Category: Bakery
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Go-to Brownies
This is my go-to brownie recipe. Are you short on time, high in need of chocolate? These brownies are the answer! I like these brownies so much that I use the recipe as the key component in a number of other desserts, including Brownie-stuffed Hamantashen. When short on time but still wanting to serve dessert, I…
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Hamantaschen Dough
Jews have dealt with the precarious nature of our life in the diaspora by feasting in the face of adversity. That phrase — “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat!” — is never more true than on Purim. One of the key components to our perseverance for millennia in an often unfriendly world was, and…
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Savoury Syrian (Ka’ak) Cookies
I’m six and I’m sitting with my back to the window of my grandparents’ tiny kitchen in Forest Hills, New York. The yellow gingham café curtains flutter against my back, and my grandparents are standing side by side. Savta (Grandmother in Hebrew) is busy rolling out the dough for her famous date cookies. But I…
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Water Challah
Challah is so intrinsically a part of Jewish cuisine that it is no surprise that there are a multitude of questions regarding the nature of challah within the context of Jewish law. One of those questions is whether we should make challah with or without eggs. In the past—and in some Chassidic as well as…
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Savta’s Date Cookies
These are the cookies I grew up on. My Savta also grew up on them; in her childhood, they were round hand-shaped biscuits individually filled with sticky date filling. But with time, my grandmother and many like her decided that it would be easier to roll out the dough flat, spread the filling in a…
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Mandelbrot
Mandel, meaning almonds, and brodt, meaning bread, is the name of this old-fashioned Ashkenazi cookie—the Jewish cousin to Italian biscotti. They are moreish to an extreme; one bite and you’ll be looking for any excuse to make a cup of tea just to enjoy another with it. Almonds are one of only two nuts mentioned…
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Babka for a Crowd
I have been struggling with Babka for years. The pastry-chef part of me wants it to be tender and buttery; the Rebbetzin in me needs it to feed the masses; and, most importantly, it must be non-dairy. The recipe below is the latter—still delicious, still moreish, but not buttery, yet still tender, with the added…
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Orange Cake with Chocolate Glaze
The first thing we learned in pastry school is that new recipes are mixes and matches of old recipes—and with this cake, that’s exactly the case. The base is a reworked version of my favourite Lemon Cake, and the glaze comes from my 5-Minute Chocolate Cake recipe. Yet mixed together, they create something entirely new.…
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Pumpkin Challah
Pumpkin pie spice – you either love it or you hate it. I love it. I think it adds warmth and coziness to so many delicious dishes, especially in baked goods. What better way to introduce pumpkin and pumpkin spice to your Shabbat table than in the challah? The colour is just a bit more…
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Sticky Toffee Loaf Cake
Two things I need to share with you about this cake. First, it’s so delicious it belongs in a shop window. As someone who keeps kosher and, at the same time, buys coffee (an Americano with cold milk is my order if you’re wondering!), I jealously eye the lineup of cakes and pastries in the…