Pareve and decadent peanut-butter cookie dough truffles–EASY!

It may not be summer yet, but we’ve had a few days so far that have really hinted that it’s on its way.  And for summer Shabboses, what’s really nice is an easy no-bake dessert that isn’t tremendously patchkedik (involved, preparation-wise).

These truffles capture the “cookie dough” vibe perfectly – they’re soft inside and not too sweet for a grown-up palate, but not too peanut-buttery and healthy-tasting (okay, they’re not healthy at all!) that kids will turn up their noses.  In other words, they’re just right.  And you can make them with just FIVE things you probably have sitting around your kitchen the week after Pesach – at least, I did.

Thinking outside of the Triangle: 26 zany new hamentashen you’ll “flip” for in 5775!

The theme of Purim is “venahafoch hu” – it was overturned.  Everything is flipped around at this busy, zany, fun time of year… including the tedium of using the same traditional recipes, year in and year out. 

There’s a time for “moon and prune” (the traditional poppy and prune fillings), of course. 

But why not turn to one of these jaw-dropping new creations to discover a brand-new favourite you can proudly share with family and friends?  There’s certainly plenty here to choose from…

1. Gingerbread / chocolate hamentaschen

2. Rainbow hamentaschen

3. Nutella hamentaschen

4. Black sesame hamentaschen

5. Yeasty hamentaschen

6. Candy-cane cheesecake hamentaschen

Baking maven Paula Shoyer declares war on kichel. This killer recipe proves her wrong.

Know what the most popular post on this site is, right at this very moment?  By far?

It’s a post called “Mmm… kichelicious.”

I adore kichel, the dry unsweetened European cookie that has been a staple of Jewish life since… well, probably since someone’s Bubby needed to make cookies and discovered that she was out of sugar.  Apparently, thousands of people out there on the Internet love kichel and want to know how to make it well at home.

But celebrity kosher baker Paula Shoyer does not.  Which is too bad, because in every other way, she’s absolutely perfect. 

I enjoyed a baking demo she did yesterday at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro.  She did a really great job of preparing a couple of basic recipes that I hope to share with you very soon.

But the real reason for her crusade to bring simple, delicious pareve baking recipes to home cooks is because, as she said yesterday, “in the U.S., pareve desserts… are absolutely horrific.”

Foremost among the horrors?  The kichels on every table, at every shul kiddush.  Paula did not mince words, describing them as a “dog biscuit with sugar on top.”

Them’s fightin’ words, Paula. 

How many minutes till snack time?? Feeding hungry kids after school.

What do you feed your kids when they walk through the door?

(Or do you feed them at all?)

I admit, this is one of my weaknesses as a parent.  One of the things I’m really not so good at.

Maybe you’re better than me at this (if so, I want to hear from you in the comments!), but perhaps the thing I’m worst at, as a parent, is feeding starving kids – my own.

When they walk in the door after school, they’re famished.  Not literally starving, as I’ve told them many times.  But they are very, very hungry.

Worse still is that they usually don’t realize it yet.  They don’t feel hungry – but they are.

With love from Israel: mega-easy pareve “rogelach”

Many social media people have been worried over the last few days:  apparently, if you Google “Israel,” you get all kinds of dire, terrible images.

This post is my attempt to fix that.

So why is the word “rogelach” in quotes up at the top?  Because if you just google rogelach (or, as I did, rugelach), most of the recipes you’ll find involve cream cheese, and possibly milk and butter.  It seems that us pareve people are in the minority when it comes to rogelach.

And because dairy does such incredible, delicious things when it lives inside a dough, these can never be truly “real” rogelach.  But they can be a tasty, rogelach-shaped puffy cookie on your Shabbos table (or any other day of the week’s table), and some weeks, it just doesn’t get better than that.

I started with regular leftover challah dough.  If you need a recipe, you can try my Reliable Challah recipe.

If you happen to have leftover dough sitting around, you may find these so easy you’ll wonder why people bother going out to bakeries to buy them in the first place.

You will also need some filling ready.  My standby chocolate filling recipe is below, and takes about 30 seconds to mix up.

1.  Roll our your dough into a circle.  Mine were pretty thin, because I prefer more filling and less dough.

 

2.  “Shmeer” it with chocolate filling.  You could also add chocolate chips at this point, or almond paste, or anything else you like inside.

3.  Cut it up like a pizza.  I cut it in half first, then cut each half in half, and do that once more, to get 16 roughly even-sized pieces.

 

4.  Starting at the outside, roll up the pieces, one by one.

       

5.  Transfer each finished “rogela” to a baking pan.

6.  Bake about 15-20 minutes at 350-ish (my oven here is only approximate; it’s turned to a notch below 200 Celsius) until lightly golden brown on top, as seen above.

In case you need one, Here’s my Standby Chocolate Filling recipe, which I have used from everything to hamentashen to kokosh to rogelach and beyond.  The corn starch gives this a little bit of body, so it doesn’t just turn flat during the baking process, which happened with every previous filling recipe I tried.

STANDBY CHOCOLATE FILLING RECIPE

Unless you are feeding an army, use the half recipe!!!

Full Recipe (a ton – too much for most things)	Half Recipe (a lot – enough for most things)
3 cups sugar 2 cups powdered sugar 1/2 cup corn starch 2 cups cocoa approx 2 cups oil – but don’t dump it all in!	1 ½ cups sugar 1 cup powdered sugar ¼ cup corn starch 1 cup cocoa approx 1 cup oil – but don’t dump it all in!

1. Mix in bowl.  No mixer required, just stir it around until evenly mixed.

2. Store in fridge until ready to use.  It will thicken slightly in the fridge, but will still be spreadable.

Optional:  For Almond-Chocolate Filling, I added ground almonds and roasted cinnamon when I made this once and it made the filling taste special and less generic.

Enjoy!  And please share this around to prove that there are still great, DELICIOUS things happening here in Israel.

Good Shabbos from the holy land!

The secret to kichelicious kichel

What are kichel, you ask?  Whether you know them as “bow-ties” or “nothings” or “eyer-kichel” (my Bubby’s version) or “keekle,” they are cookies, but they are so much more than cookies.  Actually, they are both more and less than cookies.  They are puffed-up egg and air trapped in a gluteny web of flour.  They are not themselves sweet, but coated in sugar so eaters think they are.  Good kichel are addictive:  like popcorn, you can’t eat just one. 

Though heavy and Jewish and rich and filling, they are also just that little bit zen.

And now I have learned the secret to making good ones!

Growing up, I was fascinated by everything about my mother’s new mixer.  Yes, even ten years later, it was still her new mixer.  It was special:  it was a Kenwood Chef.  She had to special-order it from England, and after she did, spent the next ten years correcting people who thought it was a Kenmore.  Kenmore was a cheap Sears brand you could get at Fairview Mall; Kenwood was NOT.

I thought this mixer was the most beautiful thing in the world… and now, here in Israel, I find myself the owner of pretty much the exact same one.

How did this happen?

Well, I found it in the trash.

Not the TRASH trash, exactly.  The pile of used clothing and junk that people donated to the Merkaz Klitah (immigrant absorption centre) where we were living.  I spotted it there in the pile one day and grabbed it to haul up to our apartment.  There was a grocery-store bag that contained only the meat-grinding attachments; I took those, too, though I had no interest in ever grinding meat with the thing.

Up in the apartment, I blew off the dust and plugged it in.  It worked!  Well, it made a loud, loud grinding noise, probably the result of not being oiled in 30 years (oops; I still haven’t).  But the motor worked.  The little blender thingy on top spun, as did the mixer part underneath.

So I visited ebay and ordered a brand-new bowl and K-beater.  I loved the K-beater as a kid.  As my mother explained it to me, not only was it the initial of the product (like Superman’s shirt logo!), but it was also the perfect shape to mix ANYTHING.

Ha.  And my mother thinks I don’t listen to her… in certain areas, if I was interested enough, her words will stay with me forever.

And now, as an adult, living in Israel, the K-beater seems to be the secret to perfect kichel.  Maybe not just the K-beater, but I should back up to explain that I have never had a good mixer before.  Only an assortment of hand mixers, one of which was destroyed trying to make kichel a few years ago.

(here’s another post I wrote about making kichel, showing the process step by step)

Although I mentioned a few weeks ago about the frustrations of baking in Israel, and how nothing comes out quite right here, kichel has been the exception. 

Like the recipe I use says, you have to have the ability to mix it HARD for five minutes.  The more gluten in the flour, the better.  You are practically making bread out of the stuff.  And that’s where my “old-new” mixer comes in.

It’s so quick!  So easy!

Dump everything in the bowl:

Cover it with a towel (I couldn’t find a bowl cover on ebay for this model… but ha ha, as long as I make sure the towel doesn’t get caught inside, I don’t need it!).  I tried a couple of times without the towel, but the initial whomp of the motor sends a LOT of flour flying around.

Once the dry flour has been mixed in, I can uncover the bowl:

  

And five minutes ON HIGH later… it’s done!

 

When I slipped these into the oven, I inadvertently discovered Secret #2 to Kichel-icious kichel:  convection oven.  Somehow, we happened to end up with a convection feature in our teeny-tiny bare-bones Israeli oven (the model I ordered was out of stock, so they substituted).

And it turns out convection is perfect for kichel.  Baking them in a regular oven, the essence is to “toast” them lightly to dry them out without burning.  Because of the increased air flow of the convection feature (you’re supposed to also turn down the temperature a bit so things don’t burn), the kichel dried out beautifully and puffed up even more than usual.

So there you go – two secrets for the price of one.

Yummy, yummy, yum!  Good Shabbos!

Which are you: moon or prune?

There are only two kinds of hamentaschen for those who don’t mess around:  moon and prune.

This is a truth I learned as a small child, growing up in a home where, for whatever reason, the Two Kinds (let’s capitalize them for convenience) were the Only Kinds.

Moon = poppy seed.  Prune = dried plums.

(the word moon = my father’s variation on the Yiddish/german mohn)

A few years back, my sister, who’s a baker, offered for sale a pastry she’d made with “dried plums” because it sounded way classier than saying “prunes.”  It sure does.  In Hebrew, there’s no distinction.  “Dried plums” is the only thing you can call them.

But they do mess around a LOT, with all kinds of flavours, from chocolate (okay) to halva (kind of okay) and many others… but they also don’t call them hamentashen – they’re called oznei haman; haman’s ears.  For those who don’t mess around, they’re hamentaschen – haman’s pockets.

My way or the highway.  A lesson I learned from my father, who considered every type of ice cream that wasn’t vanilla “polluted.”

As a kid, I had to learn the difference between the Two Kinds very early because they look so similar.  Both kind of dark and almost chocolatey-looking.  But poppy tastes of horror and disgustingness, while prune tastes fruity and bright (thanks to citrus, which is added in almost every recipe to boost the dried-plum taste).

Despite all the different kinds of hamentashen in bakeries around here these days, prune are seemingly impossible to buy… while the dank, disgusting moon hamentashen are everywhere.

Folks here LOoooove their poppy seeds on the inside of everything, it seems.  For me, poppy is strictly an “exterior” phenomenon.

So this is me, toiling away to pit two bags of prunes (dried plums), boil them with some lemon zest and fresh Jaffa orange juice, and purée them in my Israeli blender into some semblance of lekvar, the jammy filling that tomorrow will become part of my annual hamentashen.

With two of my children gone, I’m still not sure who-all is going to eat them.  You have to be careful, when it comes to the eating of the prune hamentashen.  There’s only a dollop of filling in each, but you don’t want to venture into the “too much prune” territory. 

One year, my first husband decided that prunes’ reputation was ill-deserved and that he’d take a few to snack on.  He loved them!  He ate a whole bunch!  And discovered, miserably, that it really was true what they say about prunes.

Not wanting to discover this for myself, I always a) urge moderation, and b) make some other type of hamentasch that I can snack on freely without incurring the Wrath of Prunes.  No idea what kind it will be this year, but a search of my past posts reveals some mighty tempting prune alternatives…

• pie-filling cherry cake-mix hamentaschen in 2011
• halva and almond paste in 2013
• ginger/cherry (weird!) in 2010
• ginger/chocolate (delicious!) in 2010

Whatever hamentaschen you’re making, moon, prune, or one of the heretical varieties, I wish you all the sweetness, light and joy of this happy, happy Purim season.

Hamentaschen – 3 ways

Coming back from Israel just yesterday, I wanted hamentaschen that reflected all that we’d enjoyed there, culinarily.  I didn’t quite hit the mark, but I did come up with two cute variations…

I used my usual dough recipe from Second Helpings, Please (image below), though I don’t love it because it tends to misbehave in unpredictable ways.  It has never come out the same way twice in twenty years (sigh, I feel so old saying that, but it’s true – the cookbook was a wedding present at my first wedding, and the children of that marriage are now far closer to 20 than to zero).

This time, I did it in the food processor, where, of course, it totally jammed and made a sticky mess.  Ultimately, I added a lot more flour than usual and they came out okay.  It doesn’t taste like it usually does, but it worked.

I always do one batch with a classic prune filling – or, as my baker sister likes to say, dried plums.  It just sounds so much swankier that way.

For the variations, I decided to do a halva filling like this one from Modern Manna, inspired by the awe-inspiring variety of halvas in the machaneh yehudah shuk:

I made my filling with ordinary techina (tahini) that we had sitting in the fridge, mixed with a sugar-water syrup, but I also sprinkled in a bit of Starbucks instant coffee powder.  That may have been a mistake, because it actually masked a bit of the halva flavour.  Oh, well.  (you can see the basic recipe here)

The filling was gooey going in, but actually firmed up nicely, as promised, once baked.

 

However, I was not entirely delighted with these, because the baked filling tasted a bit too much like peanut butter.  For all the (okay, small) effort I’d put in, I probably could have just used Skippy.  Weird.

For an encore, on the same theme, I decided to do a batch inspired by the oodles of delicious, soft, fresh marzipan (in Hebrew, “martzipan”) that’s found in every candy shop and grocery store.  I had some yummy homemade almond paste in the freezer already (I use this recipe and freeze it in logs, instead of buying, because it’s WAY overpriced here!).

I cut off bits of still-frozen almond paste and added pareve chocolate chips for good measure:

Now, this was the same dough that I used for the prune and halva hamentaschen, and I promise, I pinched them shut just as well. 

But for some reason, these ones ALL popped open:

 

Still… once you’ve got almond paste, you really can’t go wrong.  Right?  Open-faced hamentaschen – why the heck NOT?

What are your hamentaschen variations this year???  Oh, yeah, and HAPPY PURIM!!!

Quick Yeasty “Leftover” Rogelach

Blogging while my challah bakes in a stolen moment on a busy school-day work-day Friday…

There are 2 schools of thought when it comes to rogelach (well, besides the totally OTHER school of thought that pronounces them “rugelach” thus causing both mirth and confusion when discussing the vegetable called arugula)… where was I?

Oh, yeah.  2 schools of thought:  creamy or yeasty.  Many recipes call for cream cheese, butter, etc.  This gives a very nice, rich dough that is sometimes flaky, but is more “new world” than traditional, in my opinion.  “Old world” is to make a pareve treat you can actually eat following a good meaty Shabbos meal. 

(“Awesome new world” is to think of these not as PAREVE but as VEGAN… oh, but start with an eggless dough if you want to totally feel the vegan virtue.)

Like kokosh, blueberry buns, and many other yeasted delicacies from the Ashkenaz tradition, rugelach were probably invented as a way of either using up challah dough or saving the baalabuste (aka Hindy Homemaker) the trouble and expense of whipping up another dessert.  As far as we know, my Bubby had ONE dough recipe that she used for absolutely anything that required yeast – it was her challah, her blueberry buns, her pletzlach (that’s the plural of pletzl!) and more.

So when I’m stumped for a dessert, often I’ll turn to my challah dough, if I have extra sitting around, which I happened to this week, because even though I’m bringing challah to neighbours, I had a bit of extra dough in the bucket to begin with so there was plenty of dough to go around.  That dough wasn’t sweet at all, but Auntie Sally’s challah recipe (doubled) calls for 2 whole cups of sugar (400g) so I figured I’d be just fine to make a dessert with the leftovers. 

I thought about cinnamon buns – I made some a couple of weeks ago using this EASY coconut-based dulce de leche (aka caramel sauce) as a base for the buns – and they were completely parvelicious.  But I figured it was time for a change and a slightly new technique:  rogelach.

Easy-as-pie directions:

1.  Roll out 1.5 lb leftover challah dough in a rectangle-ish shape on a well-oiled surface.  (most people say “well-floured,” but who wants bits of flour hanging out in their bread or dessert???)

2.  Spread evenly with chocolate filling (recipe below).

3.  Slice according to this cool slicing diagram that I found over here:

Oops… this wasn’t exactly a rectangle, and some of my triangles look pretty goofy.  By the way, I used my ever-amazing Pasta Bike to slice.  This is my model, which it looks like they’re not selling anymore.

The current model looks more space-age, but it seems like it has most of the same flaws and perhaps a couple more.  HOWEVER, I have never seen a tool that does what this does so well.  All the criticisms on Amazon are true:  the axel pops off from time to time, you can’t cut really narrow strips, the cutters are plastic.  Nevertheless, especially since it came free with my pasta maker, I cannot really complain and would buy another in a heartbeat if something should happen to mine.

4.  Okay!  Now roll up your triangles, the same way you roll up those crescent rolls you buy in a tube.  Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.  ;-)

 

5.  Brush with beaten egg* and sprinkle generously with coarse sugar crystals or, really, whatever the heck you want to sprinkle with.  (* Vegan Virtue Version: plan ahead and make a corn starch wash – mix corn starch and water so there are no clumps; heat gently until mixture thickens; add a bit of salt & sugar for flavour)

  

6.  I baked mine at 350° for 20 minutes and then another 5 for good measure to get them nice and golden-brown, as seen above.  Careful:  depending on a whole bunch of factors, they may be tempted to burn on the bottom, so do not overbake.

* CHOCOLATE FILLING:

Found this recipe on the imamother forums when I was looking for something that remained more substantial than the cocoa / butter / sugar mixture I’d been improvising before (ie something that didn’t totally melt into a “memories of chocolatey” flavoured oblivion).

HALF RECIPE (full recipe was given on the forums, but it makes a LOT)

1 ½ cups sugar
1 cup powdered sugar
¼ cup corn starch
1 cup cocoa
approx 1 cup oil

Mix all dry ingredients.  Add oil till you get a spreadable consistency (a mixer is very helpful but not necessary). Mixture keeps a long time in fridge; will thicken slightly, but will still be spreadable.

Enjoy!!!

Pareve Chocolate Caramel Cookies for Shabbos

BONUS COOKING TIP OF THE DAY – scroll to the bottom of this post!

Mmm… my favourite way to unwind on Friday afternoon, when there’s time, is to sample the yummies for Shabbos and blog about them!

This week, it’s these scrummy chocolate cookies that start out really good but transform into utter decadence with the help of a caramel filling and chocolate coating.  They’re not TOO patckedik, either.

(read on for how it’s done…)

The actual chocolate cookies came from this recipe from Frugal Ima’s blog (I reduced the vanilla quite a bit), and I baked them last night, because I have had enough bad experiences of baked goods that were not sufficiently cool to ice.  This is Frugal Ima’s picture, because I forgot to take one myself.   The trick here is pressing down the middle of the cookies RIGHT AWAY when they come out of the oven.  Like her, I used the lid of the vanilla bottle to make the indentation.

This recipe made a LOT of cookies.

Then, this morning, I made this yummy coconut-milk dulce de leche that I fell in love with a few weeks ago.  Dulce de leche is basically caramel sauce, and this one features only 3 simple ingredients and a touch of neglect.  Perfect for around here!  I should have cooked it down a little longer, because mine came out too thin and runny.  A little thicker is probably better, though it will probably firm up after a while.

When the dulce de leche had cooled a bit, I spooned it into the cavities of the cookies.  So that’s why those cavities were there!!!  (the dulce de leche looks opaque because it’s frozen in this picture; it’s translucent and very caramelly-looking at room temperature, I promise)

The next step is to place the cookies in the freezer for a while to help the caramel set.  This step is necessary, I think, even with thicker caramel because you’ll be turning the cookies upside down to coat them and you want everything to stay put.

Now for the chocolate coating.  Easy peasy:  Coconut oil and chocolate chips (and a bit of sea salt)!  I used the proportions I found in this Instructable, but found it was too thin, so I had to add more chocolate and it was still too runny.  I might use something closer to these proportions in future.  HOWEVER, the way I make my life easy when chocolate coating is usually the same… melt the coconut oil FIRST, then add the chocolate and turn OFF the heat.  I find that if I avoid having chocolate on the heat at all it behaves wayyyy better.

Let the chocolate coating cool for a bit, then retrieve the (frozenish) cookies.

Dip one by one; I double dipped for good measure.

 

I noticed that after a few seconds, my caramel sauce was “bubbling up” through the chocolate coating.  Here is my desperate attempt to drip chocolate over the little craters that marred the pristine chocolate surface.  Just a dot of chocolate on a clean fingertip – drip!  Down it goes.  Still unsightly, but in a different way.

And then back in the freezer to set.  When cool, these will probably be fine in the fridge.  If I did everything (both caramel & chocolate) PERFECTLY, they’d probably stay solid at room temperature during the winter.  But I don’t trust the chocolate coating, so I plan to leave them in the fridge.  As with anything chocolatey, I wouldn’t leave them out at all during any season when coconut oil is liquid at room temperature.

Naturally, I had to sample one of these before I could blog them.  Rest assured that, minor flaws aside, they are a most delightful cookie that will probably wow your Shabbos table attendees, should they be the kind that will overlook minor aesthetic flaws in favour of a cookie that tastes rather mind-blowingly good.  (or should you be that rare home baker who can achieve both aesthetically perfect and flawlessly flavoured desserts!)

Enjoy!!!

Oh, you’re still here?  Waiting for your free bonus tip of the day?  Well, thanks for either reading all the way through or scrolling so assiduously.  Here you go:

TIP O’ THE DAY: Freeze any leftover chocolate mixture in a sandwich baggie. Label well so you don’t stand in front of the freezer saying, “is this pareve?” and “when is this from?” Thaw it by floating the baggie in warm water and then snip the tip of the baggie to drizzle chocolate attractively wherever you want it.

OR

BONUS TIP: If you don’t want to go to that trouble, call your kids into the kitchen and have them assemble dessert “shish ka bobs” out of mini-marshmallows and banana slices. Drizzle with leftover chocolate mixture and freeze until Shabbos.

Enjoy!!!

Pareve Sugar Cookies for (not exactly) a Year…

Searching for the perfect Pareve Sugar Cookie recipe a few weeks ago, I found a bunch of references online to a now-defunct blog post (if you click the link, you will probably get a message telling you just how defunct) explaining how you could create your own sugar cookie mix in bulk.

Intrigued, I tracked down an old cached copy of the post, with the recipe, and stashed it off-line for safekeeping.  And yes, it uses shortening, and if you don’t want to use shortening, then don’t.  Sometimes, you kind of have to.  I use Butter-flavoured Crisco now that it’s pareve again here.

Here’s the recipe – shamelessly reposted word-for-word as a service to you, my beloved readers:

Sugar Cookies for the YEAR!

Warning: This makes a LOT of sugar cookie mix.
We store it in freezer zip lock bags, pre-measured and ready-to-go at any time. (see below)
Ingredients:
12 cups all-purpose flour
6 cups sugar
2 Tablespoons baking powder
1 Tablespoon salt
4 cups shortening (I like to use the butter-flavored kind)
In a LARGE bowl, combine the first 4 ingredients. Cut in shortening until mixture resembles fine crumbs.

**This is your cookie base mix that you can freeze. I freeze 2 cups in Ziplock quart size freezer bags. On the bag, I write: “Add 1 egg and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Bake 375 for 8 minutes.” Really easy to just pull out of the freezer and a child can really make these easily on their own. I got 6 ziplock bags and 5 more batches that we made today.
Directions for sugar cookies:
You will need 2 cups of the cookie base mix, 1 egg, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. (If the dough is still a little dry, you can add a wee bit of water, but you want the dough to be a texture that can be rolled out.)
Combine the cookie base, egg and teaspoon vanilla extract. Using your hands, mix together to form a nice dough. Roll dough to 1/8 inch thick. Using cookie cutters, cut the dough and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 375° F for about 8 minutes or until a very light brown. Cool on wire rack. You can decorate with icing and sprinkles. Have fun! Makes about 2 dozen but depends on size of your cookie cutter shapes.
If you don’t have cookie cutters, you can get creative and use the edge of a drinking glass and make nice round sugar cookies.

Another Option is to use the dough to make Cherry - Almond Drops!
Combine 2 cups cookie base mix, 1 egg, and 1/2 teaspoon Almond extract. Add 1/2 cup chopped almonds and 1/4 cup finely chopped maraschino cherries. Drop from teaspoon onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375° F for 8 - 10 minutes or just till edges are lightly browned. Cool on rack. Makes about 2 dozen.

The only catch is that I decided to do it – for quickness’ and laziness’ sake – in my food processor.  But even in a big food processor, I could only do half a batch at a time, and even then, it was VERY crowded and would barely mix properly.  Anyway, a half-recipe made about 4 2-cup baggies for the freezer, plus one batch I made right away.  Not exactly enough for a YEAR, but perhaps for a few months if you don’t overdo things.

I made a batch of plain vanilla sugar cookies for Shabbos, cut out in loose magen david shapes and sprinkled with sugar, and they were quite well-received.  I bake them a bit longer than the directions suggest, because we like them crunchy, almost brown but not quite.

Tonight, I pulled out one of the frozen freezer baggies, threw it in back ye olde food processor and tossed in an egg and – instead of the vanilla – a teaspoon of Red Velvet Emulsion to attempt “red velvet cookies,” similar to ones I saw at WalMart the other day.  (yeah, yeah, not all my foodie ambitions are all that highbrow…)

A food processor is not strictly necessary to mix up the frozen baggies of “cookie mix,” but I was in a hurry and didn’t want to either a) wait for the mix to thaw slightly or b) get my hands dirty (okay, I know – it’s not dirt, it’s FOOD; that’s what I tell my kids, anyway).  For Shabbos, I just stirred it in a bowl, and that worked fine, too.

The Red Velvet colouring/emulsion came about after Shoshana at Couldn’t be Parve mentioned that she uses Lorann’s Buttery Sweet Dough Bakery Emulsion.  Naturally, I had to buy some, and I found a localish kitchen place that not only sold it but took paypal (I paid online, then picked up in person).  And while I was on their website, I had to pick up the Princess Cake/Cookie Emulsion AND… this bottle of Red Velvet emulsion:

It is a scary, dark blood-red colour – almost black – when it comes out, with a gel-like texture completely unlike any food colouring I’d ever known.  Also, it’s not just colouring – it has a distinctive reddish velvety cake-ish flavour which you might or might not like.

So there you have it… Red Velvet Cookies and your very own pareve freezer cookie mix.  What I’d love is an oil-based sugar cookie recipe, but I suspect there’s  no such thing.  At some point, you really need that solid fat as a base. 

If you wanted to be totally decadent, you could probably mix up this same mixture using butter as the fat… but my food processor is pareve, so I’d have to do that by hand.  And while I’m making dairy cookies by hand, I’d probably pull out the mixer and cream the butter with the sugar – the old-fashioned way.

So… what’s your go-to pareve cookie recipe???

Web recipes – due diligence

Decided to try another kichel recipe, this time Marcy Goldman’s, from A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking.  Being the cheapo that I am, I didn’t rush out and actually buy the book (like I’d love for you to do by clicking the links!), I just looked up the recipe I wanted online.

I found two almost-identical copies of the recipe here and here.

Why two recipes?

When using web recipes, I ALWAYS do due diligence and cross-check at least two versions for discrepancies.  It’s just too easy for a well-meaning blogger to make a mistake typing in a recipe, and it’s also easy for somebody to change around a couple of ingredients when posting their version of so-and-so’s winning recipe (and not say it’s been modified).

So I did that – I double-checked every single ingredient, then went ahead and made the cookies, and after great effort to roll and cut them (sticky!), popped them in the oven for 25-30 minutes as directed in this version.

Okay… I’ll admit it, I didn’t notice the lower number and put 30 minutes on the timer.  So there it was, and then I sat down to do parsha with the kiddies.

Thirty minutes later, the timer beeped, I leaped up, pulled out the cookies… and they were pretty much blackened husks of erstwhile deliciousness.

(Looking at the picture above, they actually look kind of palatable, but that’s an effect of the flash.  I assure you that they are indeed black as coal.)

When I sat down, indignant, to check the baking time (I thought it was too long!), I noticed that this version  of the recipe actually specifies “bake until lightly browned - this will take anywhere from 18-25 minutes, depending on your oven. Check for doneness after 18-20 minutes. Do not overbake - kichel will firm up once cooled.”

Indeed.  “Check for doneness after 18 minutes.”  Not “pull out incinerated husks after 30 minutes,” potentially 12 minutes longer than necessary.

Blah.

Fortunately, there is still Batch #2.  Unfortunately, Batch #2, if it does turn out marvellously delicious, will not be enough to go around.  Fortunately, I’m still planning on making chocolate-chip banana cake.  Unfortunately, it’s very late on a Friday afternoon and I should probably get around to making the challah. 

Fortunately, I love making challah, and it’s easy, and I’m good at it.  So there may be a happy ending to this story after all.

(postscript – I just pulled out Batch  #2 after 18 minutes, lightly golden-brown and ready to firm up once cooled… HOWEVER, I am also nibbling gingerly on a not-entirely-unpleasant refuge from Batch #1, which is indeed baked beyond its prime but still has a modicum of love and goodness stored deep in its crumbly heart… so maybe not a total write-off!)