Unless COVID-19 has totally passed you by, you've probably tried Dalgona coffee. Made famous by a bunch of copycat TikTok videos like this one , the idea is that with just three simple (and pareve!) ingredients, you can whip up a delightfully foamy coffee base: 2 tablespoons each of instant coffee, sugar, and water. You whip the base until it's firm, which is magic in itself. Then you gently stir the base into milk so you don't lose the foam and you have a nice cool coffee drink you can serve over ice cubes.   Voila!  Dalgona coffee! It got its name because the whipped texture of the base reminded people of dalgona, a sugary sponge toffee (honeycomb toffee to some) that's apparently popular in Korea (probably identical to the Canadian variety I've made often). I first succumbed

Cream cheese can be a hit or miss affair here in Israel.  Sure, some brands are okay for eating, but where the native product fails is usually when it comes to baked goods that call for genuine cream cheese, as I discovered at Shavuos a couple of years ago.  It's too thin, too gummy, too shiny, whatever.  It's just... WRONG. In case you’re wondering, sour cream is called “krem gevina shamenet,” and as you can see, there are lots of flavour choices… …but none of them are anything I’d want to bake into a cheesecake. But then this year, I found out I could make my own.  And not only does it taste great, it works perfectly in recipes! I won't bother calling it a RECIPE, because it's too easy to be a recipe!  It only works if you're in Israel, simply because you can’t get Israeli dairy products here.  Then again, if you're outside of Israel, you can probably just buy Philly.  The truth is, you can buy Philly here in a lot of places as well, as...

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 ...

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...

Don’t know about you, but I was afraid of dough for a long time.  Afraid to let it touch anything, because it’s so darn sticky.  Afraid to let it rise uncovered, careful to set it on parchment or silicone when baking.  Careful that the challahs were spaced just so when I put them in the oven to bake, so they wouldn’t end up touching.  Careful, and afraid. But just look at my challahs now! They’re naked, completely uncovered as they rise. They’re bare-bottomed, sitting right on the table. I’m not using a baking pan at all. Experience and a couple of good tools have changed all that… mainly the little bench scraper in the back, which I’ve raved about here before.  Also, a baking stone – preheated properly, it’s hot enough when you put the challahs in that nothing will stick to it.  Even if it does stick, a nudge with the scraper is enough to dislodge it.  Also, I oil the challah generously as I portion it, so that by the time I’m fi...

Sara has been doing some amazing things with (nearly) gluten-free sourdough.  That’s right, SOURDOUGH.  She uses rice flour, I believe, fermented and added to a mixture of various gluten-free flours, to try to rival the flavour and popularity of her gluten-full breads. Check it out over here ! And while you’re at it, here’s some more great press!!! I had an amazing NEW concept this week following a super-fun bread workshop on Thursday:  a 2-generation, 3-baker bread workshop, with me, my mother, and Sara.  Each of us could present one bread from start to finish: something like challah, no-knead and sourdough… or whatever.  Anything, really! I mentioned it to my mother, who is pretty gung ho.  Haven’t told Sara yet… or anybody at our shul, which would be a fabulous (and kosher!) place to do it.  NOT my mother’s kitchen… or mine, I suppose. Anyway, please take a minute to LIKE my sister’s very worthwhile up-and-coming bakery operation over h...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  “No knead” bread broke my mixer! Forgot to blog about this one during the week.  I have some wonderful, local Red Fife whole-wheat flour my sister gave me that I wanted to try out, so I decided to do the No-Knead 100% Whole-Wheat Bread from King Arthur Flour again.  I made it once before with spelt and it wasn’t fantastic.  This time around, it made a VERY dense loaf, but one that was eminently sliceable and eatable. This is an unusual no-knead bread because you use a hand mixer (or stand mixer) to mix the ingredients.  The finished “dough” is somewhere between a thick cake batter and a thin bread dough.  Definitely not kneadable.  And as the six words point out, really too heavy for what my cheapo hand mixer could take on, apparently.  (Luckily, I had a spare in the basement, albeit a tippy one I hate.) Once mixed, you let the dough rise in the loaf pan (mine’s a bit big, which the King ...

I’ve been sprouting these wheat berries for a few days now… they’re ready.  Now what should I do with them??  I have some rye flour I’ve been wanting to play around with… any thoughts? (the sprouts are in the fridge now, awaiting their fate – they should keep for a bit while I decide!) Postscript:  I’ve found the solution (I hope!):  Sprouty Spelty Wheat Bread. Original recipe, speltless, is here , apparently adapted from Peter Reinhardt’s Whole Grain Breads , which I haven’t read.    (from Kath Eats , a blog where I borrowed another recipe a while back, for making Ciabatta and Focaccia from the same batch of dough. (I also just discovered that the lovely Kath and her husband Matt – who bread-blogs at her food blog – are opening their own Great Harvest Bread franchise this fall!) I have no whole wheat flour in the house, but some leftover whole-grain spelt, a gift from my sister a long, LONG time ago.  I decided to use it up with thi...

Well, I don’t really LIKE sandwich bread, and I don’t like whole-wheat bread particularly much.  But fresh, easy, no-knead sandwich bread ?  This definitely looks like one to try for the future. This week, I’ve taken out Jim Lahey’s “My Bread” from the library, and for our before-the-fast meal tomorrow, I’m making an easy lasagna, along with Lahey’s focaccia, which I will sprinkle with olive oil, rosemary and a bit of kosher salt.  I am intrigued by this recipe because instead of plain water, the recipe uses a boiled potato, puréed in the boiling water.  The potato is supposed to add moisture, I guess, and if you read this blog regularly, you’ll know I am unnaturally obsessed with the idea of mushing potatoes into bread. Now, I am forewarned:  this guy (oops – it’s a girl, or rather, a woman ) had miserable failures the first few times he (oops - she) tried making this bread – to the extent that he (oops – she) had to throw out the PAN.  Okay, enough...

----- Original Message ----- From: Me, aka amateur bread baker / tooth murderer To: Recipient of the other loaf of sprouty seedy bread Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2010 8:37 PM Subject: Warning! Embarrassing but true: the wheat berries that ended up on top of the bread harden significantly during baking and CAN cause teeth damage. Eat with care!!!! Ask me how I found out... sheesh, one never wants to feel directly responsible for one's neighbour's dental bills. :-((( Hope there's some kind of Good Samaritan Bakers clause that protects me from lawsuits over this. Take care, J

On Monday at The Big Carrot , I bought some soft wheat kernels to sprout.  I started them right away, along with a batch of basic no-knead Artisan Bread in Five Minutes bread .  (you can buy them at almost any natural-food store, in the bulk-bin section) To sprout the kernels (also called wheat berries), I soak them overnight in a plain unbleached cotton bag, then drain well and rinse twice a day (hanging to dry well in between rinses) until they grow a tail.  These tails are a bit short; I usually leave them a bit longer.  Not bad, though, for a day and a half of growth.  (They’re a bit floury because I forgot to take the picture while they were still in the bag.  I don’t use any flour in the sprouting process.) So today I dumped out the Artisan Bread – which has a nice, ripe smell after two days’ fermentation in the fridge – along with the pre-soaked wheat.  (I had about a cup of kernels to begin with; didn’t weigh or measure after soaking.) ...