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,...

And no, they’re not both cheesecakes… although one is; a special all-Israeli cheesecake for which you can find the recipe a bit further down.  And okay, both are dairy-based; sorry to anyone who can’t have dairy at this very milky time of year… (In fact, since I started to write this, my husband decided to make a classic North American lemony cheesecake, deapite my predictions of doom that it wouldn’t work with Israeli cheese… so we may end up with three cakes.) With all of my dooming and glooming about baking in Israel, I was happy to receive a recipe from my ulpan teacher on Sunday night which she guaranteed would work with Israeli ingredients – given that she’s never baked it anywhere else.  I figure as an old dog making aliyah, it’s time for a new trick… with cheesecake. Except, except, except… her cheesecake doesn’t have a crust.  Heresy!  I couldn’t bake a crustless cheesecake.  Honestly, I was about to pour it into the pan (#26, according to her ...

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...

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...

These are actually based on this yummy mall-pretzel copycat recipe , which I’ve made a lot, but I made a couple of changes to turn them into bagels.  First, I doubled it… that’s not really a change.  I mixed it in the food processor, which was great.  I also subbed malt syrup for the brown sugar to make it more bagel-y, and added a tsp of salt per recipe, because there’s none in the original. They had a nice long rise because I started them in the early afternoon before we went out to a 2-hour kids’ class.  I made the holes a bit differently from usual – started with 100g boules and, with a well-greased finger, poked a hole into them which I expanded over several iterations until there was more hole than bagel (I can’t stand cake-y bagels with skimpy holes!). Nice big holes… ready to boil! Added the last of the malt syrup (boo hoo) to the boiling water, along with a bit (2-4 tbsp?) of baking soda.  This is a terrible pot for boiling in, because it can on...

Searching for the perfect Pareve Sugar Cookie recipe a few weeks ago, I found a bunch of references online to a now-defunct blog post (if you click the link, you will probably get a message telling you just how defunct) explaining how you could create your own sugar cookie mix in bulk. Intrigued, I tracked down an old cached copy of the post, with the recipe, and stashed it off-line for safekeeping.  And yes, it uses shortening, and if you don’t want to use shortening, then don’t.  Sometimes, you kind of have to.  I use Butter-flavoured Crisco now that it’s pareve again here. Here’s the recipe – shamelessly reposted word-for-word as a service to you, my beloved readers: Sugar Cookies for the YEAR! Warning: This makes a LOT of sugar cookie mix. We store it in freezer zip lock bags, pre-measured and ready-to-go at any time. (see below) Ingredients: 12 cups all-purpose flour 6 cups sugar 2 Tablespoons baking powder 1 Tables...

I was so excited when I saw that Shoshana of Couldn’t be Parve (one of my favourite kosher food blogs!) had posted this Round Woven Challah Tutorial .  She used beautiful coloured dough – there’s even a video. In previous years , when it comes to round challahs, I have done one of two things:  made a very long  EVEN braid (normally, I make the braids FAT in the middle, but that doesn’t work for round) and then just wrapped it in on itself.   Or… um… just made a big, fat snake, and wrapped it up like a snail.  Easy!  (Plus, that’s what my mother does, so it’s not only easy, it’s a TRADITION!) (click the link above & scroll down to see both models) I’ve always thought of myself as a klutzy,  non-dextrous person, but the truth is that my regular 4-braids come so easily now that I am starting to think maybe I just needed practice all along.  (I have been partly emboldened along the way by various paper-folding things, like Curious George...

  Besides a bunch of Auntie Sally’s challah which I whipped up before Rosh Hashanah and still had in the freezer, this is the main “overnight sponge challah” I’ve been playing around with this yom tov season. Because the base recipe doesn’t make very much, I thought I’d quadruple it for the first days of Sukkos, when we were expecting lots of guests.  With the help of my trusty sourdough spreadsheet (which works even with NO sourdough, just by filling in “0g” of starter), here’s what I came up with for the sponge: 1620 g flour (mix of ap and bread) 1960 g water 200 g sugar 220 g oil 4 tbsp salt 4 tsp yeast Here’s the wet stuff going into the bucket first.  With its happy new batteries, my scale held it all,  even though officially it only holds up to 2kg.  I was so happy I’d finally gotten around to marking the bucket weight on the side, just ...