I made the hot viral muffins! Flourless, pareve, practically instant… but are they tasty???

I did it – I couldn’t resist even a second longer:  I made the hot viral muffins!

Don’t you love the way eye-catching food has gone viral lately?  If you’re like me, you’ve got videos all over your Facebook feed of recipes assembled in seconds using healthy, colourful ingredients.  Just drizzle stuff in olive oil, into the oven it goes, and thirty seconds later, you’ve got the World’s Best Popsicles – or something.

(I’m sure this is a product of my demographic – if I was a teenage boy, no doubt I wouldn’t get quite so many recipes, and quite a few more brightly animated game images or whatever.)

From starters to entrees, from soups and salads to stews and desserts, I’m sure seen these videos and sat there drooling like me, wondering if it could possibly be THAT easy and taste as good as they say. 

Today’s gorgeous post, the one which caught my eye, at least, came from a site called Averie Cooks, promised Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Mini Blender Muffins. Which has got to be a record for number of adjectives used to describe a food product (click the link to see the original post).

I was intrigued, and after watching the video, I clicked through to Averie’s site to see what was involved.

I discovered that basically, they’re muffins (the noun at the end gives it away!) with nothing in them except a few things.

• · Bananas
• · Peanut butter
• · Honey
• · Vanilla
• · Baking soda
• · Chocolate chips

This is a pretty typical recipe, in that there are many “variations” of this recipe online, most of which are identical.  So if you can’t find the original, just hunt around until you see one with this combination.  Anyway, it all sounded simple enough, and I happened to have some almost-overdue bananas sitting around waiting to discover their purpose in life.

You’re supposed to just whip everything together in the blender, but

Want to make homemade bread but can’t stand touching flour? Perfect tool for sensory issues (yours or kids’)

I keep forgetting to write about this and I SHOULDN'T, because this is a very cool product that I’m excited to tell you about.

I actually bought this on impulse and didn't expect to like it so much, but I really believe it offers an interesting solution for some people (not everybody).

Do you adore getting your hands into a fresh, powdery batch of dough?  If so, maybe this post isn't for you.  This post is for people who LOVE fresh bread, but HATE getting flour on their hands. 

You know – like this:

(if that picture, with all those floury fingers, makes you uncomfortable, you NEED to read on!)

Powdery textures usually make me nuts (sand!!!), although for some reason, I'm okay with flour and bread-making.  But I have known a few people who are totally NOT okay with it, and for them, this product might be ideal.

So… what is it?

It's a silicone dough bag!  I saw these a while ago, first on Amazon and then on AliExpress, my preferred get-things-cheap-from-China site.  AliExpress is great if you don't mind waiting 2 months and even then maybe never getting whatever it is that you ordered at all.  (so, yeah, a pretty limited market)

As it happens, I buy lots of cooking stuff on AliExpress.  It saves me having to figure out what it's called in Hebrew, and the prices are waaay better.  Stuff like my cooking scale, thermometers, even spatulas.  As long as you're willing to wait what seems like an eternity.  No impulse purchases, that’s for sure.

So what is this BAG all about?

It’s made of translucent whitish silicone, but I believe you can get them in a variety of colours.

It works pretty much how you’d assume it works once you hear the words “dough” and “bag” together.  You add your regular bread ingredients, including yeast, flour, water, and whatever else, to the bag.  Then, you knead as you normally would, except you’re touching soft, velvety-textured silicone instead of dry, powdery flour.

Here’s what the process looks like, the “new-fashioned” way!

The difference between the silicone dough bag and doing this in a regular plastic bag is that the dough bag is strong enough that you really can give it a thorough kneading.  I did a batch of pizza dough earlier in the week and Naomi Rivka said, after a couple of minutes, “It’s not really mixed.”

I let her peek inside and indeed,

Homemade “No Corn Syrup!” Kosher Marshmallows (without all the patchke)

I’ve always loved the way Shoshana at Couldn’t be Parve turns out gorgeous gourmet marshmallows in flavours like Blood Orange, Rose and Raspberry Lemonade.  She makes it look easy, and the truth is, I’ve followed her recipes and they’re not difficult.

But as with most marshmallow recipes, they involve hauling out a thermometer (and I don’t have a real candy thermometer, just a digital one that I dunk into things as needed). 

Most marshmallow recipes also call for corn syrup, though Shoshana does offer a liquid invert sugar “marshmallow syrup” recipe that I’ve used several times.  It works, but it involves extra steps that add to the “patchke” of making marshmallows from scratch.

When we were invited to gluten-free friends for lunch, I saw it as a great opportunity to make marshmallows again.  But I REALLY wasn’t looking forward to monitoring the temperature or doing the invert-sugar step.  Out of curiosity, I started googling thermometer-free recipes, and found this one, which was also – as a bonus – corn-syrup free as well.

I missed photographing the early steps of prepping this, but it’s very straightforward.

Before you start, you will need:

• REAL Gelatin, not unflavoured kosher jelly-style dessert pudding mix or any other thing that makes a jelly-type pudding.
• A stand mixer.  Any marshmallow recipe needs about 10-15 minutes of mixing, but with a decent stand mixer, you can just start it up, set a timer, and walk away while it works.

I used the last package of our Kolatin gelatin from Canada.  It expired about a year ago, so I tested it first by mixing it with a little water, and it set up just fine.  If it hadn’t, there is gelatin available in stores here in Israel as well.

Here is the gelatin, mixed with water.

(Don’t ask me, by the way, why gelatin is pareve.  It comes from animals… but apparently changes sufficiently that it is no longer considered an animal product?  If you can explain this, let me know in the comments!)

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!)

Yom HaAtzmaut – Independence Day Challah

Looking for pictures to go with a blog post about Israel’s Independence Day, coming up this Tuesday, I discovered a beautiful “new” (to me) challah tradition:  the Yom HaAtzmaut Challah.

(photo credit:  רותי רוטשטיין, via wikimedia)

According to the note that came with the picture, there are a few explanations for the unique design of the challah:

“The center of the special holiday meal is a challah made ​​of twelve parts, which reminds us of the 12 tribes, symbolizing the unification of all parts of the nation and in memory of ancient days.”

The shape of the challah is also reminiscent of a crown… intentionally so.  And, of course, there are charming little flags poked into every single segment to top it off.

The photographer says:

“We have adopted the custom of baking a special Independence Day challah from the Pri-Chen family who lived in the village. We've passed this practice to the next generation and it’s been accepted as part of our regular Independence Day meal.  The late David Pri-Chen z”l wrote a special song to be said before eating this challah, and the photo shows this song in his handwriting, on the holiday table.”

The song ends with the blessing that King David will accept his crown and renew his kingdom, and we will all stand like brothers together, here in the land.

May this festival of Kacholavan (blue and white), our first in Israel, be a sweet and peaceful one, a crown for all of bnei Yisrael.

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.

Want, want, want… (ice cream bread?)

  Hmm… maybe I’ve got time to make this before we go?!?!?!?

• Three ingredients (two if you omit sugar, which sounds like a good plan)!
• Three minutes (not counting thaw time)!
• No kneading!
• (Apparently) not too sweet!

… Holy Oh-Em-Jee, everybody – it’s ICE CREAM BREAD.

1. Ice.
2. Cream.
3. Bread.

Step the First.  You thaw the ice cream.

Step the Second.  You stir in self-rising flour.  Okay, this isn’t exactly ONE ingredient, and I normally consider it an abomination, but I happen to have TWO bags of the stuff here that Ted bought by accident.

Step the Third.  Bake.

Step the Fourth.  Indulge.

The “secret recipe” is more of a ratio than anything else:

1 cup full-fat ice cream : 3/4 cup self-rising flour

Bake at 350° for 25-45 minutes (depending on how big a batch) until toothpick comes out clean.

This version recommends Triple Brownie ice cream, 1 cup : 3/4 cup and bakes for 25-30 minutes.  This version uses Butter Pecan, doubled to have 2 cup : 1 1/2 cup and baked for 45 minutes.

Play with it, let me know which you love best.  And I’ll report back here if I get a chance to try this before I move.

Sorry to fans of this, my most-neglected blog.  Israel is my big project at the moment and I suspect it will be a while before I am free to bake again regularly… :-(

Feel free to follow our adventures at my aliyah blog in the meantime!!!

Schlissel challah: Witchcraft, divination or… good clean bread-based fun?

In answer to the question in the title… well, my vote is with the latter (cast yours below in the Comments section!). 

When I posted a reminder on facebook last night to think about including a key in the first post-Pesach challahs (see this old post to find out why), somebody posted a link to this article (“Shlissel Challah – The Loaf of Idolatry?”) and someone else recommended this one (“Serious Segulah or Pagan Piffle?”). 

One person wrote, “the origins of shlissel challah is completely avodah zarah [idol worship].”  Ouch.  One commenter in a thread of one of the posts above wrote that a prominent rav “called this shlissel challah minhag "ridiculous", a violation of nichush [divination], and told his wife not to "dare" do it.”

I read the articles – really, I did.  I love fascinating new information.  I love controversy.

The first article (“Loaf of Idolatry?”) made me sad, partly because his article claims to be all scholarly but he doesn't really prove his point at all.  It’s full of footnotes and nicely formatted, but it mainly lacks substance.  Just because Christians did it did something in Europe doesn't mean they started it (he says that they did it, but not that we didn't).  As one commenter pointed out, we do have (and I had seen but then forgotten) bread stamps from the time of the 2nd bais hamikdash.

As for the charge of nichush [divination], this is totally NOT the intention of that prohibition, which (in my limited understanding) is more against auguring by natural signs.  Like whether, if a rodent sees its shadow, winter will end sooner, or later, or whatever.  We’re not allowed to say the ending of winter has anything whatsoever to do with the cloud conditions over Punxsutawny Phil.

The author of the first paper (“Loaf of Idolatry!”) also claims those who use a key view "a die-cut piece of brass as an intermediary between them and the Almighty." Just so you know where he’s coming from.

There’s a reflex these days, in the religious community, against doing anything that smacks of “what the goyim do.”  I was even told at one point that it might not be such a good idea to decorate our houses with greenery at Shavuos (a well-documented and longstanding tradition) because it’s too similar to the Christian practice of bringing a tree and garlands into the house in December.

In the case of this article, I remain unconvinced.

That said…

I am most definitely against placing too much faith in segulos [auspicious deeds or objects], which has been way abused, if frum magazine ads are any indication.  There are always people willing to prey on the gullible or desperate by selling “charms” in various forms. 

But if you think of the key as an object to help us focus our kavannah [intentions] at a particular time of year... I say yea… and yay (cuz it involves bread, which I love)!

There’s a BIG difference in mindset between thinking, "this holy key will 'unlock' my income!" and thinking, "I hope this key symbolizes good things to come" (presumably with effort and prayer).  To me, this is a lot like what we do with various symbolic foods at Rosh Hashanah.

Israeli blogger Ester from Kosher & Frugal DID post a sensible warning we should all keep in mind: 

“Keys are often made of metals than can leach out into food if baked.” 

More from Ester: 

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???

Disappointing Apple (Stuffed) Challah

Disappointing because it was a LOT of work and tasted, well, not extraordinary.  Blah.

I was inspired by this beautiful post about an apples-and-honey challah – sounds amazing, right?  Stuffed with apples, it truly is gorgeous – click over and check it out (the one above, left, is mine).  But she doesn’t show you a picture of the inside, so I’ll cut right to the chase and show you that what looks like a TON of apples, going in, totalled to a few straggly bits that didn’t make a noticeable difference to the bread itself.

To be totally, TOTALLY fair, I didn’t follow her recipe.  I used Maggie  Glezer’s Czernowitzer Challah, because I’ve used it for stuffed onion/poppy challahs every Purim and it always works out okay.  I think it’s not as sweet a dough, but the texture was also eminently ordinary.

Lots of work, though…

Chop up apples – the original uses bigger pieces, and perhaps they’d be less juicy if you didn’t cut them so much… and they might not “vanish” into the bread in the same way.

 

Roll out the snakes, but flatten them to add the apple.

Ignore the odd “bone” shape of the dough here.  I felt the ends were getting too skinny, so I folded them back and it worked out okay.

By the time I had done four of these, you can’t tell from the pictures, but I had a sopping mess on the table and was practically screaming with frustration.  I absolutely could NOT keep any of the snakes closed for more than a few seconds.  The dough was too wet and sloppy and… well, argh.  I have no idea how it looks so good in the pictures.

This finished woven bread does NOT look good, but the magic happens when you flip it over…

And behold – an actual, slippery, newborn challah.  You can’t tell from this picture, but 20+ challahs later, I’ve become very, VERY good at this woven challah that was new to me only a couple of weeks ago.

 

In any event (or, as they say in England, “in the event,” which means a totally different thing over there - “he was sent on this important and, in the event, quite fruitless mission,” or, in this case, “she braided this awkward and, in the event, quite fruitless challah”)… so anyway. 

The challah dried out nicely while it was rising and despite my fears that the breads would slip open and slop their contents all over the pan while it baked, turning it effectively into sticky buns, the snakes actually stayed shut and miraculously, the bottom of the challah was solid and dry by the time it came out of the oven, revealing no hint of the tiny-bits-o-appley-goodness that lay within.  Very, VERY tiny bits.

A few tips from experience if you DO want to make an apple-filled challah: 

• Use a fairly firm dough – none of that no-knead stuff here. 
• A sweeter dough, like the one originally called for, is probably best as well.
• Use larger chunks of apple than I did, so they don’t leach water all over your dough.  But not too large, or they’ll poke out.
• Be generous with the apple so you can see it in the end result… but not too generous, or it’ll goober out everywhere.
• Work quickly once you’re filling and sealing the snakes.
• If you’re not confident in your ability to do a complicated braid with floppy, wet snakes, just simplify – create one long, fat snake and just do a coil challah instead.
• Have a bench scraper and side towel very, very handy, and don’t hesitate to use them… everything may ooze and stick and you’ll need to dry/scrape it up quickly.
• Bake time will be longer than usual because everything is so very, very wet.  I found my thermometer almost essential – you can’t tell if it’s done from the outside.

Oh, and finally…

• Don’t make it for erev Yom Kippur, when everybody’s rushing to eat quickly and don’t really care how much effort you put into the $#!%^ challah.  Save it for when you can really savour it…

Well-rounded challah?

I was so excited when I saw that Shoshana of Couldn’t be Parve (one of my favourite kosher food blogs!) had posted this Round Woven Challah Tutorial.  She used beautiful coloured dough – there’s even a video.
In previous years, when it comes to round challahs, I have done one of two things:  made a very long  EVEN braid (normally, I make the braids FAT in the middle, but that doesn’t work for round) and then just wrapped it in on itself.   Or… um… just made a big, fat snake, and wrapped it up like a snail.  Easy!  (Plus, that’s what my mother does, so it’s not only easy, it’s a TRADITION!) (click the link above & scroll down to see both models)
I’ve always thought of myself as a klutzy,  non-dextrous person, but the truth is that my regular 4-braids come so easily now that I am starting to think maybe I just needed practice all along.  (I have been partly emboldened along the way by various paper-folding things, like Curious George paper boats and these butterflies.)
So when I saw Shoshana’s tutorial, I thought - “why the heck not?!”  I mean, I won’t wreck her tute for you, but I will share a sneak preview (properly linked, with credit, borrowed for review purposes only) and tell you she makes it look TOTALLY simple.

So why the heck not, right?
Well, because I’m a klutz, that’s why.  And because I had already made my dough, which is one of my super-sloppy, no-knead, ultra-wet doughts that produces challah that feels like cake, but which lacks the substance needed for those truly chashuvah (chashuvah = important / substantial) braids or designs.
Here are the snakes.  This is after TWO stretch-and-fold operations, and believe me, it’s still totally sloppy and trying to melt into the tabletop.  Call it Extreme Baking.  The snakes are still a little fat in the middle, but much more elongated than usual.

Now, you lay them in a cross-hatch design:

And over, over, over, forwards and back (watch the tutorial!) until just the ends are left, which you bang and pinch together.  First one, not too shabby…

So I got overconfident with the second one, and tucked the ends under too much, leaving this weird blobbish look on top.  Ugh.

So I figured it out, kind of… when tucking the ends, you tuck them on TOP of the over-under bits, not THROUGH into the centre, or else they’ll be visible.
Before tucking: isn’t this a beautiful shape in its own right?

Now, tuck… on TOP, not THROUGH:

All tucked in!

Now, flip the challah:

…Aaaaand repeat.  (see the ugly lumpy one at the bottom right side???)

… and done!

Okay, still pretty klutzy… but hopefully, delicious!
(and YES, that is a laundry hamper with a rack perched on it… hard to find table space around here on a homschool / cooking Friday!)
How do you do round challahs?  Lazy way?  Fancy way?  Something in between???

Welcome! (and kosher label FAIL)

If you’re here from Jamie Geller’s Joy of Kosher blog spotlight (and managed to find my URL hidden there at the very bottom) – welcome!  Take a second to click LIKE up above and join my blog empire!

Does this happen to you???  You start with a perfectly lovely kosher kitchen label… like this one:

And then you use it for years and years and after a while, it starts to look more like THIS one:

 

As the kids say…or said, a couple of years ago… FAIL.

Now, this is an actual unretouched photo.  I have done nothing to this label except wash it with a cloth in soapy water every time the bench scraper it happens to be attached to gets washed.  Notice that the label a) is cracked and peeling, and b) is illegible (there are a few flecks of green left on the label, but that’s all).

Well, in case you weren’t here to read my post earlier this week, I’ve finally found kosher labels, from Oliver’s Labels, that actually WORK (click the link to enter to win a set of them and MORE!) – and today I am attaching this gorgeous new “Parve” label to the bench scraper so it never accidentally gets mixed up.

Now, this label has just gone on, which isn’t exactly a fair comparison with the old one…  but here are some which have been attached for a year and a half and they’re still beautiful and going strong.

Here’s a couple of labels I attached to my keychain in January of 2011.  They have been handled constantly, unconsciously, roughly, just about every day since then. 

Though you can see there’s been some wear and tear, those labels are NEVER going to come off.  They’re not peeling, cracking and the text is not a bit smudged (I’ve erased it for privacy).

Anyway, I guess this is a weird way to say welcome, but I was so exasperated when I was washing the pareve dishes and noticed the state of the label on that bench scraper, which I love a lot, so I use a lot… but which could, without a proper label, be used or stored in the wrong place at any moment, because there are five other people living here and sharing the kitchen.

So – once again… click here to win a set of these labels for yourself, along with another bonus gift from Oliver’s Labels!!!  And if you’re a regular reader, I promise – I will stop going on about these labels… really, I will.