*** UPDATE!  We have a winner – Yosefa of Cooking Outside the Box !!!  Always nice to share with another food blogger… Back in January of 2011 , I first had the good fortune to review Oliver’s Labels products on my main blog. I was very, very pleased.  Thrilled, in fact, because I discovered that they have a line of kosher kitchen labels that actually STICK.  Having wrestled with various brands throughout my kosher-keeping life, I was delighted that not only do these stick strongly to a variety of surfaces (including wooden spoons!), but they are not see-through, meaning you can see them no matter what colour your implement happens to be. Here’s a picture I took back in January 2011 of various utensils with the labels attached – so that was over a year and a half ago.  I was so delighted that these could stick to almost any surface, including round wooden spoons (they’re cheap, but annoying to replace when trayfed due to marker M’s and F’s and P’s rubbin...

These using-up-the sourdough hotcakes got mixed reviews.  Kids didn’t eat them, and Ted said it “tasted like pancakes a hundred years ago.”  Great.  My reaction?  Different.  Interesting.  Tangy.  The texture is good – a tad rubbery, in a good way.  Quite nice with brown sugar sprinkled on top (as suggested).  Perhaps an acquired taste. I mixed in blueberries to sweeten it, but next time, I’d probably make some significant changes: Less starter Use at least some milk, not all water Add some sugar to the batter While they were frying, I started thinking this batter might make nice crumpets, but I couldn’t find metal rings to go in the cast-iron skillet to test my theory.  But who knows… maybe I’ll try sourdough crumpets next time!

Even if you’re not a teen or twenty-something (anymore – or yet!), here’s another chance to WIN a copy of Susie Fishbein’s Kosher by Design:  Teens and 20-Somethings . I’ll be posting a review and announcing my contest winner on my regular blog on November 10th (3 Kislev).  You can check out other blogger reviews, recipes, etc., in the meantime here . In honour of this slick new cookbook (I love the “fun” side of Artscroll!), I am announcing my very own… COOKING DISASTER CONTEST. Leave a comment after THE CONTEST POST (NOT here!) to tell me (in as much hilarious detail as you want) about your most disastrous kitchen disaster – EVER.  Read more rules here … bread- and cake-related disasters are most welcome!

This is the Semolina (Durum) Bread from Bread:  A Baker’s Book , which I wanted to try as an alternative to the semolina bread I have been attemping (and failing) so far. (I forgot to put sesame seeds on top and just floured before slashing.  And once again, the slashes were not deep enough!) It’s made with a “flying” sponge – which apparently means that all the yeast is in it and makes for a faster bulk fermentation.  It is faster than the other semolina breads I’ve tried, but I guess faster isn’t always better. I really think I did everything right with this one!  Okay, ALMOST everything.  I admit:  I was scared of another raw-in-the-middle disaster, so I baked this a bit longer than I was supposed to.  I was planning to give it 40 minutes at 460°.  After 30 minutes, it was alarmingly dark, so I tented it and turned the temp down to 450°. I don’t think overbaking was solely responsible for the ultimate dryness of this bread, though I ...

…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...

My whisk!  My Danish Dough Whisk!  (heretofore:  DDW) I was slightly afraid it would be all hype and that the thing would do perhaps a slightly better job than, say, a SPOON.  But no, it is a whole other world of mixing.  This dough took seconds to mix extremely well. Up until now, my one qualm about mixing up really big batches (double or triple) in my big bucket has been this:  a spoon or silicone spatula do a great job of incorporating all the flour, but can’t really reach the CENTRE of the blob.  I know this because I can sometimes feel lumpy bits in the middle of a huge batch of no-knead dough.  I have never had actual flour in the middle of challah or a boule, but I do sometimes notice an uneven texture – areas that are slightly denser and poorly mixed. So:  it turns out that CENTRE OF THE BLOB is what the DDW is all about. I used it right away yesterday (once I’d toiveled it) to stir up a batch of the Sicilian No-Knead Br...

Why did I decide to make a NEW challah for Yom Tov? Am I asking for problems??? This is Aliza Sussman’s challah , the second-prize winner in the ChallahCrumbs.com challah contest. To begin with, the recipe reads weirdly: I had no clue what Shtybel #2 flour is (Israeli bread flour, as it turns out), or how much was in “2 bags” (2kg). Then, she also asks for “1 pack of fresh yeast”… umm, how much is in a pack? (50g, which seems like a LOT for the proportions here) Finally, she says, “Add the ingredients one at a time and mix by hand after each ingredient is added.” Mix by hand after adding four eggs to over 2kg of dry ingredients?? That is a LOT of work. The water called for is only “1 ½ - 2 cups of warm water,” with the comment “want good consistency.” Gee, thanks. I shouldn’t have taken it on, and definitely shouldn’t have dived in no questions asked. Actually, I did ask a few of these questions in the comments field below the recipe, but they have since been delet...

Full description, steps and product mini-review at my regular blog .        

The big kids are coming home tomorrow, so I hauled out my trusty soft-pretzel recipe (it’s also a decent “in-a-pinch” bagel recipe!) this afternoon to whip some up for Elisheva, because it’s been impossible to find the frozen kind in the stores lately.  Okay, not just for Elisheva; also for me.  I love these! Here I am, rolling the snake, twisting and flipping it into the classic pretzel shape!  Easy as pretzels!   (if you aren’t seeing this animation, it could be because your browser – or blog-reading software – doesn’t support animaged GIFs… try Firefox or IE for best results) Waiting under the fruit-fly umbrella… sigh.  I hate those things!  The good news is that they’re almost gone !   Dip in the solution.  I don’t measure, just dump baking soda into this pan of warm water.   Then bake – they only need about 7 minutes!  They come out of the oven looking dry, but when they’re cool enough, you dip them in butter ...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out! Blueberry, almond, lemon:  not my favourite… These Blueberry Almond Bars are from the Odense (marzipan & almond past products) website.  They are exactly as promised, but just as in the Lemon and Blueberry Upside-Down Cake , which I’ve now tried twice (once pareve, once with butter), the combo enthralls me in the description, yet evades charm in the execution. Maybe there’s something wrong with my tastebuds…?

While we were in Ottawa a couple of weeks ago, I had a gift card and decided to bite the bullet and buy a no-knead bread book. They had Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which, of course, I’ve raved about many times here. But I know there were tons of typos (hee hee – I typed “tongs of typos,” just to show you that no-one’s immune!) in the first edition of that book. Plus, they’re all so expensive. I’m no fun when I’m looking at prices of things in stores . Finally, I compromised with this book, 200 Fast and Easy Artisan Breads , by Judith Fertig, which didn’t look like much fun, but has a lot of good, basic recipes. Today, I used it for the first time to make the Caraway Rye Dough. I left out the Caraway seeds because I really dislike them, but otherwise made it exactly as written. The formula is very simple – basically, wheat flour, rye flour, water, yeast, salt, molasses. I did cut down the molasses slightly because Elisheva doesn’t like molasses – down to just ove...

Sometimes, I’m just so happy at the prospect of cinnamon buns that I say it all as one word.  Don’t you? Today’s cimbuns were particularly happy because I didn’t have to make them.  Elisheva’s route home from camp involves a stopover in Eglinton subway station, which includes a Cinnabon location.  If you have ever passed a Cinnabon, you’ll know that the air positively REEKS of cinnamon for miles around. So she came home craving cimbuns and was dismayed to find that I usually start them 1-2 days ahead of time because of the dough.  Obligingly, I found her this recipe online, originally from one of the Moosewood cookbooks, for Quick Cinnamon Biscuits . No yeast, no waiting, no problem… as the title suggests. She had a brief moment of frustration when the dough turned out extremely wet and sticky, even more so than I usually associate with biscuit dough. But after shooing away my offers of help, she floured up the table and actually rolled out, filled and bake...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out! S’mores tart … and some yummy challahs! I wasn’t about to make homemade marshmallows (don’t have any proper gelatin even if I wanted to!), so I spread marshmallow fluff instead, very thickly over top.  It was a bit messy, with chocolate peeking through in spots, but I figured if it was delicious nobody would mind.  Then I sprinkled some mini-marshmallows over it.  The mini-marshmallows burnt a bit in the broiler, which lent that perfect campfire flavour!  Guests raved, though Elisheva kvetched that it was too rich.  Still:  delicious.  So simple; this is a keeper! Oh, yeah, I also made a LOT of challah, too, using Chavi’s wonderful “Challot” recipe again.  I was bringing supper to somebody, plus we had company for shalosh seudos, so I doubled the recipe.  It made four 1000-g (just over 2lb) challahs, plus a nice-sized “bilkeleh.” What a yummy Shabbos! For more delicious six-word Shabbos...

Why the weird dates?  Click here to find out!   Hats off to Chavi:  AMAZING challah! Yes, this challah – which I’m obnoxiously calling Chavi’s Perfect Balance Challah – not only raised eyebrows, it elicited a veritable squeal of delight from a certain fairly-bread-jaded teenage daughter. With just the right mix of sweetness and richness and moistness and fluffiness, it is hard to find a cakey challah that meets her approval; she prefers a denser bread. So that is high praise indeed. I had it plain for lunch and it was not as terrible as some are.  I suspect I will never meet a challah that I am as fond of for Shabbos lunch as I am Friday night. Though if anybody has a challah recipe that DOES improve with resting overnight, I’d be thrilled to learn about it.

Thursday night:  pâte fermentée, mixed. Friday morning:  risen nicely!    Add roasted potato, flour, whole-wheat flour, water, more yeast, salt.  Also a bit of fresh rosemary (next time, I’d use more… the flavour was VERY faint): Knead well, until gluten is moderately developed (short of the shinier chewing-gum texture I’m learning is characteristic of highly-developed dough).  The finished dough (some crumbly finger-leftover-bits dropped on top):   Fully-formed loaves, set to rise on parchment and cornmeal: Fully-risen loaves, floured, then slashed (much neater than trying it without the flour!):   Crispy crust, hot and fresh… delicious!   Would I make this bread again?  It WAS yummy, with a faint tang from the preferment and a bit of a rye taste, mysteriously, from the rosemary. It was moist, but not extraordinarily so.  At Shabbos lunch, it may have tasted marginally fresher than a bread without all ...