Bread Pudding with White Chocolate

Aside from almost an entire chocolate cake leftover after the weekend, I was also left with a whole, untouched loaf of challah. What to do with it? My first thought was french toast, but we don't exactly have a stove top to fry that in. My roommate suggested I make a french toast casserole, specifically one she enjoyed at a bridal shower we both attended. I got the recipe but decided to just find my own recipe for bread pudding. (It seems to me that I wasnt the only one with bread pudding on the brain, as seen here and here.) I was kind of nervous about making it because this is the type of dessert that I thought the girls would balk at. Soaked bread? Knowing that these girls would eat anything I set before them, I forged ahead (and told them it was challah kugel- made them feel right at home!). Bread pudding is, as I said before, bread that is soaked in custard and then baked. You can add whatever you feel like, chocolate, raisins, fruit, etc. This recipe is adapted from Marcy Goldman's in which she adds white chocolate. I didn't have her exact ingredients on hand, so I just used whatever I did have, using the guideline of about 3 cups liquid. I used some cream, a bit of regular milk, and soy milk for the rest. I also totally missed the seventh egg, using only six medium. The resulting bread pudding was certainly no beauty, but was so..... housewarming. My roommate cut into it and deemed it delicious, so then I knew it was going to be okay. I was worried that the texture would be wet and mushy and eggy, but I was happy to see that it wasn't wet at all, but perfectly moist. I set it out for the girls to devour, and when I came home most of it was gone. I really was surprised about that. Anyway, feel free to doctor this recipe as you wish. And just know that french toast is not your only option when contemplating uses for stale challah. This post is headed straight to Yeastspotting! Check it out!

Chocolate Chiffon Cake

This past weekend I stayed in the dorms for Shabbat with a couple of girls who decided to stay in. Instead of buying food for Shabbat, I decided that I was going to cook food. Could one have Shabbat any other way? I don't think so. So just for the three of us, I made everything from challah (mommy's obviously) to dessert. Everything in between was the no-brainer, it was the dessert part that, as usual, threw me for a loop. What to make? I knew that this week, I really wanted to make a chocolate cake and after going through all my books, I finally settled on a Chiffon Cake from the Cake Bible. But then chiffon cake made me think of all the other flavors, vanilla, orange, lemon... When I asked the girls to pick a flavor, they chose chocolate. So chocolate it was. (Fortunately, I also had the extra egg whites sitting around the fridge.) For those who arent familiar with it, chiffon cake is a cake invented by Harry Baker that is similiar to angel food cake but uses the yolks as well as whites, and also contains oil. The oil was his secret ingredient that added moisture to this spongy cake. Making it is easy- blend all of the ingredients, save for the whites, beat the whites, fold in and bake. Like angel food cake, this is foam cake gets cooled upside down to set its structure. Unfortunately, my pan is only one piece, so parts of the cake did get stuck to the pan. For my next chiffon cake (orange, anyone?) I'll bake it in a springform pan with a flower pin in the center, as per Rose's latest technique. The girls loved the cake, but barely made a dent in it, as we were only three people. After Shabbat, the other girls took care of it, leaving just a trail of crumbs behind. You might want to dust with powdered sugar to hide its imperfections, for contrast, or just because; suit yourself.

Mekupelet Crumbed Banana Cake

 As I mentioned in some earlier post, last week was Purim. With it came an excess of junk that I didnt know what to do with. All of the madrichot pooled together all the junk and placed it on our table for the girls to take as they wanted. The only thing I took for myself were the famed Israeli chocolate bars, the Mekupelet. Between me and the other madrichot, we got a ton of them, many of them mehadrin. Having recalled a Mekupelet cake in one of my Israeli cookbooks, I collected many of them. This cake before you is not the Mekupelet cake (I will get around to making it soon!) but rather the delicious Mekupelet Crumbed Banana Cake. You see, at the same time that all the Purim craziness was happening, I had three overripe bananas sitting in my fruit bowl, waiting to be used. Marcy Goldman had a recipe for a banana toffee crumb cake in her oft used A Passion for Baking. I had everything except the toffee so I decided to swap in crumbled Mekupelet. Brilliant! (If I may say so myself...) I knew this cake would be a hit and indeed it was from the very first bite. Extremely moist banana cake (love using sour cream!) topped with a chocolatey crumb- what could be bad? I finally employed the technique of applying the crumble when the cake has already set up on top and guess what? Works like a charm! No sinking crumble! Leaves you with a cake that not only tastes delicious but looks beautiful, too. Feel free to use toffee bits, crumbled chocolate bars, whatever ya got- be creative!

Chocolate Wows

This past Shabbat I was in Katamon with my dearest friend, E. It took a reallly long time to finally find a weekend that worked for both of us, but it did and I had a great time. (Thanks, El, if you're reading this!) I offered to bake challot (mommy's again) and dessert. Because A the chocoholic was coming, chocolate was the only way to go. It took me ages to figure out what to make- at first I wanted a cake- but then settled on these appropriately named Chocolate Wows from Good Housekeeping's Favorite Chocolate Recipes. These cookies more than live up to their name- chewy and chocolatey, like a brownie in a cookie, with toasted pecans. Mmmm! Everyone raved about these, but really, what's not to love? To up the deep chocolately flavor in these, I used Dutch process cocoa (my fave!) and about 3 1/2 ounces 60 percent cacao chocolate and the rest bittersweet. I also toasted the pecans as mentioned. (Don't skip this step- it takes the pecan from humble to sublime. You can't help but eat them all up.)  Once again, my pictures look nothing like the photograph because I keep forgetting to adopt the food stylist trick of reserving some chopped pecans and chocolate chips to press into the top. Go ahead and do it if you remember, if not, your eaters will just be surprised when they take a bite. That's about it. Enjoy your chocolate fix for today. (Sorry for the long pictures, these were the first taken on my new camera. Still getting the hang of it, so bear with me.)

Shaker Lemon Pie

I really wanted to have this pie baked and posted in time for Pi Day (last week) but it just didnt work out that way, so I'm posting this now. At a recent visit to Rami Levi, I picked up some lemons. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with them (and I still have a few of them left to use!) but I finally settled on this Shaker Lemon Pie because it's a pie and because I wanted to try my hand again at baking with the full fruit. This pie is credited to the Shakers, a thrifty bunch that tried to avoid wastefulness in their cooking, hence the use of the whole lemon here. I was intrigued by this concept but knew that the girls would not take too well to having peel in their dessert. Although most recipes that you can find for this pie are the same, I opted to use Rose Levy Beranbaum's version from The Pie and Pastry Bible. Being without a mandoline, I sliced the lemons as thinly as I could and macerated them for a good 18 hours before baking. I opted for a butter/shortening crust instead of her suggested cream cheese crust with no harm done. Once the lemons were finished macerating, assembly was pretty easy- just whisk together some eggs and add to the lemons to form a custard and bake. So how did it turn out? Pretty deliciously, I think. The sugar mellows out the lemons to produce a lemon-bar like custard filling. Yum. And the peel? Had a nice zing, but without the usual bitterness that the pith contributes. I was a big fan. The girls? They loved the flavor but unanimously decided I should make this again without the peel. I tried to explain that that would defeat the whole purpose of this pie but to no avail. I'm still happy I tried it and this would be a great dessert to make for lemon lovers with more sophisticated palates and open minds. This pie requires advanced preparation so plan accordingly.