Looking for a quick-and-easy dessert recipe but you don’t have much time? All you need is some nuts plenty of white sugar, corn syrup* and a thermometer.  And that, plus maybe 15 minutes, is just about all you need! *If you’re in Israel, where corn syrup is hard to get, you can make your own invert sugar syrup instead. Shh… let me tell you a secret:  I don’t like peanuts, so I always make this with almonds instead.  I toast them in the oven ahead of time, because it really helps intensify the flavour.  No salt or oil; just almonds in a tinfoil pan.  Toasting won’t bring back rancid almonds, but it can perk up the ones that taste like they’ve been on a supermarket shelf in a plastic container for a bit too long.  I also cut the almonds in half, because a whole almond is overwhelming in brittle. NOTE:  Measure all the ingredients before you start!  As with other types of candy-making, things move pretty quickly once you reach your ta...

So you made bread.  Good for you! Now what do you do with those ooky, ooky fingers?  Try one of these three magic tricks to get your hands sparkly again in no time. 1)  Get scraping Grab your trusty bench scraper .  It doesn’t have to be fancy, but I haven’t found any other tool that works as well.  Now, just like you’re stripping paint from the wall, gently SCRAAAAAAAPE the dough together.  Off your palms, the backs of your hands, between your fingers, wherever it’s stuck.  Once you have most of the dough loosened, you can rub that around your hands to get the rest off.  Don’t throw it away.  Just ball it up and toss it in wherever the rest of your dough is rising.  2)  Fight flour with flour

When you love baking as much as I do, you become an evangelist. After we moved to Israel, and our whole lives were topsy-turvy, the only time I felt like things were at all “normal” were when I was making bread.  Those breads were rudimentary at first – hey, we didn’t even have an oven.  But they kept me grounded.  I was so ecstatic when all our possessions arrived, including my gorgeous cast iron loaf pans, plastic dough bucket , and other beloved bakeware, accumulated over the years.  It was time to get my hands floury and really start baking again. I love how centered and grounded baking makes me feel, but can’t help wondering why other people seem to think it’s hard, or complicated, or just not something they have space for in their lives.  We all have time and space to make bread.  Sure, it takes a while, but very little of that is active prep time.  A bread that takes 36 hours from start to finish may have less than ten minutes of actual st...

When you want a chicken pot pie but are a) you only have one frozen pie crust (or don’t want to fuss with a top crust), and can’t even think of a b), why not make this EASY sweet-potato-dumpling topped version instead?  (if you are enthused by this idea, see also this post about putting cornbread on top of chili) You don’t even have to use meat!  Putting a quick bread on TOP of a moist, savoury dish (whether it’s meat or dairy or even vegan, as I have been known to do with roasted root vegetables and tofu) compensates for all the downsides of quick breads – namely that they tend to dry out quickly and be less full-bodied in flavour, while lacking the exquisite texture of true breads.  Baked on top of a yummy filling – whether you have a bottom crust or not – the quick bread (dumplings, cornbread , beer bread or any quick bread you like) stay moist, absorb flavour, and add texture and substance to round out a meal. (Technicality:  FYI, “quick bread” is the t...

Tip o’ the Day: (recipe follows) Always preheat your oven to 25-50°F higher than the recipe calls for, then turn it down. You’ll lose 25-30 degrees of heat when you open it and patchke around getting the pan in and out. And most breads (and many pastries) do well with a strong burst of initial heat anyway. Wanted to get a picture of this before it was too late, but… well, it was almost too late.  That’s how good this was with our chili tonight! This really is one of the few recipes I’d say would be completely different without a cast-iron skillet. I have made cornbread in pans and it’s lovely… but there is something awesomely crispy about cornbread baked in butter on preheated cast-iron.  Given that my soul-food diet precludes bacon, I tell myself that this deep, hearty crunch and this corny cornbread’s crunchy sweet / savoury crust is the next best thing.  Or really quite special in its own right, depending on if you’re a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty kind of ...

I know pizza sounds like a terrible choice for a hot summer day, but somehow, I find short bursts of oven use, however hot, more tolerable than long hours of baking. So – pizza takes a 500 degree oven, but only for about 12 minutes and then it’s DONE and you can switch it off.  And in terms of prep time, it’s perfect hot summer food because it’s very, very easy. I didn’t even start the dough for this one at 5:00, and by 6:30, okay, maybe 7:00, it was piping hot on the table. Now, I do wonder why it is that when I am absolutely SLAVING over pizza, like last time, when I actually had to deliver it to another family, it turned out absolutely awful… and then, when it’s just you and there’s nobody to impress, it turns into the best pizza you’ve ever had??? Well, I will say this – I love tasty bread and all, but this pizza used a quick-rise dough and I don’t feel at all guilty or ashamed because under tasty toppings, it’s REALLY hard to tell.  In future, for pizza, I’ll prob...

(because we just had amazing garlic bread at my mother’s house last night!) … then have bread on TOP of your regular supper!!! In this case, chili, with cornbread on top.  Always a hit, but this could easily be made with this quick n’ easy beer bread instead.  The chili around here is usually pareve, so I used milk in the cornbread; if the chili had meat, you could just use water – if I’m using tinned corn, I’ll save the corn water and use that – or some pareve kind of milk, but I don’t adore pareve milks in baking. Use any chili you want:  homemade, storebought, whatever – just make sure it’s very moist, or you’ll be gasping for liquids as you eat it, because the cornbread sucks up some of the liquid, while baking evaporates some.  Lose-lose, so start with a very wet chili. The cornbread on top is adapted from the Joy of Cooking, and I usually double it, because we love it like crazy and one batch just isn’t enough: Ingredients 3/4 cup cornmeal 1 ta...

I don’t know if this would be as much of a milestone in some families, but around here, your first challah is a big deal. So it is with great pride that I announce that Gavriel Zev made his VERY FIRST CHALLAH! I usually give him a choice, and he says no, or says he’ll just play with the “extra” piece (the small piece I separate for challah).  But yesterday, I insisted… and I gave him a full-sized blob of challah dough – 675g, enough to make a very respectable loaf. He played with it, and pulled at it, and buried a knife in it (“that won’t be a nice surprise if Abba or somebody else bites into their challah and finds a knife !”), stuck his fist into it (“or if they find a boy attached to their challah!”).  And then he lost interest and decided to leave the table. But I have been pushing him a bit lately with things like handwriting., and by goodness-knows-what instinct mamas have, I decided it was time to push him in this direction, too. I said he could go down and ...

It’s strawberry season!  The time of year all us snob-berries look forward to more than anything else! (okay, tomato season is good, too) So why not celebrate by buying tinned strawberry PIE FILLING?  Um, no.  But indeed, Ted wanted strawberry tarts and seemed rather pleased that he had the filling to make them and everything.  He also bought a package of 12 pareve tart shells – the usual store-bought ones are dairy, so that was a nice find. With very little time on a busy erev-Shabbos afternoon, I came up with these coconut-custard semi-fresh kinda-real strawberry tarts.  I made a coconut custard based on Shoshana’s recipe here at Couldn’t be Parve , but instead of soy milk (which I didn’t have and don’t like anyway), I just used 1 tin of coconut milk.  I kept back some of the watery part of the coconut milk and mixed it with 1-2 tbsp cornstarch for a thicker finished pudding. Basically, I heated the coconut  milk slightly (right on the burn...

There’s really no way to make a picture of pretzels with a goober of mustard look appetizing, is there…well, maybe a professional food photographer could do it, but I sure can’t. I decided to make soft pretzels for Elisheva because she loves them and she’s in the middle of exam week (actually, sort of still near the beginning – Exam 3 of 10, I believe).  I thought they’d be super-nice to come home to, because the big kids are always hungry when they walk through the door (in an inward direction). It’s a pretty basic, yeast-based, white-flour-based, web-based, hundreds-of-happy-reviews recipe, that also happens to be pareve and as a bonus doesn’t need kneading (though it’s thicker than most no-knead dough). After I’d been working on them all morning, and the scent of fresh-baked pretzels was filling the house, I promised Naomi she could have them at snacktime.  Well, she started crying – she wanted one NOW, for lunch. And I thought, hmm… and said yes.  Because,...

Elisheva made cimbuns again… but this time, she added just a few drops of food colouring to the icing. Mmm, purple !

  Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  Breads I forgot to blog about! …Like Wednesday night’s excellent rye-licious loaf!  Exactly the same ryelicious formula as the first time, and it worked out beautifully.  I even used corn starch – properly, this time ! – to create a lovely crusty sheen on top of the loaf.  Yes, it’s peanut-shaped, the result of a mis-handled transfer from peel to stone… but I’m getting the hang of it, really I am.  And yes, there was a bit of a blowout on the side.  I don’t know why my slashing is so unsuccessful lately.  But inside, the bread was perfectly baked and absolutely luscious with Alton Brown’s beef stew.   Mmm… And then there were Thursday’s (vegan night) Scallion Pancakes .  Super, super easy, this is a boiled-water-and-bread-flour dough that mixes up quickly and it’s ready to roll after only about half an hour.  Yes, I truly am obsessed with flatbreads these days – I can’t w...

As you know, I’m a sucker for flatbreads of all kinds.  This was my first venture into tortillas, but they’re basically the same as many other “ethnic” flatbreads I’ve made in past.  Yum, flatbreads! Here’s the recipe I used to create these easy, quick tortillas for tonight’s ground-chicken burrito supper (shh… don’t tell Elisheva, who requested burritos, but they were basically soft tacos).     Too small to hold in all that fillingy goodness!  Next time, I double the recipe and make them twice as big!!! p.s.  Soft tacos is something I’ve avoided since keeping kosher (yes, that does mean almost 20 years), but I’m happy I did this at last… they don’t really, REALLY need cheese and sour cream, and the lettuce adds a nice touch).

Yum!  These are the “double-cheddar” scones from Marcy Goldman’s Best of BetterBaking.com – I had some butter and some cheddar and could not resist these.  (not quite enough cheddar, so I skimped a bit, but they are still cheesy and delish!) Super-easy… the only hard part was waiting for them to cool before eating!

Yup, not one, not two, but THREE sourdough projects on the go at the moment! Firm starter being fed and groomed for sourdough challah Breadtopia’s No-Knead Sicilian bread, sourdough style (yes, I realize we ate semolina bread on Monday , but I really didn’t like it, and I’d like to try something different…).  I hope to either bake this in the dutch oven or use the dutch oven as a cloche over it while it bakes so as to fulfill my “bake-in-pot” promise ! Finally, what to do with all that poured-off un-needed sourdough?  Sourdough hotcakes fermenting in a bowl for breakfast tomorrow!  I plan to mix in blueberries to make them a bit more exciting.  I realized only after mixing the overnight portion of this batter that there’s no dairy, so these are totally pareve.  I picked the recipe because it was eggless, but yes, I’m tired, and didn’t realize they were also dairy-free (though I will fry them in butter to compensate!).  They look a bit like the...

Marcy Goldman’s Best of BetterBaking.com Bread Pudding Muffins !!!  Yummy… and utterly decadent…

…But I called it BIG PANCAKE !  (also known as a “Dutch Baby”, apparently… because in Holland, the babies are born big, floury and sizzling hot) See, that way I have an edge.  Ted may make ORDINARY pancakes, but I can (now) make BIIIIIIIG pancake. Utterly, utterly easy.  Simple, and delicious.  Served for lunch with powdered sugar, but YM had his with cottage cheese. Whir the batter in the blender – 2 eggs, half a cup of flour, a couple more things (I halved the recipe).  So simple.   Leave it to sit for half an hour.  Pour into cast-iron pan in which I’ve melted about 1/4 of a stick of butter. Bake 10 minutes on bottom rack; 10 more minutes on top rack. Boy, did it puff!     Slid out like a dream…   … and right out onto the plate! Yummy!  As close as you can get to a no-effort kid-pleasing lunch… p.s.  So this officially ends my dithering over the genre of my cast-iron pan:  it is now a DAI...