toughest challenge is tackling yellow cake.  I have yet to develop the perfect non-dairy yellow cake recipe.  I’ve come close but I’m still not satisfied with the results.  Butter and milk are really the main ingredients giving dairy yellow cake its perfect flavor and texture.  The one trick I have up my sleeve is pudding mix.  I tried adding a packet of instant vanilla pudding mix to my typical non-dairy recipe and was so pleased!  Then I started wondering what other recipes would be improved with pudding mix.

I added a packet of instant vanilla pudding mix to my classic chocolate chip cookie recipe and I got a fluffy, cake-like cookie.  The pudding mix seems to stabilize the cookies and retain the moisture.  I already have a perfect non-dairy chocolate cake recipe but it yields a pretty soft cake.  I need a firmer cake for stacking tiered cakes.  I added a packet of chocolate pudding mix and voila!  Magic ingredient!  I am hoping that instant pudding mix will work in many more recipes because the biggest struggle in changing a recipe from dairy to lactose free is keeping the texture.  If pudding mix can help with that, then I will be a very happy baker.  My secret is out!

Here is an example of how I converted a recipe for Red Velvet Cake.

You can see that all I had to do was replace the buttermilk with soy milk and extra vinegar. The results were fantastic. Enjoy the full recipe for my Non Dairy Red Velvet Cake.

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I like colorful food as much as the next person, but far too many pistachio ice creams out there take on an enticing shade of green through chemical means, leading to a terribly disappointing taste and a belly full of chemicals. A good version of this classic flavor doesn’t necessarily need to be an emerald or forest green to be delicious, but you can still achieve such a luscious hue simply by using the nuts themselves, plus a healthy dose of vibrant green avocado for creaminess. After you taste how incredibly flavorful this easy nutty treat can be, you will find it close to impossible to justify the purchase of those fakers again.

Vegan, Parve Pistachio Ice Cream.

Make it a Sundae with homemade Coconut Whipped Cream!

Is there a better time for Ice cream?

Ice cream gets everyone excited, no matter the age.  So…imagine your guests delight, when after a dairy meal this Shavuot, out comes…an ice cream dessert bar! Try some of these flavors, and allow your guests to mix and match delicious sauces and crunchy toppings. The delicious flavor combinations below are worthy of a holiday celebration.

Lemon Burst

Lemon ice cream with blueberry sauce and candied almonds.  This ice cream tastes like summer. The sweet blueberries and candied almonds are a refreshing and satisfying match for the tangy lemon ice cream..

Deconstructed Cherry Cheesecake

Cheesecake ice cream with cherry sauce and graham cracker streusel.  This recipe plays with the classic cheesecake by reimagining it as an ice cream sundae. With a rich cheesecake ice cream topped with a cherry sauce and graham cracker streusel, it has all the classic flavors of a New York Cheesecake in a fun and different form.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Overload

Chocolate ice cream with peanut butter cookie dough, peanut butter fudge sauce, and chocolate covered peanut butter candies.
This recipe combines two most perfectly matched flavors in an intense combination that is sure to thrill any true peanut butter lover.

Coffee Toffee

Coffee ice cream with caramel sauce and almond toffee.  As anyone who drinks caramel coffee beverages knows, caramel and coffee were meant to go together. With the pairing of this rich coffee ice cream with creamy caramel sauce and crunchy almond toffee, you won’t miss your hot mug.

Don’t have an Ice Cream Maker? Check out my guide to making ice cream without one.

Originally printed in the Joy of Kosher with Jamie Geller magazine May/June 2011

Tiramisu is a popular Italian layered dessert cake. The name tiramisu literally means “pick-me-up” in Italian, referring to the two caffeine-containing ingredients; coffee and cocoa. Today we introduce the traditional more indulgent recipe and then a lighter version using Angel Food Cake.  Try one and let us know what you think.

Indulgent Tiramisu VS Light Tiramisu

Tip: Making Chocolate Curls – For best results, make sure your chocolate bar is at room temperature when creating curls.

Don’t miss some of Jamie’s Lightened recipe remakes, What other classic recipes would you like to see remade?

Originally published in the Joy of Kosher with Jamie Geller Magazine May/June 2011.

I am always looking for new and interesting dessert ideas.  While browsing Pinterest (my newest internet obsession) I recently came across a new dessert trend called the “slab pie”.  It’s basically a pie baked in a large square or rectangle pan and cut into squares.  I found a recipe for a crumb topped raspberry rhubarb slab pie and had to try the recipe immediately.  I made a few changes, adapting the recipe to keep it pareve, and tweaking the flavorings here and there, but I was really excited about the combination of raspberries and rhubarb.  I’ve made a strawberry rhubarb pie in the past and thought it was okay, but the strawberries were too sweet and pretty much hid the rhubarb flavor.  I thought the raspberries would be the perfect balance of sweet and tangy to balance out the bitterness of the rhubarb.  I was right, this combination is a stroke of genius!  I wish I had come up with it myself!

I love this dessert because it has all the elements of a delicious pie but with tons of shortcuts.  The pie dough does not need to be rolled out, it can be pressed into the pan with your fingers.  The fruit does not have to be fresh, in fact, I recommend using frozen fruit because it is always packaged at the peak of ripeness so you know your pie will taste great.  Using frozen fruit allows you to make this recipe any time of year-the fruit doesn’t have to be in season!  And lastly, as long as you keep some frozen raspberries and rhubarb on hand, you can make this recipe for last minute company.  Serve it alone or warm with some ice cream and you will be a star.

Raspberry Rhubarb Slab Pie

The weather’s warming up and Yom Ha’Atzmaut is just about here — I’d say this calls for some cheesecake squares, Israeli style.

Israel is often praised for its dairy products, even the basic ones. My Canadian mother-in-law says the milk is better here, and the cheeses are wonderful, too.

If there was ever a day for celebrating Israel, Yom Ha’Atzmaut is it. Why not bring the celebration into the kitchen? These blue and white (sorry, kachol v’lavan) cheesecake squares are made with gvina levana, a delicious soft white cheese that makes a frequent appearance at Israeli breakfasts. (It’s similar in consistency to sour cream or yogurt and is sold in Lakewood and some parts of New York.)

These squares are light enough for the warm weather but rich enough to satisfy your cheesecake craving. And with that pretty blue swirl, they’re basically irresistible.

Here are the basics:

First, crush up some chocolate wafers for the crust.

Mix in some melted butter, and press the mixture into the bottom of your baking dish. Stick it in the oven for a couple of minutes and set aside.

Next, beat together the ingredients for the filling and spread it over the crust. Reserve a small amount of the filling to dye blue and drop in small spoonfuls over the unbaked cheesecake.

Now here’s the fun part (okay, the food coloring was fun, too): Use a knife to gently swirl the blue through the creamy white. Kachol v’lavan, people, here it is.

Now just bake, let cool…

…and slice off the edges to create a perfect square. Eat the edges, of course.

Your perfect square then becomes lots of little perfect squares. Mmmm mmm.

I suppose you could round out the meal with some Israeli salad.

Check out the recipe: Kachol V Lavan Cheesecake Squares

Editor’s Note: I made the cheesecake with more readily available Greek yogurt and it was a bit tangy but very good.

After you’ve finally finished putting away your Pesach dishes it’s time to make Schlissel or Key Challah. It is an old and established custom that on the first Shabbos after Pesach we shape a challah into the form of a key or stick a real key inside a regular challah because this was the Shabbos when the Manna, the miraculous food Hashem air-mailed to our forefathers throughout their desert wanderings, ceased to fall.

Imagine what that Shabbos must have been like. All of the Children of Israel simultaneously wondering whether Manna had gotten lost or misplaced or delivered to the wrong address. But don’t feel too sorry for them. Our anscestors had Joshua, Yehoshua Bin Nun to guide them . Remember that he was Moshe Rabeinu’s own hand picked successor and protege and like Moshe he had a hotline to Hashem.  It was time for the Jewish people to start fending for themselves and eating from the land.

This change indicated that the Children of Israel, we weren’t yet called Jews, had entered a new reality.  The key symbolizes this. It is a Jewish mystical teaching that Hashem’s goodies are locked up and our prayers are the “key’s” to opening His storehouse. The act of making Schlissel Challah is in and of itself regarded as a way to draw down the Heavenly blessing of Parnossa or sustenance.

Here’s my machatesteh’s (Yiddish for my son in law’s mother) recipe for wonderful challot – Key Challah Recipe.

Passover approaches and for someone who LOVES to bake like me, it can either be a week of no baking or challenges to find things to bake that don’t taste so “Passoverish” if you know what I mean. I strive to look for and develop recipes that can be made all year round and no one would even notice that is it Kosher for Passover! I will say I have some staples that are typically for Passover and my family insists upon- the well-known matzo crunch with melted chocolate and caramel (which I make with all kinds of adaptations like white chocolate and peanut butter for example- yum!)

For this one you’ve got to take a momentary break from any diet you may be on. It is so rich, that a small piece will do the trick. The combination of the meringue base and layered with chocolate crème and then layered with a white chocolate and dark chocolate mousse in between- well what can I say…….

The cake is not hard to make, but there is a long preparation time. It’s worth the effort though! Recipe follows- it’s my adaptation from a collection of best recipes in a popular Israeli food magazine called “Al HaShulchan” (On the Table).

Passover Mozart Cake