Making the Bitter Sweet

Hi there! Rebecca is right, my absence from blogging has been inexcusable (although not as inexcusable as her failure to take a picture of our lovely lime meringue pie before it was gobbled up, ahem). I had such a wonderful time with her, Adam, Simon, and Leo in Los Angeles last month, but since then it's been back to real life, and back to baking.

Right now we're in a period of the Jewish calendar known as the Nine Days. This appropriately named period is the nine days leading up to the fast day of Tisha B'Av, a very sad holiday that commemorates the destruction of both temples in Jerusalem some two millennia ago. Among other restrictions, we don't eat meat during this time, because meat is considered a luxury that brings us happiness. The only time you can eat meat is if you've had a siyyum (i.e. if someone has finished a piece of learning), or on Shabbat. I promise, this random lesson in Jewish history and tradition gets relevant. 

So I decided to take advantage of it being Shabbat and made steak for some friends who were coming over for dinner, which meant I had to find a parve dessert, which could only mean one thing - Couldn't Be Parve! I was in luck because I found not one, but two recipes! One was for rhubarb sorbet; the other, for sugar cookies that Shoshana suggests you serve with it. The sugar cookies were good - they mostly tasted like sugar cookies, which is all you can ask for from a parve cookie. What I liked about them is that, unlike most butter-based sugar cookies, you don't have to chill the dough at all to get them to maintain their shape while they bake, so they're great if you're in a hurry, since the dough takes all of three minutes to throw together.

The rhubarb sorbet was fantastic. It was also very easy to make, as most sorbets are, but it was a lot creamier than I expected, almost more like ice cream. Rhubarb is one of those super-summery foods, and I've been making a lot of stuff with it this summer, I thought it was very appropriate for the occasion, because it's quite bitter, but dump a ton of sugar on it and it becomes sweet and delicious. The Nine Days are also bitter, but if you dump Shabbat on it...whatever, you know what I'm getting at. You can find the sorbet recipe here and the cookie recipe here. 

Ethnic Flavor: Aaaaples and Crisco for Rosh Hashanah

So the chagim (the many Jewish holidays that come one after the other in September and October) are finally over. Every year, it seems like they’ll never end, and then they do, and you’re like, huh, a small part of me misses them. But it’s a pretty small part.

One of the more fun parts about the chagim is the eating. Well, not on Yom Kippur. But whether you’re sitting at the dining room table or in a hut, there are plenty of festive holiday meals. This year, Rosh Hashanah was made doubly special by the fact that it fell on our dad’s birthday, and our mom requested that I make him a special holiday/birthday cake. (It was also a co-cake for our Uncle Joel, whose birthday had been the previous week.) I thought about it for a good long while and then – eureka! – remembered a tasty cake that my friend Nathan once shared with me when we came back to college after Rosh Hashanah senior year. Obviously it was a very delicious cake, to have stuck with me for the last two years. It was an apple cake, which is traditional for Rosh Hashanah. (We eat apples and honey for a sweet new year, get it?) So I e-mailed him and he kindly sent me the recipe. I knew it would be delicious but I wanted to add a little spruce to it, it being a double-birthday cake and all. Caramel glaze or frosting seemed the natural thing, but because we were having meat, I was concerned that it wouldn’t work out, as caramel is rather dependent on cream and butter. Luckily, I was able to dig up a surprisingly delicious recipe for vegan caramel frosting. It used the dreaded Crisco, for which I normally would substitute margarine, but I figured that one probably shouldn’t screw around with vegan recipes, which are already dicey at best. And then it was lucky that I had made the frosting, because we pretty much had to glue the cake back together when it came out of the pan, and it looked much nicer frosted.

The most fun part about this recipe was getting to use my dad’s apple peeler-corer-slicer, the latest in apple peeling-coring-slicing technology. It took me an embarrassingly long time and the help of my heroic father to learn how to use it, but once I did, it was so fun! I highly recommend using one if you are going to make a recipe with a lot of apples, like this one.

Me, coring/peeling/slicing apples

Neat!

The cake, despite being in pieces, came out just as yummy as I had remembered it being in the fall of 2010. There were a lot of desserts at that festive holiday meal, but this cake was by far the most popular! Serve it at your next apple-related event! (Perhaps a Steve Jobs memorial service? Haw haw haw.)

Ruth Margolin's Apple Cake

5 apples (tart, like Granny Smith)

2 t cinnamon

5 T sugar

3 C flour

3 t baking powder

2 C sugar

2-½ t vanilla

1 C oil

1 t salt

4 eggs

¼ C orange juice

Peel the apples, and cut into slices.  Sprinkle with the cinnamon and the 5 T sugar, and set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the remaining ingredients together until smooth.

Grease a large tube pan.  (Either use a Baker’s Joy type spray that includes flour, or grease the pan and then dust it with sugar.)

Pour half the batter into the prepared pan.  Place half the apple mixture on top.  Pour on remaining batter, spreading to cover apples.  Top with remaining apples.  (There will be some sweetened juice in the apple bowl; you can drizzle it over the apples.)

Bake at 350 degrees for 1-¼ hours.  Let stand 15 minutes and then remove from pan and cool on a wire rack.

You can find the frosting recipe here.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Bundt Cake

This cake is so awesome because it tastes just like a chocolate chip cookie but in an elegant cake form.  And it is parve (no dairy) so you can serve it after a meat meal.  Of course, the orignal recipe calls for butter and milk, but I substituted margarine and soy milk and it was still delicious.

The base of this cake is actually Dorie Greenspan's Brown Sugar Bundt Cake, which has nuts and fruit mixed in.  However, the brown sugar base is a lot like a chocolate chip cookie batter in cake form, so it made sense just to replace the nuts and fruit with chocolate chips (although you could probably keep the nuts if you like that kind of thing).

Here is the recipe, with my changes:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Bundt Cake
Adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
225 g / 8 oz unsalted margarine, at room temperature
2 cups lightly packed light brown sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup soy milk, at room temperature
12 oz chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter and flour a 9- to 10-inch Bundt pan.

In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Working with a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat the butter and sugar together at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour mixture and the buttermilk alternately - add the flour in 3 additions and the buttermilk in 2, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Mix only until the ingredients are incorporated and scrape down the bowl as needed. Turn off the mixer, and with a rubber spatula, stir in the chocolate chips. Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top.

Bake in the center of the oven for 60 to 65 minutes, or until a thin knife inserted deep into the center of the cake comes out clean. If at any point the cake is browning too fast, cover the top loosely with a piece of foil. Transfer the cake to a rack and cool for 10 minutes before unmolding, then cool to room temperature on the rack. Finish the top of the cake with a dusting of powdered sugar. 

Cream-Colored Ponies and Moist Strawberry Streusel

Hey there, long time no Baking Sisters. Wassup.

When you are a prolific baker, it’s good to have what I like to call “back-pocket recipes” on hand. These are foolproof recipes with simple ingredients that don’t take long to make but always impress. Some of my favorite back-pocket recipes are tarte noire, Emily’s apple pie, and chocolate (fake) soufflés. But when I am called upon to make a dessert that is both parve and non-chocolate, this cake from Kosher By Design: Short on Time is always the one that I go to. The problem with most parve cakes is that you can really taste the lack of butter. Not having frosting goes a long way towards helping this, but usually the cake itself is still dry and crumbly. Not so this cake. It’s light yet satisfying, it stays moist and delicious for days, and it’s incredibly simple to make. Try this out, and you’ll want to keep the recipe in your back pocket, too.

I am aware that Rachel had already blogged about this. I would like to state that I have made this cake many, many times and I've never had the problems she had - thus proving categorically that I am a better person than Rachel. Just kidding. But seriously, this cake is fool-proof. Thus proving that Rachel is a fool. Just kidding again. Before I get myself into more trouble, here's the recipe.

Adventures with the Ice Cream Maker: Keeping It in the Family

Note: Today's double-header is brought to you by Sarah and the Baking Sisters' dad, Irv.

If you're like me, then you believe that there are certain things that define summer. Beautiful sunset walks along the Hudson in Riverside Park...

Sunflowers...

And these small, ripe, intensely flavorful strawberries that start to pop up in farmers' markets around June.

For me, this summer has also brought some exciting news - I finally got a job! I started last week and I love it so far. Conveniently, the night before I started my job happened to be Erev Rosh Chodesh Av. For those of you scratching your heads, that means "the evening of the first day of the month of Av" (Av being the fifth month on the Jewish calendar, and Jewish days starting at sunset.) Despite my happy employment news, Av is considered the saddest month on the Jewish calendar because both of the ancient Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed on the Ninth of Av, plus a lot of other sodding things supposedly happened on that date that I won't get into here. One of the ways that we show our sadness is by not eating meat or doing various other happy things for the nine days leading up to the Ninth of Av. So between our impending meat deprivation and my entry into the world of wage labor, the situation obviously called for some meat. And when the situation obviously calls for some meat, there is an equally obvious call for parve dessert.

My contribution came in the form of brownie bites from Kosher by Design: Short on Time. They are a snap to put together, they are moist and fudgy and last for ages, and when I gave one to my friend she didn't even realize they were parve! You obviously don't have to cut them just the way the recipe says but I agree with Susie Fishbein that it's waaaay fun to eat the edges around the brownie circles. I didn't do all that business with flipping the brownies out of the pan; I found that if you just use a biscuit cutter, they come out pretty easily. I also didn't roll them into balls because in my experience that's always made a huge crumbly mess, but if you want to try it best of luck to you.

Brownie Bites

From Kosher by Design: Short on Time (page 240)

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted margarine, melted and placed in refrigerator to cool for 10 minutes

3/4 cup good-quality Dutch process cocoa powder

1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil

2 cups sugar

1 cup all-purpose flour

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Coating: confectioner's sugar, cocoa powder, chopped nuts, edible glitter, colored sanding sugars

Preheat the oven to 325 F. Line a 7- by 11-inch brownie pan with parchment paper and coat with non-stick cooking spray.

In the bowl of an electric stand mixer, combine the melted margarine, cocoa powder, oil, sugar, flour, eggs and vanilla. Beat to combine.

Spread the mixture into the prepared pan.

Bake for 35-40 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and place into the refrigerator for 20 minutes or until cool enough to handle.

When the brownies are cool, run a knife around the edge of the pan. Flip the brownie out onto a piece of parchment paper on a hard word surface in one whole piece. Using a 1 1/2 inch diameter round cookie cutter, cut circles from the center of the brownie, leaving the harder crust. Roll the circles between the palms of your hands to form into balls, and roll into coating of your choice.

Store in airtight container.

Over to you, Dad!

The Baking Sisters’ father is glad to be back for a guest blog. When Sarah graduated from college and returned home with her ice cream maker, I decided to experiment. (I guess it’s in my blood, since my father owned a drive-in ice cream store when I was growing up, and I worked there every summer when I was a teenager.) This recipe was one of my best finds.

Everyone knows that there are two kinds of strawberries: those made for travelling and those made for eating. The travelling kind – the ones you get in the supermarket year-round that are bred to make it across the country in one piece – look beautiful but are hard and white on the inside and have no taste. The eating kind are small, sometimes misshapen, but red all the way through and almost oozing sweet juice. So while summer lasts, get to a greenmarket or farm stand and buy some locally-grown berries. Then turn them into this amazing strawberry sorbet with flavor even more intense than the berries themselves. You can make it with “travelling” berries, but why bother?

This recipe is adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz. It makes about 4 cups.

1-1/3 lbs. (yes, pounds) fresh strawberries, rinsed and hulled

1 cup sugar

1-1/3 tsp. kirsch (optional, but it adds a nice punch)

1-1/3 tsp. freshly-squeezed lemon juice

Pinch of salt

Slice the strawberries and toss them in a medium bowl with the sugar and kirsch, stirring until the sugar begins to dissolve. Cover and let stand for one hour, stirring every so often.

Puree the strawberries and their liquid with the lemon juice and salt in a blender or food processor until smooth (I prefer the blender). There is no need to strain out the seeds.

Chill the mixture thoroughly, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Enjoy, and plan to make more soon, since this batch won’t last.

Le Souffle (or something)

This is one of my favorite recipes! I've never been able to blog about it before now because I usually make it for Shabbat and don't have time to photograph it between baking and serving. Luckily, this time I made it for a dinner party, with dairy ingredients for the first time ever! Yes, the amazing thing about this cake is that it tastes the same whether it's dairy or parve, so it's perfect for after a meat dinner, maybe served with some delicious raspberry sorbet or fresh fruit. It's not really a souffle but it has all of the great taste with none of the temperamental-ness; you can whip up the whole thing in about half an hour and it's pretty foolproof. (After all, it is from the wonderful Kosher By Design: Short on Time.) It has a rich but not overwhelming chocolate flavor, and if you cook it for the right amount of time, the cake will be moist around the edges and hot like delicious chocolatey molten lava on the inside. That's really all one can ask for in life, amirght? Okay, here's the recipe.

Warm Runny Chocolate Souffles
From Kosher By Design: Short on Time by Susie Fishbein

4 ounces good-quality semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter or margarine

4 large eggs

1½ cups sugar, plus a little more for coating the ramekins

¾ cup flour

1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Generously coat 8 (6.8 ounce) ramekins with nonstick cooking spray and lightly cot them with granulated sugar. Hold a ramekin on its side. Tap the sides, turning the ramekin to coat the sides with sugar as well. Repeat with remaining ramekins.

Break the chocolate into small pieces; place it and the butter in a small microwave-safe dish. Microwave on medium power for 15-second intervals, stirring between, until the chocolate is completely melted.

In the bowl of an electric stand mixer, beat the eggs on high speed until foamy. Slowly pour in the sugar, and continue beating until very fluffy and pale yellow. On low speed, stir in the flour and vanilla, until thoroughly combined.

Increase speed to high, and while beating, slowly drizzle in the melted chocolate mixture. Once added, beat until all the chocolate is incorporated, about 1 minute.

For ease of pouring, transfer the batter into a large measuring cup. Fill each ramekin halfway. Set the ramekins onto a baking sheet and bake for 14-15 minutes, or until the tops are brown and the centers are warm.

Alternatively, the filled ramekins can be refrigerated. Just leave at room temperature for 30 minutes before baking.

Serve immediately, being careful because the ramekins are hot!

A Seasonal Update on Parve Chocolate Cake

It has come to our attention that this parve chocolate cake is a big hit on our blog, but we posted it in our early days when we didn't include recipes. Anyway, we've updated the original post to include the recipe, woo hoo! We also made the cake for Shabbat dinner on Friday, with a little twist in honor of Christmas Eve - half a teaspoon of mint extract added to the frosting! Yummy! Don't use any more, especially if you're going to let it sit for a bit before serving, because the mint flavor intensifies as time goes on. Enjoy!

Great Modifications: Scrumptious Sandwiches

Some days, you just gotta bake cookies. Your sister leaves you for exotic climes, your friends are flakes, your sweet tooth is achin' and you need to do something with your hands or you'll go crazy. You call up your good pal Maida Heatter and she suggests that you try some fancy little cookies called "Les Petites." "But Maida," you protest, "I wanted to make these for Shabbos, and they have dairy in them!" And then a brainwave hits you! You will MODIFY the cookies so that they are parve!

These cookies were way fun to bake, even if they were time-consuming. They also look very nice and taste very good. I changed the assembly a little because I didn't have a small enough cookie cutter to create a hole within the top cookie, and my recipe reflects that, but if you have such a thing then by all means go with it. These are good cookies to serve on special occasions, and since the holy Sabbath is always a special occasion, they were perfect! I will definitely make these again. Of course, they are probably even better not parve; simply substitute butter for margarine and you are set!

3/4 blanched hazelnuts or almonds, finely ground in a food processor
1.5 sticks unsalted margarine
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
1.5 cups sifted flour
5 ounces parve semisweet chocolate

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream the margarine in the mixer, then add the vanilla, sugar and salt, then the flour, then finally the nuts. Beat well until mixed.
Roll the dough out on a floured surface so that it is between 1/3 and 1/4 inch thick. Using a round (preferably scalloped) 1.25 inch cookie cutter, place the cookies on the baking sheet. Bake for 10-15 minutes or longer, until the cookies are sandy-colored but not too soft- do not underbake.

While the cookies are still on the sheet, use a fork to poke holes in half of the cookies. Be careful with this step, since the cookies will still be warm and a little fragile. Once you are done, put all the cookies on a rack to cool.

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or a microwave-proof bowl. When it is melted, find a cookie without holes in it. Place a dollop of chocolate on the cookie- don't spread it- and then sandwich it lightly with one of the holey cookies. Repeat. Refrigerate the cookies so the chocolate can set, then sprinkle with confectioner's sugar through a sieve.


P.S. Here are the answers to the Tony Cupcakes quiz from last time.
1-4 2-a 3-g 4-e 5-h 6-c 7-f 8-b

Our Go-To Parve Chocolate Cake

In addition to our love of baking, the Baking Sisters also keep Kosher. Since meat products and dairy products cannot be mixed in the same meal, this means that it is sometimes necessary to bake a dessert with no dairy in it (also known as parve). This means no butter, milk, cream or chocolate made with milk. For some, this might seem a travesty of baking. For the baking sisters, it is a challenge!

This cake is the go-to parve chocolate cake in our family. It is moist, has good chocolate flavor and is easy, thanks to the fact that it is based in a cake mix. It is almost impossible to screw it up! The cake comes from page 389 of The Cake Mix Doctor. Normally, we would not be ones to use cake mix (we like to bake from scratch), but when you are running out of time on a Friday afternoon before Shabbat, sometimes it is just easier to dump it in a bowl and go, without worry about whether or not the cake will turn out. Besides, there is no shame in using cake mix when it produces such a yummy recipe.

The frosting is different than the one recommended in the book. We made a parve chocolate cream cheese frosting. It is delicious -- just the right amount of tang. You can find the recipe below.

This cake can either be served at room temperature, or right out of the fridge, where it takes on a deeper, fudgier, flavor.

Dark Chocolate Chiffon Cake

5 large egg whites

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 (18 1/4 ounce) package plain devil's food cake mix

3 large egg yolks

3/4 cup water

1/2 cup vegetable oil (any kind)

1 tablespoon instant coffee powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees and set aside an ungreased 10-inch tube pan.

2. Place the egg whites and cream of tartar in a medium mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer on high until stiff peaks form, about 2-3 minutes.

3. Place the cake mix, egg yolks, water, oil, coffee powder, and vanilla in a mixing bowl and blend on low for 1 minute. Stop the machine to scrap down the sides with a rubber spatula then increase mixing speed to medium and beat for 2 more minutes, continuing to scrap the sides of the bowl as needed. Turn the beaten egg whites on top of the batter and with a rubber spatula fold the whites in to the batter until the mixture is combined but still light. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing out the top and place the pan in the oven.

4. Bake the cake until it springs back when pressed with your finger and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and without batter, about 48 to 52 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and immediately turn it upside down over the neck of a glass bottle. Run a long, sharp knife around the edge of the cake and invert it onto a serving platter so it is right side up.

Parve Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting:

1 8oz container Tofutti cream cheese
1 stick margarine
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (use really good stuff, because that is the main flavor)
1 tsp vanilla
3 cups confectioners sugar

Use the whisk attachment to mix the cream cheese and the margarine until they are light and fluffy. Add the other ingredients and mix until you achieve the desired texture. If you like your frosting less sweet, just reduce the sugar a bit.