I wanted something different for dessert this Shabbos and for whatever reason, my mind went to the stash of Kool Aid that's been sitting in the cupboard here for over a year.  And the only flavour of Kool Aid that counts, as far as I'm concerned, is Strawberry. Feel free to make these with any colour you want! Anyway, an image of these swirly cookies swirled into my mind and I knew exactly how I was going to make them. All I needed was a decent sugar-cookie recipe that didn't rely overly much on butter.  I've used a couple of pareve sugar cookie recipes in the past, including this one from Couldn't be Parve , which uses margarine, and these ones which use shortening.  But here in Israel, I don't like the taste of the margarine, there are no "healthier" margarines available, and shortening simply doesn't exist.  My substitute has become coconut oil, or (sometimes) half and half margarine and coconut oil.  So I started looking around for r...

  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.  ...

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)....

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...

You might have guessed that I haven’t been a college student for some time now. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still addicted to one of the staples of college-student life.  I don’t feed it to my family, but when I’m looking to treat myself, one of my favourite indulgences is… ramen noodles. You can find all sorts of articles online about how ramen is the perfect college food because it’s something like 20 cents a packet.  That’s not quite true if you’re cooking kosher.  Kosher ramen has always been a little more of a luxury; I don’t think we ever found it for less than $1.99 in Toronto.  Here in Israel, it’s about 4nis (about $1), though it’s sometimes on sale for less (like 5 for 10nis).   These aren’t recipes, more like suggestions.  The key is to not try to do too much at any one time.  Too many flavours will only clash with each other; choose two or three distinctive notes that will work well in harmony.  Here are some flavour no...

It’s no secret that I’ve been searching years for the perfect pareve cinnamon bun.  When I saw this recipe , for a Giant Cinnamon Roll Cake, mentioned on a facebook group last week, it looked sort of perfect – simple, low-key and kind of pretty, to boot. I didn’t use the dough recommended in the recipe – I just made my regular challah dough a bit sweeter than usual. ROLL IT OUT.  Roll it out into a “rectangle” (okay, not exact, but you can tug at the corners gently to make it prettier). SPREAD YUMMINESS.  The cinnamon spread was easy, and I was impressed that it didn’t have a ton of margarine in it.  I used butter-flavoured.  Use fresh cinnamon, if at all possible! TIME TO STRIP. Now, you’re supposed to cut the dough into nice, neat strips.  Theoretically, the recipe asks you to use a ruler and make sure they’re equal so your “cake” doesn’t look all lumpy and bumpy.  My philosophy is that it all tastes the same anyway (probably not t...

Posted from my new BlackBerry PlayBook (so many mixed-capital letters!) because it takes decent pictures and I can get them up here right away.  Yay! Here’s tomorrow night’s pineapple upside-down cake – a vintage classic.  I admit, I have never loved pineapple anything , but we had the bottle of cherries sitting around,and the funky visual appeal of this cake is irresistible (indeed, I was moved to make this by a picture on a facebook friend’s profile).  Haven’t tasted it yet, but the recipe is pasted at the bottom of this post if you’d like to try it yourself. A big plus of this cake is that it’s “naturally” pareve, ie no messy recipe adaptations required.  A big minus, in some folks’ opinion, is that the main “moistener” is mayonnaise… well, that and boiling water.  If you can get past the idea that you’re eating mayonnaise cake, another plus is that you don’t need to add eggs.  You can also try part-mayo and part-yogurt or sour cream or buttermilk ...

BONUS COOKING TIP OF THE DAY – scroll to the bottom of this post! Mmm… my favourite way to unwind on Friday afternoon, when there’s time, is to sample the yummies for Shabbos and blog about them! This week, it’s these scrummy chocolate cookies that start out really good but transform into utter decadence with the help of a caramel filling and chocolate coating .  They’re not TOO patckedik, either. (read on for how it’s done…) The actual chocolate cookies came from this recipe from Frugal Ima’s blog (I reduced the vanilla quite a bit), and I baked them last night, because I have had enough bad experiences of baked goods that were not sufficiently cool to ice.  This is Frugal Ima’s picture, because I forgot to take one myself.   The trick here is pressing down the middle of the cookies RIGHT AWAY when they come out of the oven.  Like her, I used the lid of the vanilla bottle to make the indentation. This recipe made a LOT of cookies. Then, this mo...