When I first found out that Judaism had a holiday specifically for celebrating dairy foods, my first thought wasn't cheesecake.  My first thought was... gulab jamun. What the heck are gulab jamun??? If you love Indian food as much as I do, you probably already know. I grew up eating a lot of Indian food, and once I started keeping kosher, I missed it most of all.  More than Chinese, Thai, or KFC put together. (Maybe not more than real dim sum!) When I was a toddler, my father flew to India with an Indian friend and had the time of his life.  He came back with a pair of lovely white linen "day pyjamas" that he'd save for special occasions, a love of delicate nose piercings and an insatiable appetite for Indian food. (For some weird reason, my father hated ear piercings for girls but told me as I grew up that it would be just fine if I got my nose pierced.  And indeed, he didn't flinch when I eventually got one.) Ah, but Indian food.  For...

Do you have a problem with ice cubes? Come on, hands up.  I know I do.  Working in one of the World’s Tiniest Kitchens, I appreciate any solution that saves space, time, money, and hassle.  And living in Israel, I need – desperately! – to stay cool all summer long.  Oh, yeah, and if I can spend less than ten bucks, all the better. Last summer, I bought these silicone freezer pop molds for my husband.  Back in Toronto, he had a brand of storebought freezable juice pops that were 100% juice that he loved as a refreshing summertime treat.  Here, everything is made with a ton of sugar, so I thought he could use these to make his own. Aren’t they pretty? (If you click the pics, you’ll be taken to the best-rated freezer pop molds I could find on Amazon – I bought mine locally.) Weirdly, and to my great sadness, my husband didn’t take to them.  So they’ve mostly sat empty and unused for the last year.  But when the weather here start...

     How hangry do you and your kids get in the morning?  (Or afternoon, depending on how late you've slept in and/or procrastinated.) Around here, the answer is... VERY. These quick, easy, eggy muffins are exactly what you need:  the cure for Hangry.  Shh… don’t tell anybody: they’re basically little mini-quiches, just without a crust. These are sometimes called "scrambled egg muffins."  But on most sites, you'll find them chock-full of some type of meat that just won't work in a kosher kitchen.  Pork, ham and bacon are all super-popular at breakfast time, apparently. Even if you could use some kosher kind of meat, you'd miss out on all the cheesy goodness of these delighful, bite-sized breakfast treats.  So why bother?  Just toss in lots of veggies and you'll never miss the bacon, I promise. Make your life super-easy and prepare these in reusable silicone muffin cups.  I didn’t used to like the idea...

My fellow Israelis are ridiculously huge fans of desserts involving what are basically soggy cookies.  This may have something to do with the fact that the horrendously misnamed “petit beurre” cookies are absolutely everywhere. These cookies are analagous to the Social Tea biscuits we used to buy back in Canada.  They’re misnamed (in Hebrew, “פתיבר” – all one word) because, being pareve, they don’t contain a single drop of butter.  I’m sure they’d be a great base for desserts of all kinds, but actually, the pareve ones aren’t a bad substitute. Perhaps the best-known and most-loved of these treats is Kadurei Shokolad (כדורי שוקולד), literally Chocolate Balls.  When I told my kids we were having them, they literally jumped and shouted “yay!”  GZ (age 7) was not too thrilled when I told him he’d be making them himself , but he got into it quickly. These are super-easy to make, and tons of fun to do with kids.  I recommend having a variety of spri...

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,...