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Archive for the ‘Holiday’ Category

Citrus Chiffon Cake

The couple of weeks that follow Labor Day are like a limbo. It still feels like summer, but you can sense Fall running up behind you to tap you on the shoulder. If you’re like me you slow your walking down a bit so Fall can catch up. That also means the Jewish High Holidays will soon be tapping the other shoulder, and like High Tea, it’s really all about the food. (Pardon my sacrilege.)

No matter how devout you are, chances are that at some point during the season you’ll end up with someone placing a napkin containing either a slice of Honey Cake or Sponge Cake in your hand. Honey Cake evokes both the apples and honey tradition of welcoming a sweet new year, and the European Pain d’Epice influence earned from thousands of years of the Diaspora.

On the other hand, Sponge Cake is the Jewish Wonder bread.

Ah well, I come here not to bury Sponge Cake but to make peace with it, kind of like striking up a conversation about politics with a cranky old uncle. (Good luck.)

Perhaps I am painting with too broad a brush. Perhaps it is not Sponge Cake that is the enemy, but poorly made Sponge Cake, baked way too far in advance, and wrapped tightly in plastic. (Mmmm. Sounds yummy, right?)

The Sponge Cake to which I am referring, a staple of High Holiday supermarket fare, is actually Chiffon Cake. Chiffon Cake was created by an American named Henry Baker. (Baker! I love it when peoples’ names work out like that: Tommy Tune is a musical theater performer and director. We had a relative (by marriage) named Ike Oven who was also a baker. A friend swears he knows a Dr. Doctor. By those rules my last name should be Thinksheisawriter.)

Chiffon Cake differs from Angel Food Cake or Jelly Roll sponge (biscuit) because of the addition of oil. While the oil does provide moistness, it also makes for a damp cake, and lacks the rich flavor of butter—a potential pitfall in a cake that lacks other flavorful ingredients.

Don’t blame baker Henry Baker; he didn’t intend for Chiffon Cake to be served plain. He piled it with fruit, custard, whipped cream—anything to dress it up. His Chiffon Cake was the canvas, the other stuff was the paint.

So there you go: we’re serving the canvas. No criticism from me though, because I understand why: convenience. Chiffon Cake is a “little something” traditionally served after observing a long worship in temple when the blood sugar of millions of Jews has crashed lower than yesterday’s Dow. When I was a kid you got cake and grape juice. Chiffon Cake was cheap, easily obtained, and ready for a crowd with just a few swipes of a knife. Also, kids wouldn’t get it all over their clothes.

There used to be something so essentially Jewish about cake. The comedian Jackie Mason has made it the subject of a whole routine: “It is easy to tell the difference between Jews and Gentiles. After the show, all the gentiles are saying ‘Have a drink? Want a drink? Let’s have a drink!’ While all the Jews are saying ‘Have you eaten yet? Want a piece of cake? Let’s have some cake!’”

When the comedian Rosie O’Donnell was trying to thank Barbra Streisand for being on her show she brought her cake. (Streisand was an aficionado of the late, lamented Ebbinger’s bakery chain. O’Donnell had one of the Ebbinger’s recipes recreated for the occasion.)

Mason’s riff on cake always made me think of a Sour Cream Coffee Cake my mother used to make. Even now it brings to mind cinnamon, brown sugar, and walnuts. Chiffon Cake? No.

None of this solves the issue of bad Chiffon Cake, but I would do well to mind the old adage, “One man’s feast is another man’s famine.” Translation: just because I don’t like Chiffon Cake doesn’t mean the world shares my opinion.

As a test I decided to make my own Chiffon Cake therefore putting to rest the debate about whether or not fresh, homemade Chiffon Cake makes a difference. For this little contest I held myself to one rule: it had to be baked in a loaf pan to match the format of the supermarket brands.

The supermarket brands have an indeterminate sweet, cakey flavor. I thought it might make my cake more interesting if it made a specific choice, as if it could say, “Hello, I am a Citrus Chiffon Cake.” My old trick ingredient, frozen concentrated orange juice, was nominated, as was fresh lemon zest and juice, plus a bit more vanilla extract than usually called for. No need for subtlety here as the hefty amount of eggs in the recipe tends to blunt the sharp edges of any added flavors.

The result is springy in texture, bright in flavor, but still unquestionably the High Holiday Sponge Cake I’ve come to know and be bored by. Still better than the fossilized supermarket loaf, but screaming for some ice cream and strawberry sauce.

I don’t need a holiday for that.

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Click here for my Citrus Chiffon Loaf.

Also good for the High Holidays: Pumpkin Apple Praline Cake and Challah.

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Sweet tweet (complete)

No special occasion needed...

Some years ago I was invited to a party at the home of a close friend. When I arrived I made the usual and expected round of “Hellos” to all the people I knew at the party. My greetings included those to one who would best be described as a friend of a friend. She extended a disinterested hand and introduced herself as one would to someone you’d never met. Polite.

Unfortunately we’d played this little charade more times than I am comfortable mentioning. I had met this individual for the “first time” enough times that I don’t have enough fingers to keep count. I was seemingly purged from her memory after each meeting like the contents of your computer’s recycle bin. No recollection at all. Yet, I knew her name, both of her husbands’ names, how many kids she had, and a vague idea of their ages.

After another friend who witnessed this scene picked her jaw up from the floor we recovered nicely and had a nice party.

The next day I called the close friend who had proffered the invitation to thank him for his hospitality and in a moment of fed up candor let fly with the opinion that his friend was a dope. (Yes, I may have used a more explicit compound word.)

He offered some weak excuses for his friend that mainly revealed an acknowledgement and acceptance of her social shortcomings…her “problem” as he called it. He’s simply not a judgmental person. Rather than feeling slighted by this, I actually ended up wishing that I could be less judgmental.

Through the years the same scenario has happened to me a couple of other times with a couple of other people. I may be getting to the age that I just don’t care anymore. Wait. No. I’m not quite there yet. It still rankles and still doesn’t answer the question: if I remember you, why don’t you remember me?

Conversely, a few years ago I was at the theater seeing an awful play. I stepped outside to the street to use my phone. After I finished my conversation I turned to head back into the theater and was stopped by a smiling man who looked at me and yelled, “Bobby!” It took a moment to register that he was talking to me because my name is not Bobby. (Never has been.)

I shrugged, “Sorry, I think you have the wrong guy” and continued into the theater. But he persisted and followed me. In the brighter light of the lobby I could see he wasn’t some unhinged homeless man on a chemically induced field trip. He was nicely dressed, clean, and looked more than a little bit insulted.

“Are you sure you’re not Bobby Smith?”

Taking refuge amongst the theater’s front-of-house staff, I avowed, “Oh, yeah” but the man remained unconvinced—skeptical perhaps that a long lost friend was either playing a joke on him, or had entered the witness protection program.

It was at this point that one of us entered “The Twilight Zone” because he asked me to prove my identity by showing him my driver’s license. Luckily the gentleman was otherwise persuaded that I was, indeed, not Bobby, and departed.

(Actually, I think in part he was intimidated by one of the tougher looking ushers who was giving him the evil eye. I wouldn’t have wanted to mess with her either.)

Tall, bald, bespectacled, and what my grandmother used to call “hamish”: here in New York we are a rather interchangeable, dime-a-dozen crowd. Legions of us swarm the city taking each other’s Bar exams, drug tests, and marriage vows when the real guy is unavoidably detained or just off fishing. Will the real Bobby Smith please stand up?

And what of my insistent pursuer of mistaken identities? One could make a few guesses about him: unacknowledged poor eyesight…unobservant…perhaps he assembles the “no fly” lists for the TSA? Poor Bobby Smith (or is it Smythe?). With friends like that…

The ironic soundtrack to this little documentary is Nat King Cole singing “Unforgettable.” (Use the version where they superimposed his daughter’s voice to create a duet. It’ll be easier to cross cut the film.)

It seems to me that the world may be divided into two groups: the first group looks at you, remembers you, and files you away in the appropriate area of their cortex to be recalled at will by the human brain’s amazing face recognition system. The other, much smaller, group lacks the ability to retain this information. It is to those poor, sad, souls that we must extend a hand to help them through the lunar landscape of social interaction.

Advertising copywriters have been addressing this problem for years in perfume ads. There’s even a perfume named “Unforgettable.” This is all based on the theory that the whiff of a perfume will implant itself in the cortex along with other memories of you. If the proximity is close enough, sometimes it really does work.

Some of us just aren’t the perfume type. That’s why they invented the chocolate cupcake. While we cannot wear cupcakes, we can bring them to work or to friends. There’s no need for a special occasion—we’ll create memories nonetheless. Someone will always remember you. Just play it very cool. “Oh, those? I had a few minutes so I threw them together.”

You won’t be lying. The recipe is part of my Bowl & Spoon program. No mixer is needed, even for the ganache frosting. They mix together quickly, and to frost them you only need to dip the tops in the ganache: no frosting technique is needed. If you can dunk, you’re in.

BTW: if you know Bobby Smith tell him that some guy who looks like the actor Kevin Pollack was looking for him.

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Click here for the recipe for Bowl & Spoon All-Occasion Chocolate Cupcakes.

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Cobbler...slump...or grunt?

Politicians love to speculate what our nation’s forefathers would have thought of whatever policy they are advocating.

This thinking is usually lost on me. I’d rather know what they would choose from the dessert menu. I’d rather speculate whether or not Thomas Jefferson would have liked Jell-o.

I can’t help but wonder what Messrs. Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin were eating during the hot, muggy Philadelphia days that led up to July 4^th. I can say with some confidence that during the long hours it took for him to write the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wasn’t eating Domino’s.

John Adams was a Harvard grad and a lawyer, but he was also a farmer. Abigail (Mrs. Adams to you) likely served what was fresh and in season, straight from their own fields. There was no choice: the only place she would have found an Israeli tomato was in Jerusalem. While championing the use of locally grown farm ingredients may have made Alice Waters seem like a revolutionary in the 1980s, what she really was doing was recapturing a time before fruits and vegetables were flown in from elsewhere. Folks lived off the land and bought what was grown locally; this also shaped their menu. It is only in our time that the new-fangled jet airplane has made food from around the world available in your neighborhood supermarket.

Some popular desserts in revolutionary times were cobblers, pan dowdies, and stewed fruit desserts called grunts or slumps. Supposedly the latter were called grunts because of the noise they made while cooking. Hmmm. Doesn’t sound promising, but these desserts were likely borne from a combination of the available technology (the kitchen stove = the hearth) and the available ingredients.

Just what you wanted: a history of the Revolutionary War as told through the dessert menu. My high school history teacher would be so proud. I finally got something right.

I know that the thought of a hot dessert on a hot summer night seems out of place. I won’t apologize. Fresh berries are bouncing off the shelves right now, and yes, they’re wonderful in a bowl with a little sugar and a dollop of cream. But there’s a problem with cold desserts: there’s no aroma to make your home smell like, well, home.

It’s not by accident that one of the oldest tricks up the sleeve of any Real Estate agent worth her salt is to bake apples and cinnamon in the oven when they’re having an open house. They’re not after a low-fat dessert, they’re after a sale. They can “stage” a house with fancy furniture and knick-knacks, but if the place smells like poopie it’s “No Sale.”

That tasty concept aside, I was also thinking that summer is the season when people take time to entertain friends. Perhaps they have a house near the beach which is the target of many a weekend trek by friends and family. For folks who live the other nine months of the year in their little New York City apartments, this may often be the only time during the year when they get to eat “at home” with their chums at a real dining room table as opposed to having everyone perched on the sofa.

The desserts in the picture above are like a colonial cobbler or a slump. I lightened them up a bit by substituting a very light cake batter for the usual biscuit dough topping. The cake batter makes the dessert lighter for summer, and is easier to prepare. I used my Kitchen Aid, but a bowl and wooden spoon will do you fine. You can bake these for varying lengths of time depending on how “puddingy” you want them. The longer you bake them the cakier the top becomes.

Wouldn’t it be nice to present your visiting chums with four different versions of the same dessert? Sounds ambitious, yes? Is it ambitious? No.

I’m still kicking myself. In my shopping haste I grabbed only blueberries and raspberries. My repeat performance will show me grabbing the blueberries and raspberries, but also the blackberries, strawberries, and maybe a summer stone fruit like a peach or nectarine. Each item will get its own little dessert.

The dishes are little 4 ¾’’porcelain crème brulee dishes; at about four bucks a pop they’ll hardly break the bank, and I can also use them for nuts and other snacks. (Ummmm, and crème brulee too.)

Assembling the dessert is easy: tumble the berries or cut fruit into the dishes, top with the batter. Bake. A touch of ice cream and some serving spoons are all you need. You don’t have to wait for the beach or the backyard barbecue for this: it also makes a great “coffee table” dessert. (Be careful though. Blueberries and rugs don’t mix well.)

While this isn’t strictly a cobbler or a grunt / slump, I’m calling it a slump. It’s a dessert name you don’t hear anymore, and has a free history lesson attached.

If you prefer, stick a feather in your hat and call it macaroni.

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Click here for my recipe for Berry Slump

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Breakfast Pizza. Ties are optional.

Thank goodness for modern technology: It has created a whole new gift category. Back in my Father’s time, dads got golf equipment, fishing tackle, cologne, and the dreaded new tie. My Mom used to try to buy my Pop sweaters, but I’m not sure any of them ended up escaping Filenes’ returns department.

Dads still want golf and fishing stuff, but they no longer have to worry about questionable sweater choices. Modern technology means you can give Dad a little electronic device that he can take to the beach and get caught up on his reading or even watch baseball. Try that with a sweater. Amazon now sells more e-books than paper and cardboard books. Every Tom, Dick, and Harriet on the subway is reading the latest best seller on a Kindle. Yeah, but what’s in their sweater drawer?

Father’s Day also doesn’t seem to have the same sense of ceremony as Mother’s Day. On Mother’s Day you slap an orchid on Mom’s shoulder and take her out for a frilly salad. Father’s Day honorees would rather go fishing—or like my brother, golfing—and come home to a nap and a good steak. I’m painting with a very broad brush, yes, but that’s okay. Let’s make dad a good breakfast and send him on his way to spend the day the way he wants.

Not that this means that Mom has to bear the burden of cooking a complicated breakfast. Quiche might be a good choice. Mom can make it the day before and then gently reheat it the next morning.

I can’t bake or eat Quiche without thinking of that ‘80’s spoof on masculinity, “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche.” I wonder what fifty million Frenchmen thought when that book was published? I am also a huge fan of Hitchcock movies, so any mention of Quiche also causes my mind to stray to the scene in “To Catch A Thief” (the most glamorous movie ever made) where Cary Grant’s character offers a guest Quiche Lorraine, and explains that while his housekeeper’s hands have an especially tender touch with pastry dough, she also used them to silently strangle a Nazi general when she was in La Résistance (this is, after all, Hitchcock.)

Alas, in 2011, I‘d be willing to bet that the only real men out there who would take exception to eating Quiche are members of the Lipitor club. Maybe we can find something in the cupboard that even the Lipitor club can enjoy. For Father’s Day, why not borrow the concept of quiche, and literally change course—as in, breakfast is served, Pops!

Granted Quiche has an aura of expertise and advanced skill, but peel away the aura and what have you got? Egg pie. C’mon: you can handle that! Even better: for my version, no special equipment is required; all you need is a big bowl, a fork, a couple of knives (dull is fine), and a couple of hands (yours or someone else’s). I am not talking about some “back-of-the-Bisquik-box-recipe-cheesy-egg-bake.” No sir. This is Breakfast Pizza. Dad will like this, and the good news is that the kids help make it.

Breakfast Biscuit sandwiches are big business nowadays—with good reason: people like them. Truth be told this version of breakfast pizza owes a great deal to the biscuit sandwich. While quiche has a delicate pâte brisée crust, and pizza uses yeast dough, Breakfast Pizza uses a simple baking powder biscuit dough. Instead of rolling and cutting the dough, after an easy hand mix, you dump it into the cooking vessel—a skillet—and press it into the bottom with your hands. Tricky folks can feel free to use the bottom of a measuring cup.

Toppings—besides the egg—are free choice. I stuck with items that are typically pizza in theme: peppers, tomatoes, cheese, and mushrooms. I even placed a few dabs of tomato sauce on top. Let what is fresh in your local market be your guide.

If Dad is a breakfast fiend, then make him happy by topping the pizza with some good organic turkey sausage, some diced potatoes, and mix a bit of thawed, frozen spinach in with the eggs (breakfast pizza is a great way of getting vegetables into the family tummy.)

The one I made in the photo above used four eggs—and serves four or five people. Even the most egg-shy folks can indulge. I made mine in a skillet, but that was only for looks. Feel free to use a pie plate, or any other pan you think will make an attractive presentation.

Happy Day, Dad!

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Click here for my recipe for “Breakfast Pizza”

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Write to me at the email address below with any questions or thoughts you may have. Thanks!

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Lobster from the icy North Atlantic...rolls from me

In an exquisite bit of time travel, my brain has flashed forward and is currently enjoying the long Memorial Day Weekend at the beach. Sadly, the rest of me has remained behind in the city, two weeks of work and worry away from such pleasures. I think I am not alone this year, as most people are recovering from a rather abusive relationship with Winter.

The reason I am convinced that my brain is elsewhere is because I have already started thinking about all the food that I associate with the fun of summer: hamburgers, hot dogs, ice cream sandwiches, and my New England faves, fried clams, and Lobster Roll.

While I love all of the above, Clam Roll and Lobster Roll are my travel folder summer meals. If I had to name a favorite food, they’d certainly be on the list. “The condemned man ate a hearty last meal of Lobster Roll. And then he had a Clam Roll and an ice cream sandwich.” Read that and you’ll know I’m gone.  I can’t actually name only one favorite food, but I think I have made my point.

Fried Clams are best consumed at a reputable clam bar, preferably overlooking a body of water, while jealous Sea Gulls circle overhead. But Lobster Roll remains within reach of the home cook, albeit with a hefty price tag dangling from one of the claws. Yes, my brain is down at the beach splurging on Lobster Roll.

The thing is, I feel very protective of Lobster Roll. It is so simple and basic, which explains why it is so easy to make it wrong. Lobster by itself is so perfect straight from the steam, cracked open, dunked in a touch of melted butter. When in doubt I try to not stray too far from that.

Some folks think that the same rules that apply to making Tuna Fish salad will still hold true when making Lobster Roll, but this is simply not the case. In Lobster Roll the mayonnaise should be kept to the barest minimum; just enough to coat may be too much. Some insist that you should dispense with the mayo altogether, and stick with a drizzle of butter. Not a bad idea.

For traditionalists though, a touch of mayo, and just the sparsest tumble of diced celery will suffice. No salt, thank you, the mayo and the lobster and the obligatory Wise potato chips served on the side have plenty. (French Fries? With Lobster Roll? On what planet?)

Phew! Glad that’s settled.

Oh wait! I forgot the most important part: the bread.

The real New England-style hot dog roll is baked side-by-side and sliced on top (as opposed to the side). When the rolls are pulled apart, more bread is exposed, so we butter and grill or toast the sides of the bun too. This holds true for hot dogs, Clam Rolls, and Lobster Rolls. Lobster Roll isn’t Lobster Roll without this key element. It’s the law (lower case “L”.)

The bun itself is all about texture. This is no place for whole wheat. Fluffy bread is good because the toasting creates a contrast of textures. But that should in no way imply that boring white bread is called for.

As a little treat, I decided to make my own hot dog rolls, and this called to mind the puffiest, fluffiest bread I could think of: potato bread. No, this is not a New England specialty; actually, I think it comes from Pennsylvania Dutch country.

Hold on there, buddy (you’re thinking), with all the great hot dog buns sold, why are you making your own? Is this one of those “Martha Stewart-raise-your-own-hens-so-you-can-have-the-best-scrambled-eggs” moments?

My answer: “Yes. No.”

Translation of ambiguous answer: rolls that you buy in the store are just rolls. Mine are artisanal. Yes, that’s right, I just dropped the “A” bomb on you. At $15.99 a pound, how often will I splurge on Lobster Roll? So I think it is worth it to create something special to mark the occasion. Also, New England-style top sliced buns are hard to find in New York. (You should feel free to use whatever rolls suit your fancy. No judgment from me, I promise.)

Potato bread tends to be very soft and fluffy because of the loose, gluten-free starch in the potatoes. Deciding to up the ante a bit, instead of using a regular potato, I used a sweet potato.  Its honey-like sweetness and carroty color would add a mellow tang to the bread. My intent was not to make an icky-sweet roll, just something sweetly laid back.

I diced and boiled the potato until it was cooked through, then drained it thoroughly before mashing into a smooth paste with a fork. Then I added it with some of the flour to the dough. Some potato bread recipes use a bit of the liquid in which you boiled the potato. Instead, I used milk for a touch of richness.

The result is a roll with a gentle sweetness, and a sunny saffron color which surprisingly coordinates with the rusty, salmon pink of the lobster. I have a few left over which I will pair with some Hebrew National hot dogs, or maybe some chicken sausage.

Meanwhile, I hope my brain is wearing sunscreen.

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Click here for my recipe for “Sweet Potato Hot Dog Rolls”

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Write to me at the email address below with any questions or thoughts you may have. Thanks!

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Flower Cookie Centerpiece

Mr. Maple Tree, a certain gentleman who resides outside of my living room window, has finally started to sprout leaves. I noticed this development about a week ago when one tiny little green bud appeared at the end of a branch. This week he is displaying what looks like green pom-poms. Soon those will grow into full-fledged clusters of green leaves. Tree hugger? Me?

I love winter, but will happily admit that this year’s snow fest was a bit of overkill on the part of Mother Nature. My winter boots asked for disaster pay. (Rim shot, please.)

Bottom line: finally, spring is here.

In the Big Apple this is school vacation week. I live near a middle school that normally clangs with the screeches of hundreds of teens. But the quiet this morning reminded me of a western town in a John Wayne movie just before the Dalton gang arrives. The only thing missing was the tumbleweeds.

I am an unapologetic Peeps addict, so I tend to think of Easter as Christmas with marshmallow. Oh, and instead of poinsettias, tulips and daffodils are on display. While I’d love to have a garden—and a gardener to maintain it—alas, it seems as a dweller of the big city the only crop I seem to be able to grow with any abundance is dust. (There’s a joke there, somewhere. Something about dust bunnies and Easter bunnies, but I haven’t quite figured it out yet.)

I enjoy watching Ina Garten, TV’s Barefoot Contessa walk outside her kitchen door to snip something from her garden and arrange it simply in a water glass and use it as a centerpiece. I could try the same thing, but there’s no rosemary growing in the hallway. (My landlord would frown on that.)

You do what you can with what you’ve got. I can’t grow flowers but I can bake them. So try this on for size: a little Martha Stewart-style crafts project I call the Butter Flour Eggs Cookie Centerpiece.  I started using cookies as cake decoration a while ago, so it is not a stretch for me to try to find other venues in which to display their beauty. (My first thought was to use them as Christmas tree decoration. But living in a New York apartment, there are a few disincentives to leaving food sitting around.)

At heart the cookies are made from basic shortbread dough—my same easy to roll recipe that I used on Valentine’s Day. To my eye these sugary flowers always look like they were drawn with a sparkly crayon, which makes them perfect for occasions where children will be among the celebrants. Using a bit of royal icing (a/k/a edible Elmer’s Glue) I attached a bamboo skewer to each one and grounded that firmly in a cupcake. Two or three plates of those down the center of a long table will be my centerpiece at Easter dinner.

The color palette is your choice; you can see I gravitated towards groovy ‘60’s yellow and pink. I won’t be insulted if you find my choice a bit loud and decide to go with something a bit more subtle (zzzzzzz). Your choices are as wide as the colors of sanding sugar you can find. For these cookies I recommend rolling the dough to a hefty ¼” thick. Paint a bit of egg wash on the unbaked cookies and sprinkle with the sanding sugar before baking. Cool thoroughly before gluing the skewers with Royal icing and allow a few hours for the Royal icing to harden and dry.

Don’t feel confined by a vanilla cookie or the flower cookie cutter. A couple of Christmases ago I made little chocolate wreaths with Royal icing that looked like brown Wedgewood.

If your kids are home from school this week, the cookie centerpiece is a great project for you to supervise. And if you’re not feeling ambitious don’t worry about the royal icing and skewers: just stick the cookie right into the frosting.

This reminds me of a friend who used to have a country house. No slouch in the kitchen, if you visited him during the winter chances are you would be served a steaming plate of Cincinnati Chili. During warmer months the chili was retired but you could look forward to hand churned ice cream or “Dirt Cake” which was (I think) chocolate pudding and cake served in a real (sterilized)clay pot, topped with chocolate cookie crumbs (the dirt) and a real flower. It was pretty convincing until he started spooning it onto plates.

You can do the same thing with the cookie centerpiece, although for my money the cartoon-y quality of the cookies matches cupcakes better. Don’t go crazy with the cupcakes here—you can even use store bought. I made very simple white cupcakes and placed everything on simple white plates.

No surprise here: as usual for me the cookies are the star of the show.

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Use this recipe for the cookie dough: I Heart Shortbread Cookies.

And it’s not too late to bake for Good Friday or Easter. Click here for my recipe for Hot Cross Buns.

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Hot Cross Buns

The last stop before Grand Central Station on the Metro-North commuter train is 125th Street. Once passed, there is a sense of relief and anticipation that you’re almost “there” (that’s the relief)—but that “there” is our jumping, jiving city (that’s the anticipation).

In the case of the Easter and Good Friday holidays, the relief and anticipation are all about spring and summer and nice weather – an all too important consideration after the rough winter we’ve had this year.

Of course, at this time of year it is easy to get over confident about the weather, but Mother Nature tends to be a tricky, moody, old biddy, so we really don’t know what she has in store, but the days are just that much longer, and even the coldest mornings are just that much warmer.

Alongside seasonal weather changes are seasonal supermarket changes, for the spring heralds the arrival of the Passover food on your grocer’s doily-lined shelves, and Hot Cross Buns in the bakery section. The latter were always a curiosity to me. I had tried them and found that their spiced- icky, sticky bun-candied fruit allures held no sway over me. They always struck me as sticky buns gone wrong; bread that wanted to be fruitcake, but realized it had arrived four or five months too late and missed Christmas; dough that took the wrong path. (Has this gotten a bit film noir? Sorry.)

Purely out of a sense of duty then, I felt compelled to make Hot Cross Buns for this blog. My conscience was bothering me: can one write a baking-centric blog and ignore Hot Cross Buns? I think not.

So with that great burden weighing on me (heavy sigh), I started researching them. The great thing about the internet is that if you think it, someone, somewhere, has, at some point in time, written about it. I had an art professor in college – a tough cookie—who liked to say, “There truly is nothing new under the sun.” Surely he was talking about the internet too.

What the internet revealed to me filled me with a great deal of relief. I had expected the basic flavors and ingredients of Hot Cross Buns to be as tightly proscribed as the placement of medals on a military uniform. Turns out I was wrong. The only constants I found amongst all the variations were 1.) duh: there’s always a cross on the top (although not always sweet) and 2.) Hot Cross Buns are sweet.

While Hot Cross Buns may traditionally have been a Good Friday treat, in recent years they have broken off from their niche purpose and become a year-round bakery staple. If I ever needed an excuse to make the long trip down under to Australia (I didn’t), the revelation that the Aussies add chocolate chips to their Hot Cross Buns could certainly have been one. Bravo, Aussies, for that was the inspiration I needed to bring some enthusiasm to the project.

While the Aussies add more than just chocolate chips to their Hot Cross Buns, the allure of chocolate cannot be overstated. After reading this blog each week, my sister-in-law will often write me a short email consisting solely of the words, “Can I put chocolate on that?” I could write about sauerkraut and she would likely ask the same question, for, like me, chocolate is her cure-all. (I even crave it when I have, uh…digestive distress.) This week, the answer is a happy, “Yes, but there’s already chocolate there.”

The internet also revealed a bit of discussion about the texture of the buns. Should they be hearty and dense, or light and puffy? I have come down clearly on the side of light and puffy, and this dictated a lot of technical issues about the recipe. Light and puffy means two rises, and, because we want something just slightly sweet, a little richness in the ingredients is called for. While some bread doughs get by with only water and oil or butter, a whole egg plus a little milk and butter will give our Hot Cross Buns a supple richness that will support the sugar without making the gentle sweetness seem “thin.”

The result reminds me of the wonderful Parisian-inspired subtly sweet rolls they sell at the extraordinary Silver Moon Bakery on New York’s Upper West Side.

The process of baking bread seems intimidating to some, but the truth is, if you can plug in a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer you can bake bread. (Sounds like a sales pitch, no?) Measure a few ingredients, turn on the mixer, then leave the dough to rise. Yes, it can be three or four hours from plugging in the mixer to taking the Hot Cross Buns out of the oven. But you only work for about a half an hour. The rest of the time the yeast and your oven are doing the work. (Sorry, I shout this every time I bake any form of bread.)

I love a recipe that serves more than one purpose. It is a perverse form of recycling, but next week’s Hot Cross Buns could show up at a special holiday weekend breakfast next fall. (Well, not the same actual rolls. I’ll make a fresh batch.) All I have to do is make a squiggle with the icing instead of a cross.

But even that amount of change isn’t needed.

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Click here for my recipe for Hot Cross Buns.

…and don’t miss these great Passover recipes (they’re great any time of the year):

Coconut Macaroons

Passover Honey Cake

Torta di Mandorla per la Pasqua. (A very light Passover chocolate – almond torte)

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Passover Honey Cake

Growing up in a Jewish home I was always made acutely aware of how important good food was—is—at any occasion. Even the post-funeral gatherings we call “sitting shiva” are excuses to pull out the good napkins. That’s why I am always mystified by my people’s willingness to put up with bad food on Passover. The excuse is always that you cannot cook with “chametz”, the umbrella word describing ingredients that are not allowed on Passover. This usually refers to anything bread or flour related, and any kind of leavening, but the actual rule bans things made from wheat, barley, oats, rye, or spelt. The only wheat product allowed is matzo and what I lovingly refer to as its derivatives: matzo that has been ground, crumbled, or otherwise processed so that it can be used in other recipes.

There is such a thing as Passover Baking Soda, which confuses me because I thought the purpose of the Passover holiday was to commemorate bread not being allowed to rise. Passover Baking Soda’s loophole? No cornstarch.

From a baker’s point of view it’s kind of like being told that you must substitute breadcrumbs for flour.

Generations of commercial kosher bakers have been putting their kids through Harvard and Yale just by selling Passover desserts to even the most unobservant Jews (hello) who have always been willing to pay for Passover-compliant cakes and cookies. Here’s the problem: a lot of it just isn’t very good, especially the supermarket brands. A lot of it is also…shall we say, “premium-priced.”

Apologies to the folks who produce the supermarket Passover stuff (and to their well-educated progeny), but a cake that has been sitting in a box for an unknown amount of time has a few strikes against it.

Is it heresy for me to complain? All I want is a good piece of cake, for goodness sake.

Luckily, I’m handy in the kitchen and have figured out a few tricks that result in desserts that aren’t just good for Passover, they’re good anytime of the year. Last year I made a Northern Italian-style Torta di Mandorla per la Pasqua, a chocolate, almond, egg white torte. I actually served it before Passover to a group of non-Jewish friends who loved it, and remains one of my favorite recipes. (It is very light so perfect for summer.)

This year I decided to re-visit the Grandmother of all Jewish Holiday desserts: Honey Cake. When I was a kid with (I’m guessing) a much less discerning palate, my presence at any event could be secured with the promise of honey cake. The typical honey cake comes in a loaf, usually encased in (don’t get me started) a disposable aluminum pan. To my adult palette though, honey cake always tastes a bit syrupy, and manages to be both too dry and too sodden. Not sure how that’s possible.

Blame science. In baking, the type of flour, its grind, the kind of wheat used, and how the milled flour has been treated are some of the things that rule how a cake gelatinizes (mixes with liquid then bakes into a solid). Passover Cake meal is basically powdered Matzo and has its own rule book, but it is easy to predict that this ingredient will lend density to a cake. The usual trick has always been to lighten the cake meal in a way that imitates traditional cake flour. This is usually accomplished by adding potato starch. The results vary according to the other ingredients in the cake. In the case of honey you end up with a wet, damp cake because honey is hygroscopic: it actually pulls moisture in even when baked.

Okay, I promise: no more science. But the takeaway here is: use too much honey and you’ll have a damp, heavy cake. Too little, your cake is dry. Just the right amount and you’ll have a cake that works at staying fresh. The question is: what can you add that will give the cake a true “crumb”, texture that makes a cake feel like a cake when you take a bite?

For the answer you can thank the current popularity of macarons, the colorful French-style almond macaroons. I have been trying to learn to make them (they’re tricky) and have a bag of almond flour sitting in my refrigerator. Almond flour is just the man for the job: it will mix well with the Passover Cake Meal to make a nice crumb and is Passover-friendly on its own.

Using almond flour in cake is certainly nothing new. Europeans have been baking with it for generations. So taking a cue from a French Galette, the simple round torte, I called my Springform pan into service.

The beauty of my concept was that with the honey and almond flour I already had two very flavorful ingredients. A couple of more layers of flavor would be ideal, so I used a delicate sprinkle of orange zest, and a not so delicate dash of frozen concentrated orange juice whose character would slightly overlap the honey while adding a sunny note of its own. A little cocoa powder and vanilla extract would bring some perfumed but earthy notes to the cake.

The result has the slight chewy crumb of a galette and a delicate honeyed sweetness that some may find reminiscent of the desserts the Spanish Sephardic Jews favor.

No disposable aluminum loaf pans required…or allowed.

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Click here for the recipe for Passover Honey Cake.

Click here for the recipe for Torta di Mandorla per la Pasqua.

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The can is purely ceremonial...

I’m beginning to feel self conscious: I’ve been boiling so much sugar lately that I’m afraid my neighbors must be thinking I’ve started a rum factory in my kitchen. The true explanation is quite innocent: I just happen to be baking things that require boiled sugar as part of their magic.

Let me tell you a little story. (Have a seat.) Many years ago I worked with a talented sleight-of-hand artist. While that sounds like the opening salvo of a very old-fashioned dirty joke, it is the truth. Sleight-of-hand artists differ from regular magicians in that everything they do is designed to be witnessed from very close range. While you watch an illusionist pull a rabbit out of a hat, part of your mind is usually doing the work to reverse engineer how the illusionist may have made this happen. At the very least you  know there’s bound to be something special about that hat—some way of hiding the rabbit.

With a sleight-of-hand artist all you see is a few coins, and a couple of pairs of hands, one pair of which likely belongs to you. My usual startled reaction to my co-worker’s tricks (and I use that word with a great deal of guilt) was, “How did you do that?” The answer was always, “It’s magic.” I could never figure out a better explanation.

I get the same zing when I boil sugar to 238 degrees: It never fails to amaze me that a saucepan of clear, dangerously hot, boiling syrup can magically transform into so many different things. Magic.

Sugar boiled to 238 degrees is commonly referred to as being at “soft ball stage.” It is called that because if you put a drop or two of the sugar syrup into a glass of cold water it should form a soft or malleable ball shape. This is cooking chemistry at its simplest. Boil the sugar to a hotter temperature and you get “hard ball stage.” You guessed it: a few drops in a glass of cold water would be hard to the touch.

If you’ve ever had Salt Water Taffy then you’ve had something that didn’t stray that far from soft ball stage sugar syrup. They cool the hot syrup on a marble slab, add a few drops of flavoring and coloring, then stretch and pull the mixture (usually by machine) until enough air has been incorporated that it has the soft milky quality that has pulled us in from the Boardwalk for so many years.

Remember the Scooter Pies I made a few weeks ago? The marshmallow I made to fill them is simply soft ball syrup whipped into gelatin. The frozen soufflé I made for Valentine’s Day had an Italian Meringue base made with egg whites and the very same soft ball syrup. The silky but rich buttercream on your cousin Debbie’s wedding cake likely started life boiling in a sauce pan (cousin Debbie may have her own dark secrets.)

Naturally if I didn’t have a Kitchen Aid-type stand mixer these things would not be in my repertoire. So it is only natural that I should find myself in front of the bubbling sauce pan again, this time so that I can resolve some unfinished business from last year.

A year ago in preparation for Passover, I decided to make Coconut Macaroons. I have an aversion to the kind they sell in the little cans. When I eat those I taste nothing but sugar and the can. I used a recipe I found that employed a generous dollop of coconut milk, a couple of egg whites, and some confectioner’s sugar. On paper it all sounded delicious. On the cookie sheet it was a loose, runny mess. I kept adding things to firm up the mixture: more confectioner’s sugar, a bit of Passover potato starch, even a touch of almond flour. Nevertheless the liquid from the cookies ran, dripped and burned onto the bottom of the oven. Have I ever told you about my fool-proof trick for ridding your kitchen of smoke? That’s because I don’t have one.

I tried that recipe a couple of times. While the resulting macaroons tasted okay they were also a bit greasy from the coconut milk. They were moist, but had no texture because the coconut was so wet it never got a chance to toast while the cookies baked. They were also far too rich for Passover dessert.

Back to the drawing board. This year it occurred to me to follow the k.i.s.s. rule: keep it simple, stupid (the latter referring to yours truly.) One package of sweetened coconut. One small batch of Italian meringue. Done. The result is a cross between a classical French Coconut Meringue (the crunchy kind) and the inside of a Mounds bar. The bonus is that they are relatively very light (as light as anything with coconut can be), and they are painless to make in quantity (you can easily double my recipe.)

Yes, by all means feel free to dip these in chocolate.

If you miss the can, you can supply your own as I did in the picture above.

It is part of the ceremony, right?

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Click here for the recipe for Coconut Macaroons.

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Bad guy / Good hat

Frankly, I don’t know why the movie has never been made. The story has all the hallmarks of a great action film. Not to mention that there’s strong woman at the core of the story who saves the day—a great role for a young(ish) actress. Even the advertising slogan practically writes itself: “Haman. Bad guy. Nice hat.”

What follows is my “treatment” of the story of Purim. Working title, “Book of Esther: the Whole Megilla.”

Please note the following: 1.) this means I can now say that I have a movie in development. 2.) Regrettably, none of the stars mentioned are actually attached to the project—yet. 3.) Also, some events have been condensed, changed, or otherwise fabricated to serve the story arch. (Hey, it’s a movie. I’m allowed a little cinematic license.)

We open at a vast banquet in the ancient Persian capital of Shushan. The action starts with the refusal of Vashti (Megan Fox), the wife of King Ahasuerus (Jude Law) to be seen in front of people—as the King has requested– without her veil. For her refusal she is banished. (Hopefully with a good pre-nup in tow.) The King decides to have a competition to find the new Queen. First, they will spend a year in his harem, all expenses paid, being groomed for the role.

Hadassah, (Anne Hathaway? Natalie Portman? Drew Barrymore?) a Jewish orphan raised by her cousin Mordechai (Mark Ruffalo), is helping a friend (not a starring role) prepare to compete for a chance to be in the King’s harem. While retrieving a piece of forgotten luggage from her friend’s cart, a gust of wind blows the contents of the luggage into the street. The task of retrieving the wind-blown clothes is made easier by the assistance of a handsome, yet intimidating stranger in a three-cornered hat (Leonardo diCaprio.) A protective Mordechai is suspicious of the handsome stranger’s attentions to Hadassah.

Cut to the group of harem-wannabes who have now finished competing. Hadassah stands off to the side, but notices that the people who are in charge of the competition are looking at her and nodding in agreement to something the stranger in the three-cornered hat has told them. Much to her surprise, they announce that Hadassah has been chosen for the harem. She glances at the handsome stranger in the three-cornered hat. He nods at her and smiles. (Please note: I created this “meet-cute” plot device. Hey, it’s a movie.)

Hadassah is reluctant, but Mordecai admonishes her to join the harem yet warns her to conceal her Jewish identity. She assumes the typically Persian name Esther, and enters the harem where the King chooses her as his new Queen.

Soon after, a now somewhat lonely Mordechai is drowning his sorrows at bar not far from the palace gates. He overhears two members of the King’s court planning to assassinate the King. Mordechai relays the information to Esther who tells the King. The plotters are caught and executed.

The King (now suffering from insomnia – no doubt brought on by all that stress) then names a new Prime Minister to his court: the stranger in the three-cornered hat enters and is introduced to the court: Haman. The court bows to the new man in charge.

The King orders a parade in Haman’s honor. As the procession makes its way around Shushan, everyone bows to Haman except Mordechai who insists that as a Jew he bows only to God. Haman is not pleased.

In the meantime the insomniac King is reading court documents in the middle of the night when he comes across records that indicate that Mordechai was the one responsible for uncovering the assassination plot against him. He asks Haman how he should honor a man who has been so loyal to the king. Thinking the king is referring to him, Haman replies that a full dress parade is in order.

When Haman finds out that the parade is for Mordechai he is enraged, and, egged on by Mrs. Haman (Keira Knightly?), makes a monetary deal with the sleep-deprived and unwitting King to kill all the Jews in Persia. He and his wife draw lots (“purim”) to decide the date of the massacre. On that date Persians will be free to kill Jews and steal their property. The Jews will not be allowed to defend themselves.

Mordechai begs Esther to talk to the King about this. Problem: if she tries to speak to the King without being summoned she could be put to death. In a courageous move, she seeks out the King who agrees to see her. She asks if she can have dinner with the King and Haman. The meal is arranged during which Haman’s evil plans are revealed and that Esther is Jewish, and therefore, one of his targets. The King orders Haman’s execution, but he escapes and leads the plot against the Jews, although now the Jews have the King’s permission to defend themselves. Our movie climaxes with Esther defeating Haman in a thrilling sword fight. (Outcome? Esther and the Jews 1, Haman and the bad guys 0. However, we reserve the right to be ambiguous about whether or not Haman meets his maker, leaving the door open for sequels.)

Thrilling, no? A total girl-power flick. And high-concept too. How great is it that we have a head start on the merchandising and tie-ins? For hundreds of years little children have been celebrating Purim by dressing as Queen Esther or Haman, and making loud noises whenever Haman’s name is mentioned. It should not come as a surprise that my favorite part of the celebration was always eating  Hamantaschen, the little pastry shaped to echo Haman’s three-cornered hat. Holiday-themed food seems to have always been my raison d’etre.

Growing up I always found Hamantaschen suspiciously close to Danish pastry; in fact there was one very cakey variety (that I haven’t seen since I was a kid) that would be perfect in the morning with a little coffee. Hamantaschen have traditionally been filled with jams, and prune, or poppy fillings—the latter was always my preference.

As an adult I question the absence of chocolate in this equation. Thousands of years of Purim celebrations and we’re still stuffing our faces with the equivalent of a prune Danish? This is something I must fix.

The result is the crunchy shortbread brim filled with a slightly chewy chocolate crown seen in the photo above. The filling isn’t terribly gooey, so your little Queen Esther won’t get her gown dirty. If you’re like me and believe chocolate goes with everything, these should make you happy.

By the way if you think my story treatment is too heavy, I have a lighter version that might make a good Disney animated musical. (Esther would be the first Jewish princess. Okay, the first Jewish Disney princess.)

Working title?  “I’ll Eat My Hat” Cute, huh?

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Click here for the recipe for Hamantaschen.

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