The Best Passover Cookies Ever

So remember back in my previous post when I said I wasn't really planning to make any new desserts this year?  Well, I just can't help myself...and you shouldn't either.  These are, hands down, the best Passover cookies I have ever tasted (and they rank up there with non-Passover cookies too).  A friend brought these to our seder and everyone devoured them in an instant.  It is great to have a recipe where people eat it on Passover and say how great it is, not just great for Passover.  Be sure to use really good chocolate, since that is the primary flavor of the cookies.  I also used matzah cake meal instead of matzah meal, since it is ground a little finer, but I think either would work.  The good news is that there are four more days of Passover, so you can make these!  You can find them on Martha Stewart's website.

New Passover Dessert: Chocolate Idiot Cake

The thing about Passover desserts is, when you find one that works, you really want to stick with it.  So many Passover dessert recipes are really terrible and you don't know until you bite into it, so when I find a good one, I tend to make it every year.

However, at the last minute this year, I decided I wanted something chocolate to go with our usual berry crisp.  I thought the best course of action would be to find a flourless chocolate cake that was not Passover in any way, and make it  for the seder.

After a short google, I found this flourless chocolate cake from David Lebovitz.  Since I trust the man with all ice cream, I figure he probably also knows cake.  And, since this cake is called Chocolate Idiot Cake, I figured the chances of screwing it up are small.  

This cake was very, very easy to make.  It is just chocolate, butter (margarine in my case), sugar and eggs and then you put it in a water bath.  The cake comes out creamy and very, very rich (and pretty flat, but that is par for the course).  A small slice does the trick and is a delicious chocolate end to the seder (and if you are having a vegetarian seder, I highly recommend a dollop of whipped cream).  You can find the recipe here.

A Passover Surprise (The Good Kind)

Okay, we admit it, August has been a pretty weak month for the Baking Sisters. Rebecca has an infant and a toddler so she gets a pass; Rachel has been in Los Angeles helping take care of the aforementioned infant and toddler, so she also gets a pass. Basically, I have been unacceptably lame when it comes to posting. But that doesn’t mean I’ve been unacceptably lame when it comes to baking, no no no! So I’ll do my best to catch y’all up with my exciting baking adventures this week.

You know what’s the best? When you try a delicious baked good, exclaim over its baked goodness, look up the recipe, and then discover that it is, of all things, kosher for Passover. This is what happened recently in my office. Our office recently moved, and while we are now far away from most of the delicious food in the Murray Hill/Flatiron area, we are a mere block away from the delicious Francois Payard Bakery. One of my coworkers bought a fudgy chocolate cookie with nuts from FPB, and was nice enough to share it. It was so good – a little chewy, a lot fudgy. Another coworker managed to find the recipe on New York Magazine, and – behold! – it was flourless! It’s seriously awesome when that happens. So it became immediately apparent what I would be bringing in for Baked Goods Friday that week.

These cookies are seriously easy, like simple arithmetic or a loose woman. The only thing that isn’t totally straightforward is the amount of egg whites, as I learned from reading the many helpful comments on the recipe. I started out with two and, when the dough still seemed too dry, added a third. This is obviously less than the recipe calls for, but even so my cookies had a chewier, more meringue-like consistency than the ones from FPB. But I don’t think it made them taste worse, just different. Also, I know that the Baking Sisters are as a rule opposed to including nuts in baked goods, but honestly these cookies have so few ingredients that there’s barely anything in them without the nuts. I felt the nuts made it a little more substantial. (Oh, did I mention that without the nuts, there's no fat? God these cookies just keep getting better and better.) But if you’re a purist, do whatever you want, I don’t care. Just be sure to enjoy these cookies next time Passover rolls around, or even before then!

François Payard’s Flourless Chocolate-Walnut Cookies

From Chocolate Epiphany by way of New York Magazine

2 3/4 cups walnut halves
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. Spread the walnut halves on a large-rimmed baking sheet and toast in the oven for about 9 minutes, until they are golden and fragrant.

(1) Let cool slightly, then transfer the walnut halves to a work surface and coarsely chop them. Position two racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and lower temperature to 320. Line two large-rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper.

(2) In a large bowl, whisk (or combine in an electric mixer on low speed) the confectioners’ sugar with the cocoa powder and salt followed by the chopped walnuts. While whisking (or once you change the speed to medium), add the egg whites and vanilla extract and beat just until the batter is moistened (do not overbeat or it will stiffen).

(3) Spoon the batter onto the baking sheets in 12 evenly spaced mounds, and bake for 14 to 16 minutes, until the tops are glossy and lightly cracked; shift the pans from front to back and top to bottom halfway through to ensure even baking. Slide the parchment paper (with the cookies) onto 2 wire racks. Let cookies cool completely, and store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Ethnic Flavor: Passover Dessert Roundup Part II

Ebony and Ivory from Kosher By Design (and Passover by Design)

Do you ever make a dessert that looks so fancy that people oooh and ahhh over it, but you feel secretly smug because it didn't take very long and it wasn't very hard?  This is one of those desserts.  I have mande it many, many times and it always comes out great.  The only tiny tweak that I would make is that the coffee flavor seemed to be stronger this time than other times I have made it.  It might be the kosher for Passover coffee, so just be careful if you don't like coffee.  Usually the coffee just enhances the flavor of the chocolate.   The best Passover chocolate I have found is Alprose Swiss baking chocolate.  If you can't find it near where you are, I ordered it from Oh Nuts!  They are a great website and I highly recommend them.  This dessert was a total hit with everyone at the table.  It is also wonderful because it requires no fake Passover ingredients.  Everything is already kosher for Passover!


Mama Penny's Lace Cookies

The first Passover my husband and I spent together, he asked me to make lace cookies (as though everyone knows what those are).  It turns out they are a combination of matzah farfel, sugar, eggs, margarine, almonds and a little bit of luck.  They are a little bit like florentines, but because they are for Passover, they are very, very thin and sticky.  The recipe comes from my mother-in-law, by way of a friend of hers.  


They are good cookies on their own, but this year I made them even better by adding a twist.  I sandwiched two cookies together with chocolate (I used leftover dark and white from the cake) and they were delicious.  My husband thinks I ruined them, since he doesn't like chocolate, but we had some of both so there was something for everyone.


A silicon mat is a MUST here, otherwise your cookies will stick like crazy.  Seriously.  We have made them without one, and they often end up a in a crumbled (but delicious) mess.


Recipes for the cake and the cookies are after the jump.

Ethnic Flavor: Passover Roundup (Part I)

So, I thought I was going to be all ahead of the game and make and post about all my Passover desserts before the first seder.  However, the oven gods were conspired against me, and our oven died on Saturday night.  Luckily, we have a very generous neighbor who allowed us to kasher her extra oven for Passover, but by then we were many hours behind.  These desserts just made it under the wire.  However, there are still five more days of the holiday, which is more than enough time to try some of these desserts.  Without further ado, I present the Passover dessert roundup, Part I.


Mixed Berry Crisp from Couldn't Be Parve

This is one delicious dessert.  And it is so easy!  All you do is mix together a few pounds of fruit (Shoshana uses strawberries and rhubarb, we used a combination of strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries) with a few other things, top with a basic crumble topping and cook.  Yum!  Everyone at the seder loved it and the leftovers have been just as good.  It would be delicious with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream if you are having a dairy meal (or don't keep kosher).  You can find the recipe here.  Even if you think you are not a cook or a baker, you can make this...and you should!  Brooke is going to try making it with apples.  Perhaps she will leave a comment letting us know how it turned out.


Fallen Chocolate Souffle Cake from Baking and Books

This cake was good, but I think I overcooked it, and so it would have been a lot better if that had not happened (remember I was working with an unfamiliar oven).  It was very light, which was nice after the seder, unlike flourless chocolate cakes which tend to be heavy.  It puffed up nicely in the oven and fell when I took it out, but after a dusting of powdered sugar, it was very pretty.  The orange flavor from the zest (I skipped the alcohol) was very subtle the first day, and intensified as the days went on.  I liked the combination of flavors, but if you don't like orange and chocolate, this cake might not be for you after the first day.  You can find the recipe here.


Success Cake from My Most Favorite Dessert Company Cookbook

I think this needs to be renamed -- failure cake.  The meringue part went fine, and then it came to the buttercream.  I don't know if it is because of the differences between Passover and regular margarine (the recipe was written to be non-dairy) but the frosting would not come together.  It looked disgusting -- like cottage cheese that had been on the counter too long.  I tried three times and it had the same problem each time.  I don't know if it was the margarine or the fact that the recipe called for sugar syrup to be heated to 240 degrees, which seemed too hot in my experience, but it was a total failure.  In the end, I just cut up the large pieces of meringue into smaller cookies, which didn't look pretty but tasted good.  I am posting the recipe just for the meringues, since the frosting was so terrible.  I have made other things from this book and they have been fine, so I think it was just Passover or something.


Success Cake Meringues
2 1/4 cups ground almonds
1 tablespoon potato starch
6 extra-large egg whites, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar


Preheat oven to 200 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.


Combine almonds and potato starch.


In the bowl of a standing electric mixture fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites on medium speed until foamy.  Increase the speed to high and gradually add the sugar, beating until the meringue is glossy and holds peaks.


With a rubber spatula, fold in ground almonds and potato starch, gently but throughly.


Pipe onto cookie sheet in desired shape.


Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes and allow them to cook on the baking sheets.

Ethnic Flavor: Passover Recipes

So, Passover is coming, which is why we have not posted in a while.  I haven't made our desserts yet, but I will post them as I make them.

We will be making:

Mixed Berry Crisp from Couldn't Be Parve (her version is strawberry rhubarb, but there is no rhubarb around here yet, so mixed berry it is).  

Fallen Chocolate Souffle Cake from Baking and Books

Success Cake from My Most Favorite Dessert Cookbook (recipe coming soon)

Ebony and Ivory Mousse Cake from Kosher By Design (recipe coming soon) -- This is not for the seder, but for Shabbat dinner, where we will be having fish, since I assume we will be sick of meat.

If you are in need of some good Passover recipes, you can also try:

Torta Del Re

The Passover Section of Couldn't Be Parve, where she has tons of great stuff

Chag Sameach (Happy Holiday).  We will update you as we bake.