Ridiculous Hot Dog Cookies for Purim - and Kosher Connection Recipe Linkup

Purim is a happy, carefree holiday.  If you're a kid, that is.  Costumes, candy, parties, and the cessation of education for at least two weeks.  It's awesome. 

But I get stressed out by this holiday, though I didn't used to.  I finally understood what my problem was recently, when a friend spelled it out for me.  You see, three years ago, we made awesome mishloach manot.  And I can't ever top it, so now I have put myself in a position where expectations are high, and I let everyone, especially myself, down when I give a lame old MM.

So what was so great about that year's MM?  Well, I finally relented and went with a theme beyond "it's Purim, here's some food."  Our theme was fast food, and everything (almost) was cookies and cake.  We made hamburgers,

hot dogs,

French fries with ketchup,

ice cream sundaes,

and chocolate milk - okay, that was real. And if I can't ever live the experience down, well, maybe you can share in my suffering as I share the recipe for the hot dog cookies.  They were bookmarked in my browser in a file called "ridiculous," which, obviously, they are, but you never know when a recipe like this could come in handy.  (I don't actually hve any ideas right now for when that could be, but I am sure they'll come to me.)  So I throw down the gauntlet: make these cookies for your Mishloach Manot, but keep in mind that they will impress your friends and and then everyone will expect to be wowed next year too!

As for me, I am sure we will come up with something, but if you have any great ideas for a theme for us that's not too complicated, we'd love to hear it!

Hot Dog Cookies
Adapted from TLC

Ingredients:
150 grams softened margarine (1 1/2 sticks or 3/4 cup)
6 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt
red gel food coloring
1/2 teaspoon cocoa
Yellow and/or red buttercream frosting or royal icing

Directions:
Cream margarine with sugars.  Beat in egg yolk.  Add dry ingredients and mix well.  Remove 1/3 of the dough and knead in a small amount of the red gel food color and the cocoa. Chill both sections well, at least a few hours or overnight.  Remove the uncolored dough, leaving the rest in the fridge, and divide into approximately 12 pieces.  Form each one into a long cylinder, then use the side of your hand to form an indentation (mimicking the shape of a hot dog bun).  Divide the colored dough into 12, and form each piece into a hot dog shape, then place each one in a "bun."

Chill in the fridge for about 20 minutes.  Preheat the oven to 350.  Bake for 15-17 minutes, until "buns" are lightly browned on the edges. 

When fully cool, put your frosting or icing in a decorating bag with a small round tip, and apply a squiggle of "mustard" or "ketchup" or both.  If you are so inclined, you can use things like cut-up gummy candies and shredded coconut to add "relish" or "onions."  With or without the additions, they will be adorable. Enjoy!

 

Wishing you all a happy and joyous Purim - and fun with the preparations!

And now for some real Mishloach Manot inspiration, check out the rest of this month's Kosher Connection recipes!

Sacher Torte Sandwiches - January Kosher Connection Recipe Linkup

I was trying to be super-creative for this one, trying to think outside the box.  I mean, I love miniatures.  I make mini-desserts, I love when foods are made single serving, what's not to love.  But then I realized two important things. One, my brain does not work in a straight line.  I don't really think a box could contain the leaps and bounds and stretches my mind makes when I think about things.  Second, I am always making miniatures.  What are cookies if not miniature desserts?

So instead of something totally different, I thought I would share my process with you.  This is how Dvora's Cookie Creations comes up with a new flavor.

1.  Have a food craving.
2.  If it's healthy, indulge it.
3.  If it's for something sweet, think about how the flavors I am dying for can be translated into a cookie form.

That's it.  There's not much of that "Cupcake Wars" notion of how can I fit a disgusting ingredient into a dessert.  I draw the line at that.  No cheese curls or crispy salmon skin in my desserts.  But this concept of translation has worked for me.  Thus, the orange-cranberry-white chocolate cookies (started with Creamsicles), the apricot white chocolate cookies (chocolate dipped dried fruit), the pecan shortbread (pecan pie), the samoa sandwiches (Girl Scout cookies), the Chunky Monkey bars (ice cream!! - still working on the Chubby Hubby squares), and today's example, the Sacher Torte sandwich.

So let's talk cake for a minute.   I love cake of all kinds.  It's delicious, or should be.  But there's so much of it.  Even a little 6-inch cake is too many servings to just have lying around.  A cookie, however, is portion-controlled.  You can make some, freeze the rest of the dough, eat one, and put the other cookies aside for Shabbat or another occasion that calls for some dessert.

Sacher Torte is a traditional Austrian pastry; two layers of chocolate sponge sandwiching apricot preserves, covered in chocolate glaze.  Mmmmm.  So to translate this into cookie-hood, I decided to go the sandwich cookie route (which, let's face it, I do a lot of.  It just seems a great way to layer flavors and textures.).  I started with a chocolate but not excessively chocolatey roll out cookie, to which I added almond extract - not so authentic, but definitely screams Vienna to me.  I wanted one with a fair amount of leavening, so the cookies would puff up to resemble the texture (sort of) of sponge cake.  I cut the well-chilled dough into circles, cutting out a small circle from the center of half of the cookies to provide a window into the filling. 

After baking, I paired off the cookies, one solid and one with a peek-through, so that similar sized cookies fit together.  It's one of those annoyances that even cookies cut with a cutter are never all precisely the same, so it's just gotta be done.  I covered the backs of the solid cookies with apricot preserves, then topped them with the cut-out cookies.  Instead of coating the whole thing with chocolate, I chose to drizzle a zig-zag of chocolate across the cookies, as I felt a complete or even partial dunking would overpower the apricot and almond flavors.  And a drizzle is always pretty...

So there you have it, an actual cookie recipe from me.  It doesn't happen too often, so enjoy!

Sacher Torte Sandwich Cookies
Ingredients:
200 grams margarine, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup cocoa
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

good quality apricot preserves
100 grams chocolate chips or baking chocolate
1 teaspoon oil

Directions:
Cream margarine with sugar.  Add eggs, one at a time, then vanilla.  Sift together cocoa, flour, baking powder, and salt, and add to creamed mixture.  Divide dough into three disks, wrap each in plastic wrap, and chill well, at least one hours.  Preheat oven to 350 F.  Roll out dough on well-floured surface, about 1/8" thick. using a 2" round cutter, cut circles.  Place on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.  Gather up scraps and re-roll.  Cut out a small (1/3 - 1/2") circle from the center of half the cookies.  Bake for about 7 minutes.  Cool and pair cookies, one whole and one cut-out, by matching sizes.  On the underside of the whole cookies, spread apricot preserves.  Top with a cut-out cookie.  Spread cookies out on a fresh piece of parchment.  Melt chocolate with oil in microwave on low power.  Pour into a disposable decorating bag or heavy duty ziploc bag.  Twist shut, and cut off tip/corner.  Drizzle chocolate onto cookies.  Let chocolate set, and - b'tayavon!

The Queen of Gluten Free

Before we made aliyah, celiac disease (or as we knew it to be called, celiac sprue), was barely known to us.  David's cousin has it, but she was literally our only encounter with the disease.  Then we moved, and while at first we only knew a small handful of people with celiac, the number of sufferers has increased dramatically over the last six years.  And not only do people with celiac have to avoid gluten, but we know other people who avoid gluten religiously for a variety of health reasons.

Gluten, for the uninitiated, is a protein found in wheat and related species, and it's what gives dough its elasticity. For people with celiac disease, gluten can cause many unpleasant, very serious, and long-reaching consequences.  While it was not as well known before, more celiac disease is being diagnosed, and the levels of gluten in flour has risen in the last decades, causing people increased sensitivity (or so I have been told). I myself was tested for celiac this year, thanks to a lifetime of stomach issues, and while the test was negative, the wait for results gave me a lot of food for thought, about what I would do with my business if the result was positive.

The thing is, gluten is in a lot of foods. Surprising and unexpected foods. So it can be hard to avoid. But the amazing thing to me was that most cake decorating ingredients are actually gluten free, so to make a beautiful cake that has no gluten, you just need to find a great cake recipe. That I did with a little help from a few friends with family members with celiac. Since I started working on these GF recipes, I am sort of feeling like that is the most popular thing I do.  Believe me, the smiles I get from producing a cake or cupcakes that actually taste good - even to wheat eaters! - makes me feel so good!  I love knowing that a person who might not otherwise have had a cake to enhance their celebration will now get to indulge just like the rest of us.  I can't share the recipes with you (so far just chocolate and vanilla cake) as it's my livelihood we are talking about here, but I can show you what we have created. It's all GF!!

60th birthday celebration

Engagement party

Multiple birthday celebration

Engagement

Bat mitzvah dessert buffet

Bat mitzvah

 

17th birthday celebration

 

Sheva brachot

5th birthday celebration

 

But to make it up to you, I am going to give you a GF recipe - for the most delicious brownies ever.  So why am I sharing davka this recipe with you?  Because to be quite honest, the ingredients in this recipe are rather pricey (an entire pound of bittersweet chocolate, for starters), so I don't think selling them would ever be worthwhile.  I made them this summer for my GF sister and brother-in-law, and no one at the table missed the gluten.

 

Gluten Free Brownies 

adapted from Pragmatic Attic

Ingredients:
6 tablespoons margarine (75 grams in Israel)
5 tablespoons canola oil
16 ounces bittersweet chocolate (I prefer Vered HaGalil for daily use, but check with your gluten-free person about what chocolates are okay for them - here, Carmit 60% seems to be considered the "cleanest", though many brands claim to have less than 20ppm, which is the gold standard) or semi-sweet, or a combination - whatever you favor
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 eggs
3 tablespoons cocoa
6 tablespoons corn starch, called cornflour in Israel (or potato starch - kemach tapuchei adama)
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons instant coffee powder
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350F/180C.
Line an 9x13 pan with foil then parchment paper extending over the ends for ease of removal after baking. Spray exposed foil with cooking spray.
Melt together the chocolate and margarine, either on the stove top over a very low heat, stirring frequently, or in the microwave on a half power setting. when the chocolate and margarine are melted, add in the oil, then the sugar, stirring well. Add the eggs, one at a time, then add the salt.
In a small bowl, combine the cocoa powder, coffee powder andstarch to evenly combine. Add to the melted chocolate mixture and mix vigorously to evenly combine.
Mix vigorously until the batter is smooth and well combine.  Pour into the prepared pan and spread evenly with an offset spatula.Bake for about 35 minutes, checking beginning at about 25 minutes. Brownies are done when an inserted toothpick comes out nearly clean, with just a few moist crumbs.  Cool completely.  Use the parchment paper to aid in removal from pan, and cut into squares - these are very rich, so 32 brownies is a fair number.

Whether you avoid gluten or not, ENJOY!

Dvora

For a Sweet New Year - Kosher Connection Recipe Linkup

It's time for the next round of the Kosher Connection Recipe Link-Up!  This month's theme is "Honey," which is especially appropriate for the time of year - the run-up to Rosh Hashana.  In addition to my grandparents' honey chiffon cake, which I suggest you make because it makes me happy ;-),  I am contributing a newly developed recipe for Spiced Honey Sticks with Lemon Glaze.  I can't exactly call them mandelbroit, because there's no mandel (almonds) in the recipe, and they are not biscotti, because they are not toasted after baking and slicing.  The texture is soft and chewy, just the way I like them.  They have a tasty honey flavor without being cloying, the spice adds interesting notes, and the honey-lemon glaze brings it all together.  Feel free to bake and freeze. The honey in the recipe keeps the bars moist and chewy for several days, stored in a sealed plastic container.  A great recipe to prepare in advance of the holiday.

Here in Israel, we don't call it a run-up to chag for nothing.  All over the country, people are running around and FREAKING OUT over the impending TWO DAY CHAG!!!  When we first made aliyah, I vacillated between thinking that (A) everyone here was crazy, I mean good grief, I could prepare two day yom tov in my sleep and (B) how wonderful it was that everyone is preparing for the same holiday.  Six years down the road, I am slightly less enamored of the supermarket chaos that ensues two full weeks before yom tov.  If you saw the creative parking that goes on in the lot at our Rami Levy (think drunken sailors and illegal mid-lane car abandonments), you would understand my frustration.  But it is still truly beautiful that we are on the same page, gearing up for Rosh Hashana.  And I just have to keep telling myself that.  Even if I am now enough of an old-timer to think two days of yom tov is really, really long.


Fear not the crystallized ginger -
 but do try sprinkling a little flour over it while
you're chopping so it doesn't stick to your knife

So what are the keys to getting ready for Rosh Hashana?  Here's my take:  Shop early.  Get whatever you can buy in advance, things you can freeze like chicken and meat, dry goods, items with long shelf lives.  Start preparing early.  Bake and freeze, if you have the room.  Make recipes that are quick and require little patchke-ing.  Like this one. Mix it up, chill just a bit, bake in two long loaves, cool, glaze, and slice.  I considered giving you two variations, one with crystallized ginger and one without, because I thought the ginger flavor might be a bit much for some people.  The flavor is indeed quite pronounced shortly after baking, like when you can't wait for the bars to cool and you slice off an end and you burn your fingers and your tongue just a little, but it's worth it.  The next day, though, the flavors meld and mellow perfectly.  Even if you've never tried it,  be adventurous - add the crystallized ginger.  But if you don't have it on hand, or don't feel like chopping it up (I can't resist a little patchke!) but still want a spicy kick, add an additional 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger. Or just omit the crystallized ginger, and it's still a delicious honey dessert for a sweet New Year.  Definitely a step up from your traditional honey cake.

Spiced Honey Sticks with Lemon Glaze

Ingredients:
100 grams or 1/2 cup margarine at room temperature
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup finely diced crystallized ginger

Glaze:
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest, optional
1/3 cup confectioner's sugar

Directions:
Cream the margarine with the sugars until smooth.  Beat in the egg, then the honey and vanilla.  Add in the dry ingredients and mix just until combined.  Mix in crystallized ginger.  Chill dough at least 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Divide dough into two and, with oiled hands, roll each into a long, narrow log about 13 inches long, and place on the sheet, leaving space between the two rolls.  Flatten slightly.


I cheated - I used two separate pans.

Bake for 15-18 minutes, until golden brown.  Cool.


Not so impressive without the glaze, but still yummy.

Mix together glaze ingredients. Drizzle diagonally across loaves with a disposable decorating bag, a ziploc bag with the corner snipped off, or even with a fork. 

Allow glaze to set, then cut into slices, somewhere between a half and three-quarters of an inch. Enjoy!

With best wishes for a Shana Tova U'Metuka - a Good and Sweet New Year full of blessings for us all.

Dvora

Now check out all the other recipes featuring honey from the September Kosher Connection Recipe Linkup!

Houston, we have a problem

We have been home for two weeks now, happily returned to our home and real life. And yet, re-entry has been somewhat difficult. Four weeks away shouldn't feel like a lifetime, but it does. For whatever reason, my brain has not fully readjusted to being home, so functioning normally - as mom, wife, and baker - is something of a challenge.


Would it be so hard to fit this into a carry-on?!

For example, my grip on both of our primary languages has slipped.  I have no idea what we have and what we are missing in the fridge, freezer, and pantry.  My grocery lists are woefully incomplete. It's almost like the post-Pesach, need to restock on all the staples and not a few extras syndrome that takes time to complete.  Every time I get out of the car, I start stomping my left foot.  Why? Because our awesome rental car, a fully loaded Chrysler Town and Country, had a parking brake pedal.  My less awesome Mazda MPV, has a handle to pull up. And no automatic doors or seats, no satellite radio, no DVD player, no wireless headphone, and did I mention no automatic doors?!

And I spent a couple of days after I got back to work complaining that something was wrong with the hot water connection from the dud shemesh (solar hot water heater) to the kitchen sink.  I was getting scalding hot water in the shower, but just warm water in the kitchen sink.  Why?  Because I was turning the handle THE WRONG WAY!!! Six years experience in my kitchen was undone by four lousy weeks away. Maybe I should have taken my mom up on it when I asked her to show me where she keeeps the pareve knives and she answered, "You're only here for four weeks - don't worry about it..." Maybe if I had sat on a chair and let others serve me, coming home would be less confusing.  But it's not my style (see previous post!) and I will just have to muddle through.

All in all, though, I am happy to be home and back in my life.  I made these adorable cookies for a new baby girl, and got to make good use of my new onesie cookie cutter - so much fun! I now have blog posts to compose, recipes to create, cakes and cookies to design and execute, life to live and if I am lucky, a vacation to enjoy.

Shavua tov!
Dvora

Happy New Year!

It has been a while. Blogging has not afforded me the outlet it once did. But I am taking the blog back. And maybe, just maybe, I will post more often. But no promises. I very much want to avoid the pitfall that so many people fall into online, whether on social network sites, email groups, or blogs: Never forget that you can not control who does or does not read your work. Too many people seem to forget that their outlet is someone else's light reading.



So let's keep it light!



Yom tov here was great, despite the three day nature of the chag. We were fortunate enough to be invited out for the first four !!! meals. They were all really enjoyable, wonderful company, great food, a terrific way to start the year. Many thanks to our generous and thoughtful hosts. We hosted company for the last two meals (can't count seuda shlishit, because we were too full for anything more than a little challah and salad), and it was also great - we are so fortunate to have found such good friends here and to be able to spend chag with them. Davening was also very moving and meaningful for me, so it was a very good yom tov.

Baking wise, we had a LOT of orders for this Rosh Hashana, so many in fact, that I had no time to take pictures of any of the trays. I try to incorporate some of the simanim in the flavors, so the menu included honey sugar cookies, apple crumble bars, apple blondies, carrot cake sandwiches, and chocolate sandwich cookies filled with a pomegranate-raspberry-chocolate ganache. Not that anyone is going to say the "yehi ratzons" over the cookies, but the thought is there. Larger trays, 36 and 48 piece sizes, also had chewy chocolate chip cookies, because who doesn't like chocolate chip?! Every tray was topped with a decorated apple shaped sugar cookie, with "Shana Tova" written on it. Overall, very festive and fun, and well-received. We also did a bunch of custom sugar cookies, in various holiday designs. The actual cookies for RH were even cuter than the ones below, but for a small idea of what went out, here is a photo of samples from a couple of weeks before the chag.

May we be inscribed for a happy, healthy New Year!

Dvora

Sugar Cookies Make Everything More Fun

It's true; they really do. Proof?

For starters, this Rosh Chodesh treat platter is more fun with a Chodesh Tov message, on a sefer Torah in honor of the month of Sivan.
This anniversary platter is a celebration in sugar - decorated sugar cookies tell beloved parents how much their children care. The cookies underneath will get eaten, but I have a feeling (past experience) that the sugar cookies will be cherished for a long time to come.
All of these cookies were in the shape of a sefer Torah, to celebrate a chanukat habayit and hachnasat sefer Torah at a new shul in a nearby city. The linzer cookies, thin mint sandwiches, lemon curd sandwiches, and sugar cookie ganache sandwiches are all enhanced by the Torah shape, while the closed scroll sugar cookies feature a metallic gold keter Torah - a little bling for a good cause.

Dvora

Sleep is overrated

I guess Lag B'Omer isn't just a night for bonfires and barbeques. It is an all clear signal to start the simcha season. And what simcha does not need dessert? So it has been a very hectic couple of weeks, and not yet slowing down. I am about to throw several pictures at you to illustrate the very first part of the holiday rush - I hope you don't mind!
Let's start with an easy one, a sheva brachot.
The hostess served a variety of cookies, including heart-shaped thin mint sandwiches, chocolate dipped chocolate chip cookies, ginger crinkles, chocolate-caramel filled sugar cookie sandwiches, and linzer cookies. They also serveda lot of lemon squares.

Another sheva brachot held on the same night was a giant step to the formal. Having had no wedding cake at the wedding, the parents of the bride wanted a very wedding-like cake. We went with an all white decoration of various flowers and a monogram on a cake of alternating chocolate and vanilla layers. Shana had a great time working onthe sugar flowers while we all pretended we were working in Carlo's bake shop.

The sides were decorated with Swiss dots (I don't know what makes them Swiss, but hey, I will just throw around the terminology) and a bead border on top and bottom.

Another fun cake was this l'chaim cake,

a tall, 4 layer white cake, filled with alternating layers of lemon curd (world's most perfect food, I could wax rhapsodic on its merits for hours, but I digress) and buttercream, covered with more buttercream and fondant blossoms.

Next post will continue with more tempting photos; til then, let's all try to get some sleep!

Dvora

Can cheaters ever prosper?

You all have probably read my theory on cutting corners by now - if you haven't, and it is a whole lotta words, here's a synopsis: I don't like it. I don't like pre-made components in my baking, but let's face it: we all have to sleep sometime. Last Shabbat was Ayelet's (English) 15th birthday, and though her birthday Shabbat celebration with friends will take place for her Hebrew birthday, she still needed - if not deserved - an acknowledgement of the event. This was not the time or place for a fancy birthday cake, but a Boston cream pie would suffice nicely, thank you very much.(We all share a nostalgic fondness for Dunkin Donuts Boston creams, whether or not we actually liked them in the flesh. The idea is what counts here.) My cake recipe, while requiring the whipping of the egg whites, comes together rather quickly (some other time I will tell you why I feel obligated to hand whip the meringue here, as soon as I come up with a valid, non-crazy reason). But pastry cream on Friday afternoon after a nearly-no-sleep Thursday night was not happening. Enter the mysteriously shelf-stable pareve vanilla cream I happened to have in the pantry. Make a little ganache, and voila! You have a really yummy dessert with a minimum of fuss, not to mention a 15 year old who is reasonably happy and even grateful for her b-day dessert. But if you are looking for a picture, you will have to try Google. I can either make cake or take pictures. They ain't both happening!

But as a consolation prize, I will offer you a few pictures.

A six inch birthday cake for a very lucky daddy. Chocolate chip cake, chocolate filling, light blue vanilla buttercream, fondant stripes and polka dots in shades of blue.The six inch is such a cute size, perfect for a small family celebration, or as a tier on top of a larger cake, or even to crown a cupcake tower.Shabbat platters, some with special touches, also kept me busy. This was for the Shabban Kallah in anticipation of the marriage of Edit and Lior.A similar assortment graced the kiddush table of the Sheva brachot for Yoni and Suzy. I was feeling all kinds of Cake Boss-y, and chose a cke design I really liked, then translated it into cookie.Here is a close-up of the wedding cake cookie. Mazal tov!

This week's assortment looked pretty darned good too! Glazed lemon cookie,s oatmeal fudge bars, chai shortbread sandwiches, cherry chocolate chunk cookies, and cinnamon squares.

So in short, while I may have cheated a little on the birthday girl's cake, I think we all prospered. Lots of cookies and cakes got baked and decorated, we enjoyed our shortcut cake, and Ayelet knew she was being celebrated. I guess ordering sushi for seuda shlishit didn't hurt either. And sometimes it's okay to let someone else take a little of the burden whether it's the sushi guy, the pre-made filling, or anything else, as long as you are honest about it.

Dvora