Baked Goods

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Bagels

For more tasty bakes, see my collection of family specialties:

You Can’t Have Dry Coffee: Papa’s Excuse to Have a Nosh And Nana’s Perfect Pastries

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084WLZ1R7/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

Do you have flour and yeast in the house? Have you got a little honey and salt? In less than an hour and a half, you could take fresh bagels out of your oven.

Ingredients

  • 2 c. warm water
  • 1 Tbs. yeast (or just use a package if that’s what you have)
  • 2 Tbs. honey (or sugar)
  • 6 c. flour (may use 2 c. whole wheat flour)
  • 1 Tbs. salt

 

Toppings

  • poppy seeds
  • sesame seeds
  • dried onion
  • fresh garlic, pressed
  • sunflower seeds

 

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, stir the yeast and honey into the water. Let sit for 10 minutes or so, until foamy. Stir in the salt and as much flour as you need to make a kneadable dough. Knead for 10 minutes.
  2. Cover and let rise for 1 hour.
  3. Using your largest soup pot, put about a gallon of water on to boil.
  4. Cut the dough into 12 equal pieces. Coil each piece into a section about 7˝ long and 1˝ in diameter. Attach the ends, and then, with your hand inside the loop, roll the seam so that the shape is even. (Alternatively, make a fairly uniform ball shape, poke your thumb through the center, and then even out the bagel shape from there.)
  5. Let bagels rest for 10 minutes.
  6. Grease two cookie sheets.
  7. Boil the bagels. Place the bagels into the boiling water. They will expand in the water so only put in about four at a time. Boil for two minutes on a side, then flip and boil for two minutes on the other side.
  8. Remove from water with slotted spoon, and place on cookie sheet.
  9. Sprinkle on the toppings of your choice, or make them plain.
  10. Bake at 375° for 30 minutes. Cool on a rack.

Leave room for the bagels to expand in the boiling water.

 

What’s for supper? Last night it was toasted bagels topped with pastrami and swiss, broiled until the cheesse melted. Doug topped his with brown mustard. Served with a side of pea pods and cucumber spears.

 

 

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Dorothy’s Shaker Lemon Pie

For more tasty bakes, see my collection of family specialties:

You Can’t Have Dry Coffee: Papa’s Excuse to Have a Nosh And Nana’s Perfect Pastries

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084WLZ1R7/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

Sliced lemons, sugar and eggs—that’s all that’s in the filling.

I have some people in my family who love tart food. Just mention “lemon” or “rhubarb” and they start squealing. My mother-in-law loves tart, so when she visited on her birthday I made her a birthday pie, using this recipe from her cookbook. If you love tart, this is for you.

Shaker Lemon Pie

  • 2 large lemons, washed, dried and sliced paper thin; remove seeds
  • 2 c. sugar
  • 4 eggs, well beaten
  • pastry for a 2-crust, 9″ pie

Place lemon slices in a bowl and sprinkle with the sugar. Gently stir to coat all slices. Let stand at room temperature for at least 3 hours or up to 12 hours. Stir occasionally.

Roll out pastry and line a 9″ pie pan. Combine the eggs with the lemons and pour into the pie shell. Roll out remaining pastry and place over filling. Seal edge, and cut slits in the top. Bake 15 mins. at 450 degrees. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake 30-35 mins. longer or until golden brown. Serve warm.

This pie makes even a lemon-lover pucker!

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Bialys

For more tasty bakes, see my collection of family specialties:

You Can’t Have Dry Coffee: Papa’s Excuse to Have a Nosh And Nana’s Perfect Pastries

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084WLZ1R7/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

Bialys were once the life-bread of Bialystok, Poland. They resemble a bagel, although the hole does not go all the way through—the depression is usually filled with minced onions and poppy seeds. Also, bialys, unlike bagels, are not boiled prior to baking. A terrific read about the history of this special bread is The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a Bread and a Lost World, where the author, Mimi Sheraton, sets out to find an authentic bialy in Bialystok, only to find that nearly all of the original bakers are gone.

This also makes an exceptionally good pizza dough. After the first 2-hour rise, punch down, let rest for 10 minutes, then shape into pizza doughs.

Ingredients

For the dough:

  • 2 c. warm water
  • 2 tsp. sugar
  • 2¼ tsp. yeast (1 package)
  • 1 Tbs. salt
  • 5 c. flour

For the filling:

  • 1 small onion, minced
  • 2 Tbs. olive oil
  • 1 Tbs. poppy seeds
  • ½ tsp. salt (preferably coarse kosher salt)

Directions

  1. In a large bowl or mixer, mix together the water, sugar and yeast. Let rest about 10 minutes until bubbly.
  2. Stir in the salt and flour. Knead for 10 minutes. Cover and let rise for 2–3 hours.
  3. Punch down the dough, divide in half and roll into two 8″- long cylinders. Cut each into 8 pieces. Let the dough rest for a few minutes on a lightly floured board, while you prepare the filling.
  4. For the filling, mix together the onion, olive oil, poppy seeds and salt. Set aside.
  5. Form each piece of dough into a ball, and place onto a parchment-covered baking sheet, and cover with a towel or plastic wrap. Let rise until doubled in size, 1–1½ hours.
  6. Using a small glass or jar that is 2″–3″ in diameter, press a deep indentation into each dough-ball. The glass will probably stick to the dough, so you can grease it (just dip it lightly into your filling mixture) and flour it before pressing into the dough. Or use your hands to form the shape.
  7. Spoon ½ teaspoon of filling into the indentation.
  8. Preheat oven to 475°.
  9. Bake for about 10 minutes until just lightly browned. Do not let them get dark brown, since bialys are meant to be sliced and toasted before eating.

The flattened rounds of dough at the end of their rise.

Grease and flour a 2″ glass, then press into the risen dough.

These are filled and ready for the oven.

Sliced and toasted. Bialys are good with butter, cream cheese, lox, jam, or…?

 

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If you’re a crispy, these are for you: Mandel Bread

For more tasty bakes, see my collection of family specialties:

You Can’t Have Dry Coffee: Papa’s Excuse to Have a Nosh And Nana’s Perfect Pastries

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084WLZ1R7/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

Mandel bread is another of those Jewish staples, something that you’ll often see at an oneg Shabbat (a social gathering after temple services) or for the high holidays. They are crisp, light, butter cookies, which are twice-baked; something like biscotti but much more delicate. The name comes from mandelbrot which means almond bread. While some bakers put almonds in their mandel bread, my mother was partial to pecans. This is her recipe. If you compare what follows to her recipe card, you’ll notice that I’ve increased the salt a bit, since Ruth used salted butter and I prefer unsalted for baking.

Ingredients

  • ½ lb butter
  • 2 Tbs. Crisco (optional)*
  • 1 c. sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 3 c. flour
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • ¼ tsp. baking soda
  • pinch salt
  • ½ c. chopped pecans
  • 1 c. mini chocolate chips
    (optional)

*makes for a bit flakier cookie

Directions

  1. Cream butter, Crisco and sugar.
  2. Add eggs and vanilla, and then the dry ingredients.
  3. Stir in the nuts and/or chips.
  4. Refrigerate dough for about 2 hours (or spread the dough thin along the edges of a metal bowl and freeze for 20 minutes).  Next: Shape, bake, slice, and bake some more
  5. Hand roll into eight 1″ rolls, place onto greased cookie sheets, spaced about 4 inches apart and flatten using the palm of your hand.
  6. Bake at 350° for 20–25 mins, or until very slightly browned.
  7. Remove from oven and cut into ¾” diagonal slices, turn each cookie 90° onto a cut edge and return to oven to bake for another 8–10 mins.
  8. Remove from oven and flip each cookie over onto the other cut edge, return to oven for another 8–10 mins.
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A sweet babka for a sweet new year

For more tasty bakes, see my collection of family specialties:

You Can’t Have Dry Coffee: Papa’s Excuse to Have a Nosh And Nana’s Perfect Pastries

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084WLZ1R7/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

A babka is a yeast-dough coffee cake, usually filled with fruit and/or chocolate. My nana made a babka each year for Rosh Hashana, which she made as sweet as possible so that we would enjoy a sweet year. I remember her emptying out jars of jam (usually leftover Passover eingie, or maybe some plum jam), throwing in some extra sugar and cinnamon, plus a handful of nuts and raisins. In her honor, I made one for my family today, and filled it with a jar of tart cherry jam, some chocolate chips, cinnamon-sugar and a handful of slivered almonds. The fun in making this is that you can use whatever filling you like.

 

If you’d enjoy the recipe, please visit the Apple iTunes store to download my app, iNosh. Here’s the link for that:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/inosh/id777362589?ls=1&mt=8

I’m donating half of the proceeds to Mazon, A Jewish Response to Hunger

And here’s a preview of some of the content on the app. For now, it’s only available for iPad users.

iNosh info

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Gluten-free, Dairy-free Challah

For the people I love who do not eat gluten, I think you’ll really enjoy this bread. This is the most unusual dough I’ve ever worked with. It is stretchy and very thin, and is very entertaining to watch rise and then gently flow over the lip of the bread pan. It got tremendous reviews at dinner last night.

In a large bowl in your mixer, combine and let sit until bubbly:

  • 1/4 c. sugar
  • 1 Tbs. yeast
  • 1 c. warm water

Then add:

  • 3 eggs + 1 egg yolk (save egg white for brushing top of loaf)
  • 1/2 tsp. cider vinegar
  • 3 Tbs. olive oil

Stir in:

  • 1-1/3 c. rice flour
  • 1-1/4 c. tapioca flour
  • 2 tsp. xanthan gum
  • 1 tsp. salt

Beat on high for 2 minutes. Cover and let rise for 1 hour, then beat again for another 2 minutes. Grease a 9″ x 5″ loaf pan with some olive oil, and flour it using rice flour. Transfer the dough into the pan, and let rise for 45 minutes.

Very gently brush the top of the dough with a mixture of:

  • 1 egg white
  • 1 Tbs. honey

Sprinkle with:

  • poppy seeds or sesame seeds

Bake at 375 degrees for 45 mins. After about 15 minutes, when the top gets brown, loosely place a sheet of aluminum foil over the top to prevent burning.

 

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Black Bottom Brownies

For more tasty bakes, see my collection of family specialties:

You Can’t Have Dry Coffee: Papa’s Excuse to Have a Nosh And Nana’s Perfect Pastries

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084WLZ1R7/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

My test-taster, Max, gives a thumbs up.

During the course of my blog’s hiatus, I was laying in bed one night, thinking about packing and moving across country and how black bottom cupcakes are so delicious, yet so fussy to make. That is how Black Bottom Brownies were born.

Black Bottom Brownies

For the batter:

  • 2 sticks butter
  • 2 c. sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 tsp. vanilla
  • dash of salt
  • 1 c. flour
  • 1 c. cocoa

Cream together the butter and sugar, add the eggs, vanilla and salt. Carefully stir in the flour and cocoa (so that you don’t have dust everywhere). Spread batter into a greased 10 x 14 pan.

For the topping:

  • 8 oz. cream cheese
  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 c. sugar
  • 1/8 tsp. salt
  • 1 c. mini chocolate chips

Beat together the cream cheese, egg, sugar and salt, stir in the chips.

With the end of a small spoon, make deep indentations in the brownie batter, carefully spaced so that you will have one per cut brownie. Fill a small ziplock bag with the topping, zip it shut, then snip off about a 1/2″ corner of the bag. Using the bag like a pastry bag, squeeze a dollop of filling into each indentation of the batter. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 mins.

Use a ziplock as a pastry bag to squeeze in the filling.

Out of the oven…

…and into waiting hands. (Try and wait until they’re cool before cutting.)

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**Seeking test bakers! This recipe left me with a half batch of leftover filling.  I suggest using an extra egg yolk in the batter, and making half the recipe of the filling using just an egg white. The new filling recipe would look like this:

  • 4 oz. cream cheese
  • 1 egg white
  • 2 heaping Tbs. sugar
  • dash of salt
  • 1/2 c. mini chocolate chips

Let me know if you try this and how it turns out.

Or: After tasting these, and realizing how rich and filling they are, I might just use up all of the filling next time, putting the dollops closer together—even touching a bit, making much smaller brownies.

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Passover Rocks and Cherry-Almond Rocks

For favorite Passover recipes from my kitchen, please see Essential Passover from Scratch: Recipes and Stories from My Mother’s Kitchen

From Nanas recipe card box.

These were my dad’s favorite Passover cookie. I’m going to bake up a batch tonight.

Passover Rocks

Mix together:

  • 2 c. matzo cake meal
  • 2 c. matzo farfel
  • 1-1/2 c. sugar
  • 1 c. raisins
  • 1/2 c. chopped pecans

Add:

  • 4 eggs
  • 1 tsp. cinnamon

Mix in:

  • 2/3 c. butter, melted (and more as needed)

The “dough” is very crumbly. Drizzle in enough additional melted butter so that you are able to press together a small cookie and it will hold its shape.

Drop by teaspoon, bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until nicely browned.

For Cherry-Almond: substitute dried cherries for the raisins, omit cinnamon, and add 1/2 tsp. almond extract with the butter.

Cherry almond rocks (back row), and traditional Passover rocks (front row).

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Passover Mandel Bread

My grandmother Mollye’s recipe card box is a family heirloom.

As my grandmother Mollye got older she would ask me to come over to help her bake. Her Passover favorites were mandel bread, rocks, teiglach and ingberlach. Instead of flour, the Passover mandel bread recipe calls for potato starch and matzo cake meal, which give the cookie an extremely fine texture.

 

Ingredients

  • ½ lb. butter
  • 1 c. sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 Tbs. grated orange rind
  • 1½ c. matzo cake meal
  • ½ c. potato starch
  • 1 c. chopped pecans

Directions

  1. Cream butter and sugar.
  2. Add the eggs and orange rind.
  3. Mix together the cake meal and potato starch and add to the wet ingredients.
  4. Stir in the nuts.
  5. Refrigerate for at least an hour, or overnight.
  6. Hand roll into eight 1″ rolls, placed about 4 inches apart onto greased cookie sheets, then flatten using the palm of your hand.
  7. Bake at 350° for 20–25 mins, or until very slightly browned.
  8. Remove from oven and cut into ¾” diagonal slices; turn each cookie 90° onto a cut edge and return to oven to bake for another 8–10 mins.
  9. Remove from oven and flip each cookie over onto the other cut edge; return to oven for another 8–10 mins.
  10. If you like, sprinkle the warm cookies with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon.

For favorite Passover recipes from my kitchen, please see Essential Passover from Scratch: Recipes and Stories from My Mother’s Kitchen

passover promo shot