Farfel and Fortitude - Top Ten Passover Survival Tips

Even for experienced bakers, Passover is the greatest annual challenge. Passover bakers cannot use flour, yeast or even pure vanilla. Very few bakeries make kosher for Passover desserts, and those packaged Passover cookies and cakes have been sitting on the shelves in my local stores since January. In short, for this holiday, you really need to bake yourself, and that is why I included a Passover chapter in The Kosher Baker.

During Passover, you need to satisfy two distinct baking needs: You need elegant desserts to serve at the Seders, Shabbat and holiday days, and you cannot survive without snack food to get you through the week. For the Seders I give you the easy yet elegant Chocolate Almond Cake with Ganache Glaze. You can dress up the slices with puréed and strained strawberries or raspberries. To snack on, I present my Whole Wheat Passover Granola made with whole wheat matzoh farfel, nuts and dried fruit. You can eat it straight, on yogurt or ice cream, or in milk as a tastier alternative to pink and blue Passover breakfast cereals. The recipe makes almost seven cups of granola, and I ate six of them myself.

I won the get-out-of-Passover-free card this year and am headed to sunny Boca Raton where I will be baking exclusively chocolate desserts because any other dessert is against my mother’s beliefs. And lest you think I am a slacker, I have been baking Passover desserts for two months already, teaching classes at home in Maryland/DC, Chicago and around New York, and creating new recipes for you. Look for more of my Passover desserts in the Passover issue of Kosher Inspired Magazine, Washington Jewish Week and the Washington Post. Trust me, the better the sweets, the happier you will be.

Two weeks out you are likely already making your lists and checking them thrice, have been to the store multiple times already and also to the bank for a home equity loan to pay for all this food. Tell me how you get through Passover. Here are my top ten survival tips to make your holiday enjoyable:

1. Save receipts from year to year so you have a shopping list of what you actually use, and edit during the holiday – if you buy 3 jars of jam and use two, change the list

2. The more chocolate you eat, the less you miss bread and pasta

3. Double snack food recipes

4. Eat healthy – plan meals around protein and vegetables

5. Stay away from kugel – wouldn’t you rather have your Passover “carbs” in the form of dessert?

6. If you must eat kugel, every portion consumed demands 45 minutes of exercise

7. Don’t get frustrated in your kitchen; make sure you have the equipment you need to make what you like

8. A method of making really good coffee during Passover is essential to shalom bayit (peace in the home)

9. Plan a Passover away every 5 years – during the holiday, dream about how next year you might get the get-out-of-Passover-free-card

10. The Kosher Baker has over 20 Passover recipes

Whole Wheat Passover Granola

3 cups whole wheat matzoh farfel

1 cup dried coconut flakes

1 cup pecan halves, chopped into ½ inch pieces

½ cup cashews, chopped into ½ inch pieces

½ teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground ginger

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup honey

2 tablespoons oil

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1/3 cup chopped apricots (about 10 halves)

1/3 cup raisins

1/3 cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 300°F. Line a jelly roll pan with parchment paper, making sure the paper goes ½ inch up the sides. In a large bowl, mix together the farfel, coconut, chopped pecans and cashews, cinnamon, ginger and salt.

Place the honey, oil and brown sugar into a glass measuring cup or microwave safe bowl and heat in the microwave for 45 seconds, until the honey and sugar can be dissolved. Stir well. Pour over the farfel mixture and toss to coat. Spread on the prepared baking pan and bake for 45 minutes, stirring every ten minutes, until the farfel and nuts are browned. Let cool on the pan for 30 minutes. Mix in the fruit. Store in a freezer bag or airtight container.

Chocolate Almond Cake with Chocolate Glaze

Makes one 10-inch cake, 12 to 16 servings

Cake

1 cup whole almonds

Parve margarine for greasing pans

10 ounces parve semisweet or bittersweet chocolate

1/2 cup ground walnuts

3 large eggs plus 2 whites

3/4 cup sugar

Glaze

7 ounces parve semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped or broken into 1-inch pieces

1 cup parve whipping cream

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place the almonds on a parchment-lined jelly roll pan and toast for 15 minutes, or until the almonds are browned and fragrant.

Take a 10-inch springform pan and detach the bottom. Trace the bottom onto a piece of parchment and cut out. Cover the top of the pan bottom with aluminum foil and then wrap the excess foil under the bottom. Attach the pan sides to the bottom, lock in place, and then unwrap the foil and wrap up around the sides of the pan. Grease the bottom and sides of the pan. Press the parchment circle into the bottom of the pan. Grease the top of the parchment circle.

Break the chocolate into small pieces and place in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Add the toasted almonds, ground walnuts, whole eggs, egg whites, and sugar and process until the mixture becomes a smooth batter. Make sure there are no large chocolate chunks in the batter.

Spread the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 40 minutes or until set. Let cool for 20 minutes.

To make the glaze: Melt the chocolate either on the stovetop or in the microwave. In a small saucepan over low heat, bring the cream and vanilla just to a boil. Pour the cream into the melted chocolate. Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed or vigorously by hand with a whisk for 2 minutes to thicken the glaze.

Release the sides of the pan. Use a wide knife or long metal spatula to separate the parchment circle from the foil and slide the cake and parchment onto a serving platter. Place small pieces of waxed paper under and around the bottom of the cake to catch any extra glaze. Pour the glaze over the cake and use a silicone spatula to smooth the top and cover all over the sides. Store in the refrigerator until serving. Remove the waxed paper pieces, decorate with fruit, shaved chocolate, or nuts and serve.

Go to the website for more food and dessert recipes for Passover.

A Rainbow of Hamentaschen

For most of my life, I had no love for hamentaschen, the triangle-shaped filled cookies eaten on the Jewish holiday of Purim.  I always found the doughs dry and the fillings boring.  When I received my husband's family recipe, I had to change my tune.  The dough was easy to roll, shape and re-roll, and the cookies came out perfect and tasty every time.  I filled them with jam, prune and poppy seed fillings and chocolate for the kids.  After a few years, I was bored again.  


Last Thursday, as I was lying in bed in London at 3:00 am  suffering from jet lag, my mind drifted to what I needed to do when I returned home: Purim. Mishloach Manot. Hamentaschen.   I must have been inspired by the complete rainbow I saw in Edinburgh, Scotland earlier that day which appeared following 10 minutes of giant hail and sideways rain; I started to imagine tinted hamentaschen doughs that were flavored to match their fillings.


I returned to my laboratory and created raspberry, chocolate, apricot, hazelnut and pistachio hamentaschen. I filled the pistachio ones with pistachio paste and some with little triangles of good quality chocolate. I played around with the amount of baking powder in the recipe and found that less baking powder yielded crisper cookies.  My flat metal spatula was the perfect tool to lift the dough circles.  I discovered that chilling the dough for several hours or overnight made it easier to roll, but you can still roll right away if you want, just sprinkle more flour on your parchment and dough.  The chocolate dough can be found in The Kosher Baker, and I filled some with chocolate chunks and others with parve white chocolate chips.  My lemon hamentaschen recipe appears on the Joy of Kosher website.  


What is the most unusual hamentaschen you have ever tasted?  Any flavors you would like to see developed?  Let me know.  Happy Purim!

Pistachio Hamentaschen         Makes 4 dozen

3 large eggs

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil

1 teaspoon orange juice

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

4-5 drops green food coloring

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ cup shelled pistachio nuts, ground fine

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting parchment and dough

one 11-ounce can pistachio nut paste

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line 2 large cookie sheets with parchment.  In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, sugar, oil, and orange juice, and mix well. Add green coloring to achieve desired shade of green.  Add the baking powder, ground nuts and flour and mix until the dough comes together. You can chill the dough at least one hour or overnight or bake right away. 

Divide the dough in half.  Take another two pieces of parchment and sprinkle flour on one, place one dough half on top, and then sprinkle more flour on top of the dough. Place the second piece of parchment on top of the dough and roll on top of the parchment until the dough is about ¼ -inch thick. Every few rolls, peel back the top parchment and sprinkle more flour on the dough.

Use a glass or round cookie cutter about 2 to 3 inches in diameter to cut the dough into circles. Place a teaspoon of the pistachio paste in the center and then fold in 3 sides to form a triangle, leaving a small opening in the center. Pinch the 3 sides very tightly. Place on the prepared cookie sheets. Repeat with the rest of the dough and re-roll and cut any dough scraps you have.

Bake for 12 to 16 minutes, or until the bottoms are lightly browned. The baking time often depends of the type of cookie sheet used: cookies on darker sheets bake faster. Just watch the cookies until they look done—you do not want them to be brown on top because then they will be too hard. Slide the parchment onto racks to cool the cookies.

Raspberry Hamentaschen    

3 large eggs

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil

1 teaspoon raspberry extract, Bakto Flavors 

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

4-5 drops pink food coloring

1 teaspoon baking powder

3 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting parchment and dough

1 cup seedless raspberry jam

6 ounces fresh raspberries

For the dough, mix the eggs, sugar, oil, extracts and food coloring well and then add the baking powder and flour and mix until combined.  After you roll out and cut circles according to instructions above, fill each circle with 1 teaspoon jam and one fresh raspberry.  Follow instructions above to shape and bake. 

Macaroon Marathon

I am dreaming about macaroons.  No, not those canned coconut chocolate ones that serve as snacks on the New Jersey Turnpike while driving to Passover Seders.  I dream of a rainbow of light, chewy, colorful French macaroons with delectable fillings. I imagine the macaroons I saw in Europe last summer that are flavored with caramel and salt, green tea, passion fruit, licorice, rose and litchi, and grapefruit, and wonder whether I can create them with Kosher ingredients. 

My obsession is not new.  I fell in love with macaroons in pastry school in Paris.  Even then my French teachers declared them “temperamental” because they require precision, no extreme temperatures in the kitchen and patience. 

I was assigned by the fabulous new Kosher Inspired Magazine to write about French macaroons for their Purim issue.  Thus began a macaroon marathon for two weeks straight.  Don’t you wish you lived in my house?  The truth is it was hard work.

Although I have recipes for vanilla, cinnamon and raspberry macaroons in The Kosher Baker, I wanted to see if there was a way to improve on the recipe. These cookies present many challenges, such as how to achieve great colors without weighing down the batter with food coloring.  The answer?  Add the color to beaten egg whites and then add the almond/powdered sugar. 

I tried different oven temperatures, different rack positions in the oven; I varied the standing time for the cookies and used different colored baking sheets.  Essentially I was running a laboratory.  If baked too long, the cookies crumble.  Too short, they are too gooey in the center and you cannot remove them from the cookie sheet.  Too high a rack, the tops burn and all the color you worked so hard to achieve disappears. Too low an oven rack, the bottoms burn and you lose the chewiness. 

I baked small batches to see how each adjustment worked. The rejects may not look as pretty or be as chewy, but they are certainly edible and I ate them all as the kids were not home during my experiments.  Ultimately, I learned that more food coloring is better than less and you need to use your best, unbent cookie sheets so that the cookie batter doesn’t slide.   I discovered that Bakto Flavors extracts are great, especially their raspberry flavor, which added extra flavor to the pink raspberry macaroons featured in the Kosher Inspired article. 

 If I thought that baking perfect macaroons was tricky, that experience was trumped by the photo shoot.  Oh, the days of placing a cake slice on a plate and turning it left and right.  Every adjustment of cookies required the precision of astronauts repairing the International Space Station to avoid cracking and cross contamination.  It took many hours to get them right.  

After two-weeks I created gorgeous AND delicious cookies and only put on a few extra pounds—but nothing my Spanx can’t handle.  I am now confident that I can tame these formerly moody cookies and, rather than let them get the upper hand, tailor the flavors and colors to my own mood.

Have you tried baking these at home?  They are  worth the effort.  Let me know if you have discovered any great tips.   

Look for the article, baking tips, step by step photos by The Kosher Baker photographer, Michael Bennett Kress, and the recipes for mojito, raspberry and mocha macaroons in the current issue of Kosher Inspired, found at Judaica stores, kosher supermarkets and newsstands, but not on-line yet.

Lemon Macaroons              Makes 30-40  cookies

Cookie

1 cup almond flour (can grind 1 ½ cups slivered almonds in coffee grinder)

2 cups confectioners’ sugar

4 large egg whites, at room temperature (set out at least 1 hour,  3 is best)

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

6-10 drops yellow food coloring to achieve a bright yellow color

Lemon Cream

3 large eggs plus 2 egg yolks

1 cup sugar

5 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (from 3 lemons)

Zest (grated outer peel) of 1 lemon

5 tablespoons parve margarine

Line 2-3 cookie sheets with parchment, making sure the parchment fits perfectly flat on the sheet; trim if necessary.  Lighter-colored cookie sheets work best.  To make the cookie batter, place the almond flour and confectioners’ sugar in a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Process for 3 minutes. Sift into another bowl, discarding any large almond pieces.

In a large bowl, beat the egg whites with a stand or hand-held electric mixer on high speed until stiff. Turn the speed to low, add the sugar slowly and the turn up the speed to high for 3 minutes. Add the lemon juice and food coloring and beat 30 seconds.  Add the almond and sugar mixture and mix on low speed to combine.

Place the batter into a pastry bag fitted with a ¼ -inch round tip. Squeeze out circles onto the prepared sheets until they are about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Leave 2 inches of space between each circle. Let sit at room temperature for 1 hour.

While the cookies are sitting, prepare the lemon cream.  Place the eggs, yolks, and sugar in a heatproof bowl and set over a medium saucepan with simmering water (or use a double-boiler). Add the lemon juice and zest to the bowl and whisk. Cook the lemon cream, uncovered, whisking occasionally, until a thick mixture is formed. This takes approximately 25 minutes. Be patient and do not stir too much.

Don’t leave the whisk in the bowl with the lemon mixture while it cooks; it may get too hot to touch. If the water in the saucepan boils too fast, turn down the heat.

Remove bowl from the heat and whisk in the margarine a tablespoon at a time. Cool for 10 minutes and then cover with plastic and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight. To use that day, place the bowl of lemon cream in a larger bowl of ice water (below the level of the bowl with the lemon cream) for 20 minutes, or until the cream is chilled.

To bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 300ºF. Do not bake more than two cookie sheets at a time.  Bake for 20 to 22 minutes, until the cookies have puffed up, switching the cookie sheets halfway through baking. Do not let the tops brown. Slide the parchment off the cookie sheet and let cool at least 45 minutes.  Use a metal flat blade spatula to remove from the parchment.

To fill cookies, make pairs of them about the same size. Place about 1 to 1 ½ teaspoons of the filling in the center of the bottom of one cookie, place the other on top so the tops face outside, and then press gently so you can see the filling from the sides.  Store in the fridge for up to two days.  

Chocolucias

I learned how to do nothing for seven hours a day. I didn’t think I had it in me. When I was on bed rest before my twins were born, I decided that doing nothing was entirely overrated, after aspiring for boredom for a decade. This past December, my family, known for shlepping vacations where we sightsee and fly/drive from place to place every two days (Argentina last year), decided to try a resort vacation in St. Lucia.

The one day I was persuaded to abandon my perch at the beach, we went on a boat with three other families to Soufriere, hot springs and a cocoa plantation. The otherwise boring explanation of traditional cocoa bean processing caught our attention when a man in bare feet climbed into a large urn with the fermented and dried beans to polish them with his feet. My three sons jumped at the chance to have their turns, never boys to pass up chocolate or a silly experience.

While on the boat, two of the moms were embarrassed to tell me that they were baking brownies from a mix that night in their villa. The next day, I learned of their "success."  They had completely burned the top while the interior remained batter, apparently some confusion over oven temperature. They decided to turn the brownies over out of the pan so the burnt part was on the bottom and the goo was on top. They announced to their families they were serving chocolate molten cake. They were proud of their delicious creation. I was impressed by the clever marketing.

After landing stateside, we went to our friend’s house in Westhampton, New York for Shabbat. To continue the chocolate theme from St. Lucia, I baked a double batch of these chocolate cookies and we ate them non-stop for two days. We all secretly hoped that no feet had touched the cocoa.

Cracked-Top Chocolate Cookies                            Makes 6 to 7 dozen

These cookies can be baked two ways: with or without a coating of confectioners’ sugar. I like to bake half the dough one way and half the other as I like the way the two kinds look on a platter.

2/3 cup canola or vegetable oil

2 cups sugar

1 cup parve unsweetened cocoa

4 large eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar, for coating cookies (optional)

In a large bowl, whisk together the oil, sugar, and cocoa. Add the eggs, one at a time, and whisk well after each addition. Add the vanilla and whisk again. Add the flour, baking powder, and salt and mix well with a wooden spoon or silicone spatula.  Place the dough in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

Line three baking sheets with parchment, or bake in batches. Use a tablespoon to scoop up the dough and roll into balls about 1 inch in diameter. If you’d like to coat the cookies in confectioners’ sugar, place the confectioners’ sugar in a small bowl. Roll the cookie balls in the confectioners’ sugar until they are heavily coated with sugar. Place the cookie dough balls on the prepared baking sheets about 1½ inches apart. Place the sheets in the freezer for at least 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Bake for 12 to 16 minutes, depending on how chewy or crunchy you like your cookies. The cookies will spread and crack on top when they are almost done. Slice the parchment onto cooling racks and let cool.