Freeze the lime in the coconut (with just a touch of chocolate, mm-hmm)

 

If you’ve ever heard the “Lime in the Coconut” song – don’t worry.  There’s no “bellyaching” here, just a whole fluffy heap of summer-Shabbos deliciousness.

On a hot day, it feels like there is no taste more perfect than lime and coconut mixed together.

Happily, I discovered a couple of years ago that you can WHIP the cream that rises to the top of coconut milk.  Is there anything more perfect, you ask?  No, there is not.

Well, okay... it does get a little more perfect, when you stir in just a small handful of tiny chocolate chips.  Mini chocolate chips work best, because they're awesomely subtle, but really, who's going to complain that their chocolate chips are too big?

Here is the basic premise of this, the easiest and perhaps most perfect of all whipped desserts:

This isn't exactly a recipe, more like a method.  You'll need well-chilled coconut milk or coconut cream, so stick it in the fridge overnight before you open the tin. 

Only use the coconut cream that's congealed.  Whatever liquid is in there after you scoop out the white stuff is incredibly tasty on chicken, so hang onto it and use it for something else, because it definitely won't whip.

• Pull out 2 tins of well-chilled coconut milk. 
• Before it can warm up, skim off the solid white stuff on top and add it to a bowl.
• Add 2-3 cubes of frozen lime juice (maybe 4-8 Tbsp?), to taste.  If lime juice is frozen, let it thaw a little before starting to whip.
• Add 1/2 cup of sugar.
• Whip the white stuff until it gets reasonably firm (it may take a while if it's a warm day, but it WILL whip, so keep going).

Once mixture is fully whipped, gently stir in chocolate chips and transfer to freezer.

That's it - enjoy!!!  Let me know if you love this as much as I do. <3

[lime/coconut photo © Alex Gorzen via Flickr]

Tzivia / צִיבְיָה

Free weekly aliyah tips and more:

Magically healthy panko-baked sweet potato puffs

Are you sick of kugels but aren’t sure what else you can make to serve on the side of a Shabbos or Yom Tov meal?  Here’s something that’s just as EASY as a kugel, only in tasty, crunchy, bite-sized morsels.

 

Last week, I wanted something like the Alexa brand sweet potato “tater tots,” which by all accounts are absolutely delicious.  We can’t buy them here, so I knew I had to make something from scratch.  My puffs came out totally different, but utterly delightful in their own right.  They’re a great way to sneak even more of that sweet potato goodness onto your family’s menu.

Plus, they’re terrifically simple:

Bake or boil the sweepoes (I boiled mine), puree them with egg yolks, cornstarch and seasoning, and then coat the mixture with panko before baking.  I added a little melted coconut oil to the sweet potatoes; you could probably leave it out OR substitute canola if you wanted something subtler (there wasn’t a strong coconut taste, however).

 

Everybody loved the taste and texture of these!

 

Here, I’m pureeing the sweet potato.  I added everything in here:  egg yolks, cornstarch, coconut oil, salt and pepper, plus a little cinnamon.  You can leave the cinnamon out if you don’t like it.

 

I let the mixture sit in the fridge for a while in the food processor bowl to firm up a bit before scooping it out.  I think this really helped, though it was still rather mushy.

 

Happily, we had panko (Japanese bread crumbs) in the house.  I mixed in a little melted coconut oil, plus salt and pepper.  Then, I just dropped in the sweet potato mixture by tablespoons-full.  Because they were so mushy, I tossed crumbs over them lightly with a fork to make sure they were completely coated before transferring to the baking pan.

Granola greetings: a perfect way to start the day (dairy)

It’s sort of like alchemy, really… you take oats, which is essentially horse food, and you turn it into pure, hearty breakfast yumminess.

If you’re thinking of starting to make your own granola, this is one of those “old favourite” recipes you’ll want to keep handy.

This picture here of the ingredients highlights the truly “no-frills” alchemy of this recipe:  crafting a premium product out of all these yellow-label groceries.  (the brown sugar and a couple of other things that aren’t packed in yellow were left out of the photo)

I’ve made this granola many, many times now.  I’m still searching for a source of milk powder (skim or otherwise) in Israel, because now I miss it… a lot.  Plus, storebought granola is pretty expensive here, while oats are relatively cheap.

I was surprised the first few times that I liked it so much; I’m not a huge granola fan.  Before I made this, I tried the Artisan Bread in Five Granola (the granola is meant to be used to make yummy Granola Bread!), but to be honest, I wasn’t that inspired by it.  This one DID inspire me.

What’s the difference?

In this recipe, it’s the milk powder that MAKES the granola.  It makes the granola sort of clump together the same way Quaker Harvest Crunch does – delicious clusters of pure homemade crunchy deliciousness.  If you don’t have powdered milk or don’t want to make a dairy granola – ie, for baking – then stick with the ABin5 recipe; it’s very good.  Otherwise, try this one – it’s GREAT!

I recommend that you not double the recipe.  The single one makes a decent quantity, and it doesn’t keep long.  Plus, my family gets sick of eating the same thing surprisingly quickly.  This is so fast to throw together that you can always whip up more if it vanishes.  (If you have a big family, I suppose you could double it, but keep in mind that you’ll need to spread it out flat to bake properly in the oven.)

This recipe is adapted from The Tightwad Gazette.

What you need:

The Wet Stuff:

• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup honey

Kosher Kinda-Caribbean Rice & Beans – easy, creamy & delish (and pareve, too)

I've been on a bean kick this winter.  So when I wanted an out-of-the-ordinary side dish that would double as something appealing and warm that I could offer the kids when they came home on a blustery, rainy day, I decided this Caribbean-style rice would be incredible.

I'm calling it “Caribbean-style” (sorta Caribbean) because I've never had ACTUAL Caribbean rice.  And I didn't follow the recipes I found online (mainly this one) to the letter. 

2017 UPDATE!  Watch me make a quick-n-easy variation of this recipe that you can throw together in under half an hour:

 

Most of the recipes I found are spicier than my family likes, although one I found suggests cooking the pepper without opening it (do not peel, seed, chop etc, just toss it in whole), which apparently adds  warmth without spicy violence.  Sounds like a great hack if I ever feel like pushing the envelope.

My daughter’s new favourite soup: Creamy Zucchini-Potato (pareve)

I know I’ve been doing a lot of soups lately.  Forgive me… it’s winter and I could not be happier. 

Before we moved to Israel, we got used to inaugurating Soup Season at Sukkos and finishing sometime after Pesach.  Here, Soup Season is way shorter – more like December to February than October to April.  So little time, and so many soups to cram in while we’re still shivering.

This Zucchini-Potato Soup is pareve because it gets its creaminess from pureeing potatoes.  It is super-fast, mainly because you make it in a small batch.  It can easily be doubled, tripled, etc., to serve a crowd. 

Did I mention that my daughter is nine?  She found this herself in the cookbook and has actually made it entirely by herself, except for the pureeing part at the end.

If you are just starting out on the soup-making journey, this is the perfect soup for you to start with.  It can be anything you want it to be.  You don’t taste the zucchini, which is perfect, because most of us here don’t love zukes. 

If you want something with a stronger flavour, add broccoli and boil it a little longer.  For a bit of colour, add a carrot instead.  This soup essentially cannot be ruined.

It’s adapted from Gatherings: the Netivot HaTorah Day School Cookbook, which is a terrific, sensible cookbook now published by Feldheim.  I am actually mentioned near the back – under my previous name - because I was on the original committee.  (I don’t think I actually did anything, but it’s nice to get credit!)

15-minute pareve peanut brittle? Yes, you can!

Looking for a quick-and-easy dessert recipe but you don’t have much time?

All you need is some nuts plenty of white sugar, corn syrup* and a thermometer.  And that, plus maybe 15 minutes, is just about all you need!

*If you’re in Israel, where corn syrup is hard to get, you can make your own invert sugar syrup instead.

Shh… let me tell you a secret:  I don’t like peanuts, so I always make this with almonds instead. 

I toast them in the oven ahead of time, because it really helps intensify the flavour.  No salt or oil; just almonds in a tinfoil pan.  Toasting won’t bring back rancid almonds, but it can perk up the ones that taste like they’ve been on a supermarket shelf in a plastic container for a bit too long.  I also cut the almonds in half, because a whole almond is overwhelming in brittle.

NOTE:  Measure all the ingredients before you start! 

As with other types of candy-making, things move pretty quickly once you reach your target temperature.  Also, forget about the “drop” method – hard ball, soft crack, and whatnot - or any other you’ve read about for checking the temperature – just use a thermometer!

Here’s what you’ll need:

Hot and WHAT…? Hot and sour, one of my all-time favourite soups

Do you love Asian flavours as much as I do?

Then maybe you miss them as much as I do, too.

Even though Israel is technically IN Asia, it’s tough to get authentic-tasting Asian food here.  Takeout places are hit and miss, mostly on the “miss” side of things… as in, I totally MISS delicious hot and sour soup.  Yes, it looks disgusting (if you make it right).  But the mix of flavours, of sweet, spicy, pungent, salty… well, it’s divine.

(And on the plus side, the hottest thing in Tel Aviv is kosher dim sum, and it actually tastes okay, so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much.)

Still, while the cool weather lasts a little longer here, I thought I’d share one of my all-time favourite soup recipes – to make, to share, to just lean over and inhale.  It’s very, very fragrant.  You can adjust the hotness and sourness to suit your family’s taste.

RECIPE DISCLAIMER: 

As with most of my favourite easy soups, this recipe is an approximation, not an actual scientific calculation of ingredients and quantities.  Play with it.  Have fun, and taste it as you go along, and the results will be edible at worst and mind-blowing at best!

My mother’s secret pralines: turn ordinary pecans into… magic

I have the secret!

But you have to swear you won’t tell.  These are my mother’s top-secret recipe, which was my grandmother’s top-secret recipe before that… which may not not really be all that secret after all.

I wish I had a great picture to show you, but believe me, these turn out looking beautiful.  Every time I make them, they go so quickly that there’s no chance to take a picture.

So now, like me, you can make Pralined Pecans (or pralined almonds, as I did during Pesach) any day… or any night! Anytime, really. They are super super easy. And they always turn out well, despite my occasional neglect – crystally and nice and nostalgic.

Ready? Here goes!

Three Magical Ingredients!

• 1/2 lb whole pecans [about 2 cups] - I don't know what she means by WHOLE pecans - I use raw (unroasted, unsalted) pecan halves
• 1/4 cup water [or sherry, my mother says]
• 1/2 cup sugar

Linzer Tart, gluten free by Paula Shoyer (shh... it’s Kosher for Passover too)

Planning for Pesach yet?

No???  Why the heck not?

Oh, yeah... because it's January.  Then again, when better to test out recipes so your family doesn't have to live with those thrown-together first-time "experiments" when yom tov rolls around?

And if you think of it as the most incredible gluten-free pie crust you've ever seen, EVER, then it becomes a little easier (so to speak) to swallow.

Plus, hey, who doesn't love a new cookbook?  Especially when, like Maryland mom Paula Shoyer's brand-new The New Passover Menu, it's a totally user-friendly experience, complete with prep times, cook times, hints for advance prep and freezing... plus, get this:  equipment lists. 

Yes!  A cookbook writer who GETS what it's like to work in a bare-bones Pesach kitchen, not sure if you have a pareve sieve or not.  (Though she recommends that everybody run out to buy a waffle iron for Pesach, which may not be the most practical suggestion ever.)

I discovered Shoyer through an invitation to watch her cook in the home of the U.S. Ambassador to Israel.  Who could I resist an invite like this?  (Not me!)

Ooey gooey can’t-believe-they’re-pareve “Turtles” (we ate them, so I can’t show you what they look like).

If only I had taken a picture.  But Shabbos was early, one of the earliest of the year.  And now, they’re all gone.  I hope that tells you how yummy these are.  Like, “I can’t-believe-these-are-pareve” yummy.

Imagine hunks of gooey caramel, topped with lightly toasted pecans and just the right amount of dark chocolate.  You know, sort of like Turtles?  Except these guys are easy to make at home, out of regular coconut milk.  And no, they really truly do NOT taste like coconut.  (Not that I mind the taste of coconut; it’s the texture I can’t stand.)

Special tools?

I usually hate nonstick, but I happen to have this heavy-duty nonstick muffin top pan.  This also comes in handy before Rosh Hashanah to make honey cake tops, which are absolutely divine.  You could also use a whoopie pie pan, or make these in silicone baking cups.

Janis Dohmann’s (and now my) Pecan Pie

This has been my go-to pecan pie recipe for YEARS (maybe since the late 90s?).  But when I went to the site today, I discovered that the recipe was GONE.

Shock, horror, dismay!

Happily the Wayback Machine remembers everything.  So I was able to dig up an archived copy of the recipe.  (If you’re curious, you can also visit my old Geocities site, going as far back as 1999.)

Here’s what the page originally looked like:

I’m reposting the recipe here without permission as a public service.  If you are the copyright holder (Janis Dohmann and family, I suppose), and you don’t want this recipe to stay up here, then please just let me know nicely and I’ll take it down.

NOTE 1: 

Because my pie pan is rather deep, I usually make 1.5 times this recipe (ie 3 eggs instead of 2, 1.5 cups of corn syrup, etc.)

NOTE 2:

For Israelis who have trouble finding corn syrup, I substituted about 1/3 invert sugar, made with this Marshmallow Syrup recipe (I didn’t have Cream of Tartar, so I substituted a small squirt of lemon juice).  Don’t use ALL invert sugar, because you’ll lose the taste and make the recipe waaaaay too sweet.

Here’s the recipe:

Growers of Texas Native Pecans Since 1972

---

Janis Dohmann's Pecan Pie

We have tested many pecan pie recipes but this one, which Janis has fixed several hundred times, is by far our favorite. It has won numerous awards and accolades and we hope you enjoy it also.

---

Ingredients	Directions
2 Eggs, Slightly Beaten 1 Cup Light Corn Syrup 1/4 Cup Sugar 2 Tablespoons Flour 1/4 Teaspoon Salt 1 Teaspoon Vanilla 1-1/4 Cups Broken Texas native pecans	Preheat oven to 375 deg F. Spread pecans in an unbaked 9-inch pie shell. Mix remaining ingredients and pour over pecans. Bake at 375 deg F. for 40 to 50 minutes or until filling is set.

TIPS:

1. Cover the edges of the pie crust with aluminum foil about halfway through baking to prevent crust from getting too brown before the pie is done.
   
2. For best results, be sure to use only Texas native pecans. If you insist on using hybrid pecans or pecans grown in some other state, don't complain to us if you aren't happy with the way your pie turns out.
   
3. Note that this recipe calls for Light Corn syrup (we use the Karo brand). Many people use dark syrup in their pecan pies but we find that this gives the pies a rather strong taste and a darker, less appealing texture.
   

We hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do. We would love to hear how your pie turned out -- you can contact us at [email protected] .

| Pecan Home Page | Order Some Pecans | Dohmann Home Page | Top of This Page |

This site is http://www.ortech-engr.com/pecans/pecanpie.html

Enjoy!

I'm not blogging here all that often, because we're still settling in and doing things like trying to make money (go figure). If you’d like to hear from me more often, I’ve included a signup below so you can get on my mailing list for Jewish parenting ideas, kids’ book giveaways, and more.  No obligation, just tons of (occasional) fun.

Tzivia / צִיבְיָה

Jewish parenting ideas, inspirations, and freebies (no spam!)

Recipe: Old cake, new cake… on Shavuos, we have two cakes!

And no, they’re not both cheesecakes… although one is; a special all-Israeli cheesecake for which you can find the recipe a bit further down.  And okay, both are dairy-based; sorry to anyone who can’t have dairy at this very milky time of year…

(In fact, since I started to write this, my husband decided to make a classic North American lemony cheesecake, deapite my predictions of doom that it wouldn’t work with Israeli cheese… so we may end up with three cakes.)

With all of my dooming and glooming about baking in Israel, I was happy to receive a recipe from my ulpan teacher on Sunday night which she guaranteed would work with Israeli ingredients – given that she’s never baked it anywhere else.  I figure as an old dog making aliyah, it’s time for a new trick… with cheesecake.

Except, except, except… her cheesecake doesn’t have a crust.  Heresy!  I couldn’t bake a crustless cheesecake.  Honestly, I was about to pour it into the pan (#26, according to her instructions, which took some measuring, because I’d never heard of this size before), when I broke down and decided I simply couldn’t do it.

Hence, a last-minute, Lotus biscuit crust.  If you have never had Lotus / Biscoff / Speculoos biscuits before, you must.  I was already dreaming of them before we got here, having read on several baking sites that they are simply delicious.  Indeed, I found a copycat recipe a number of years ago and tried to recreate them, but really, they were nothing like the real thing. 

(Trust me, this is a cookie people love so much that they made it into a spread.  So if you’re eating a biscuit that isn’t a Lotus, you can “convert” it with a dab of spread!)

Anyway, we had a bunch here, but the catch is that they’re individually wrapped… which meant individually unwrapping about four dozen of the things to make a crust in my #26 pan.

Crumble, crumble, crumble…

…Crust!

 

As you can see in the picture above, the cake was already completely mixed.  Like I said, I was about to pour it into the naked tinfoil pan, but simply couldn’t do it.  So the cheese part waited while the crust baked.

… Baked crust!

At last… time to pour the cheesecake stuff in.  Waah!  Even without a crust, this would barely have fit in the pan.  Maybe I did something wrong…?  But I sampled a bit to make sure it was yummy before slipping it into the oven, so I think it’s okay.

 

Here’s the recipe. 

Lucky for you, I have transcribed it below so you can try it out yourself without needing to squint through my Hebrew handwriting.

But what about the second cake? 

It wouldn’t be Shavuos without an old cake, a familiar family friend.  And the most familiar of all is my Grama’s Neapolitan Cake.  Which sounds all hoity-toity, unless you think of it (as I do) as “pudding-cookie cake.”  Really – it’s just pudding and cookies; it really is that simple.

STEP 1:  Take four HUGE cookies:

STEP 2:  Slop some pudding onto them… and sprinkle with toasty almonds so it doesn’t look like so much something a child made:

Wah-la!

For the full Grama’s Neapolitan Cake recipe, click here.

And for the “new” cheesecake recipe from my ulpan teacher Galya… well, read on.

ALL-ISRAELI CHEESY CHEESECAKE FROM MY ULPAN TEACHER GALYA

(if you try to make this outside of Israel, your results may vary)

Cheesecake Ingredients:

• 750g gevina levana / white cheese (I used 2 tubs, 1 500g and 1 250g)
• 6 large eggs, separated
• 200ml (1 regular tub) 15% shamenet chamutza / sour shamenet = roughly like sour cream
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar, divided
• 4 tbsp korenflor / cornflour = corn starch (not corn meal!)
• 3 tbsp instant vanilla pudding mix (the Hebrew term for this: “eenstant pooooodeeeeeng vaneeeel”)
• 1 packet vanilla sugar OR real vanilla extract (that’s what I used)

How to make it:

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees.
2. Mix well the egg yolks, shamenet, corn flour, pudding mix, gevina levana, vanilla sugar / extract, half cup white sugar
3. Beat egg whites with one cup sugar until they form peaks
4. Gently but thoroughly combine egg whites with other ingredients (which you mixed in Step 2).
5. Place in a greased round #26 pan (= 26 cm)
6. Bake around one hour until golden-brown (I generally bake cheesecake a little less than it feels like you ought to so it doesn’t dry out and crack!)
7. For best results, leave in oven to cool at least 1 hour after baking.
8. Ice with “krem” if desired (see below).

(one HUGE cheesecake, as demonstrated by my husband)

“Krem” (frosting) ingredients:

• 1 small container of sweet whipping cream
• the rest of the vanilla instant pudding from the cheesecake
• 3/4 cup milk

How to make it:

1. Beat all “krem” ingredients together.
2. Spread on cheesecake when cool.

NOTE:  I haven’t made the “krem” yet and can’t vouch for its yumminess!

For more information about Shavuos, please check out:  Shavuos Adventures from Adventures in MamaLand.  The adventures you’ll find there include…

• The (simplified) story of Ruth and Naomi (Book of Ruth, read on Shavuos)
• Sample Shavuos menu
• Easy Shavuos kids’ craft
• Free printable Shavuos book for early readers
• Dvar Torah for a midweek Shavuos

Good Yom Tov / Chag Sameach / Happy Shavooooooo-ot from the holy land!

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!!!

Quick, Easy Corny Skillet Cornbread – with Recipe

Tip o’ the Day: (recipe follows) Always preheat your oven to 25-50°F higher than the recipe calls for, then turn it down. You’ll lose 25-30 degrees of heat when you open it and patchke around getting the pan in and out. And most breads (and many pastries) do well with a strong burst of initial heat anyway.

Wanted to get a picture of this before it was too late, but… well, it was almost too late.  That’s how good this was with our chili tonight!

This really is one of the few recipes I’d say would be completely different without a cast-iron skillet. I have made cornbread in pans and it’s lovely… but there is something awesomely crispy about cornbread baked in butter on preheated cast-iron.  Given that my soul-food diet precludes bacon, I tell myself that this deep, hearty crunch and this corny cornbread’s crunchy sweet / savoury crust is the next best thing.  Or really quite special in its own right, depending on if you’re a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty kind of person.

Special equipment:

• 9” cast-iron skillet (mine was cheap secondhand from Value Village, kashered in my oven’s self-clean cycle)
• Optional: a little silicone handle doohickey like this one makes life REALLY good when transferring a hot cast-iron skillet to or from the oven
• Optional: and I cannot tell you how much better life got with a nice pair of oven gloves… (not mitts; gloves!)

The Dry Stuff:

Whisk together thoroughly in a large bowl and set aside:

• 1 1/4 cups cornmeal
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup (or a bit less) granulated sugar
• 1 tsp table salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda

The Wet Stuff:

• 1/3 cup milk (whole milk is nice, but I used 2%)
• 1 cup yogurt (regular, not Greek!) (if you don’t have yogurt, mix 1 cup of milk with 1-2 tsp of lemon juice / vinegar added – stir and allow 5 minutes to curdle and thicken slightly)
• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 stick (= 8 tbsp) unsalted butter
• 1 can (341 ml, 12 oz) corn kernels, drained

1. Preheat oven to 450°F.  While preheating, melt butter in oven in a 9-inch cast iron skillet (about 5 minutes). 
2. When butter is melted (even if oven’s not all the way hot), remove from oven and pour into a bowl to cool slightly.
3. In a measuring cup or small bowl, stir the milk, yogurt (or soured milk), and eggs together well. Stir in slightly cooled melted butter.  Mix well.
4. Make a well in the middle of the dry stuff in the large bowl.  Pour wet stuff into the well in the dry stuff.  Pour in corn kernels now, too.
5. Stir a few times just until moistened.  Do not overmix!
6. Carefully remove hot skillet from the oven (hint:  use your silicone handle doohickey if you have one!).
7. Pour batter into the skillet - place it in the center of the oven.
8. Reduce oven temperature to 425°F.
9. Bake until centre is firm and a cake tester, skewer or toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.  For me, this was 25 minutes.
10. Turn out immediately (use the doohickey!) onto a cooling rack.  If your pan is well-seasoned and you melted the butter in it ahead of time, it should just fall out with no sticking.  Yay for cast iron!
11. If you’re the patient type, allow to cool 10 to 15 minutes before serving.
12. Yum!

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???

Test-Driving the Pyrex Bake-a-Round

I have taken one giant step forward in my Ongoing Quest to create the perfect round and malty bread, which will sustain me through the winter!  And I also got to test-drive the newly-toivelled Pyrex Bake-a-Round baking “pan.”  (which is really just a tube in a rack)

Here’s the Bake-a-Round, all greased up (with shortening, per the instructions, NOT Pam, though I don’t know why) and ready for action.

I decided to use this British Malt Loaf Recipe, for authenticity.  I figured it’s from the Flour Advisory Bureau.  Even their name is FAB; how bad could the bread be?  I liked the fact that most of the ingredients were scaled, and quickly switched my scale to pounds and ounces so I wouldn’t have to convert.  I also appreciate its use of the word “whilst.”

(I doubled everything, because it didn’t sound like very much.)

Ingredients for Malt Loaf

(bastardizations of the original, for necessity or preference, shown with strikeout below)

75ml (2 1/2 fl oz) hand-hot water
200g (7oz) brown flour or 100g (3 1/2 oz) wholemeal flour and 100g (3 1/2 oz) strong white flour – I don’t have whole wheat, so I subbed 3oz spelt, 4oz bread, then doubled these to get 6oz spelt, 8oz bread flour.
2.5ml spoon 1/2 tsp) salt
2 x 15ml spoons (2 tbsp) malt extract – YES!!!  I have this!
2 x 15ml spoon (2 tbsp) black treacle dunno what treacle is, but I suspect it’s molasses; I used molasses.
25g (1oz) margarine we’re out of margarine, so I used oil, but ran out halfway, so I only ended up with 1.5oz instead of 2oz of oil.
30g (1oz) dark soft brown sugar we’re out of brown, so I used white and a bit of extra molasses
100g (3 1/2 oz) sultanas  sultanas is British for raisins; I omitted these!
Honey or golden syrup to glaze because I baked this in the Bake a Round, I didn’t glaze it.

Yeast:
2 x 5ml spoons (2 tsp) conventional dried yeast + 5ml spoon (1 tsp) sugar
or 15g (1/2 oz) fresh yeast
or 1 x 5ml spoon (1 tsp) fast action easy blend yeast – YUP, I used regular instant yeast.

How to make Malt Loaf

1. Stir the dried yeast and sugar into the water and leave until frothy, or blend the fresh yeast with water, or mix the easy blend yeast with the flour.
2. Place the flour and salt in a bowl, add the sultanas.
3. Warm the malt, treacle, margarine and sugar until just melted and the sugar dissolved, and stir into the flour with the yeast liquid. (Note: if using instant yeast add to dry flour and warm the water with the malt mixture).
4. Mix to a soft dough.
5. Turn onto a floured surface and knead until no longer sticky (about four minutes), adding more flour if necessary.
6. Shape and place the malt loaf in a greased 500g (1lb) loaf tin. Cover the dough and leave to prove in a warm place until doubled in size - about one and a quarter hours.
7. Bake at 220°C, Gas Mark 7, for 30 minutes until browned and the malt loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.
8. Cool the Malt Loaf on a wire rack. Whilst the loaf is still hot brush the top with honey or syrup.

Actually, I just dumped the wet stuff, yeast, salt, sugar, etc., into the bucket and stirred in the flours until it was kneadable.  I might warm the wet things a bit more first next time.

Makes 1 Malt Loaf

Flour Advisory Bureau
www.fabflour.co.uk

Once mixed, the dough just kind of sat there in the bucket.

After a LONG wait, I blobbed it into a ball and rolled it up, then jammed it into the tube.  It was easy enough to insert, but didn’t keep its shape – the whole loaf sagged down to the bottom more than I’d expected.

     

Oops – forgot to cover the ends with tinfoil, so I did that after a bit.

Time for baking (still not very risen, but a bit bubbly, at least!

 

Popped it into a 425° oven, which turned out to be too hot for a loaf this big and sweet.  After a while, it got very dark, but it still wasn’t done.  After another long while, it got BLACK on the bottom, and was as done as it was going to be, so I pulled it out.

I thought getting the loaf out of the Bake A Round was going to be tricky, but it turned out the loaf wasn’t coming out because I still had the tube in the rack.  Once I lifted it slightly out of the rack, the loaf pretty much slid out, with the help of a silicone splatula.  (splatula = more like a bowl scraper than the pancake turning thing most people call a spatula)

Looks like a disaster, I know, but – cooled and sliced, it actually ended up tasting delicious.  My mother said, “tastes like it should have raisins in it!”  Thanks for that vote of confidence.  Everybody thought it was very sweet indeed – probably too sweet to serve at supper alongside potato-corn soup, which I did.

Also, the loaf had a weird “split” down the centre, which you can kind of see here, probably due to the overly high baking temperature.  I would bring it down next time, probably to 400 or maybe even 375, to give it time to rise and bake through without excessive browning.

It didn’t slice particularly well, and I did wait until it was only warm, not hot.  The crust crumbled tremendously.  I think perhaps a bit more kneading next time will give it less cakey crumbliness and more bready strength.  And less sugar, because it really doesn’t need all that treacle/molasses, plus sugar, on top of the malt, unless you want a really festive or breakfasty loaf.

So, to sum up, for the future:

• no added sugar
• all white flour to maximize rise / gluten until the recipe is perfected
• use the full amount of oil
• knead more
• longer rise time before forming loaf?
• lower bake temperature

Nevertheless, I feel good about this recipe.  I really feel like I’m on my way!

(filing this under barley because that’s what malt really is!)