Tag Archives: dessert

Joy’s Pineapple Kugel for Passover

27 Mar

Passover pineapple kugel

This is a very easy Passover recipe from my machatenista Joy Gardin. If you are not Jewish, you may not know that very useful Yiddish term for the mother-in-law of your child. A child’s father-in-law is a mechutan and together they are the machatunim. 

Anyway, this makes a nice change at Passover because it doesn’t contain any matzo meal, farfel or anything else to give it a distinctive Passover taste. It would be a good recipe for gluten-free people as well. Serve it as a side dish or even for dessert, because it’s sweet enough.

Ingredients:

4 eggs
½ cup oil
½ cup sugar
4 Tbs. potato starch
1 Tbs. vanilla sugar (optional)
1 tsp. baking powder (optional)
1 20 oz. can crushed pineapple, drained

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix all ingredients except pineapple and stir well. Add drained pineapple and mix. Bake in a 9-inch round pan for about 40 minutes or until firm and lightly browned.

Serves 6 to 8

 

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Easy Passover Brownies

24 Mar

Passover browniesGroan! If you’re like me, you’re up to your elbows in Passover cleaning and starting to think about the cooking. For everyone in the midst of this craziness, I wish you energy to complete the task and joy when everything is done!

I make these brownies every year because they’re easy and they’re good. In fact the recipe is almost exactly the same as the non-Passover brownies-from-scratch recipe I use year-round except it leaves out the baking powder (even though you can find kosher-for-Passover baking powder) and it uses a little less cake flour than all-purpose flour. If you wrap them well, they’ll keep for a few days.

Ingredients:

2 eggs
1 cup sugar
⅓ cup matzo cake meal
¼ tsp. salt
6 Tbs. cocoa
1 stick butter or margarine, melted (tip: if you melt it in the baking pan, the pan will be nicely greased!)
½ cup chopped nuts or chocolate chips (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat eggs. Add sugar gradually and beat until light and fluffy. Add the salt, matzo cake meal and cocoa powder and mix well. Add the melted margarine and mix well.

Stir in the nuts or chocolate chips.

Bake in a greased 8-inch square pan for 30 minutes. Cool completely before cutting into squares. Wrap leftovers carefully so they don’t dry out.

Makes 16 brownies

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Zucchini Cake

12 Feb

zucchini cake from FlickrI’m posting this recipe today in honor of the birthday of  Lois Armstrong, one of my oldest and best friends, who introduced me to this lovely cake. Unlike most zucchini cakes and breads, it does not have cinnamon or other spices. The pineapple, vanilla, nuts and raisins give it a nice flavor, and the zucchini adds pretty green specks. If you don’t tell the kids that it has zucchini in it, they’ll love it!

I confess the photo is not an actual zucchini cake baked by me. With only two of us at home, we don’t make too many desserts of this type except for company dinners or potlucks. And we usually make this cake in the summer, when we have a glut of home-grown zucchini. So I grabbed this shot off the Web (photo attribution at the end). You’ll just have to trust me when I say this recipe makes a pretty and delicious cake! And happy birthday, Lois!

Ingredients:

3 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup oil
2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups grated zucchini
3 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda
1 cup drained crushed pineapple
½ cup chopped nuts
½ cup raisins (preferably golden)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream the eggs, sugar, oil and vanilla. Add the remaining ingredients. Pour into a greased and floured Bundt pan and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/betsyweber/3679874866/”>betsyweber</a&gt; via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>cc</a&gt;

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Chocolate Mousse

14 Jan

ImageI got this very easy recipe from Judith Baskin, who is the distinguished director of the Jewish studies program at the University of Oregon. We met  at Antioch College, and we were roommates during our year abroad at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. We lived in a damp, cold, moldy basement apartment in an otherwise toney neighborhood (we referred to our apartment as “the slum of Rehavia”). After college, my husband and I lived in Philadelphia and we visited Judy and her husband, Warren Ginsberg, a few times in New Haven while they were  graduate students at Yale. On one visit, they served us this wonderful dessert, which we have been making ever since.

Ingredients:

1 6-oz. package semisweet chocolate chips
⅓ cup boiling water
4 eggs, separated
2 Tbs. coffee liqueur (or another liqueur that goes well with chocolate)
½ tsp. cinnamon

Directions:

In a blender, or with an immersion blender, mix the chocolate chips and boiling water for about 10 seconds. Add the egg yolks, liqueur and cinnamon and blend another 5 seconds. Beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Fold the chocolate mixture into the egg whites until no streaks or lumps of white are visible. Spoon into dessert dishes or a 1-quart serving bowl. Chill for one hour or more. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream.

Serves 4 to 6

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