Sasha's Kitchen: Rosh Hashanah Honey Cake

I just *had* to make honey cake for the Jewish New Year. L'Shana Tova, or Happy New Year to all of my Jewish readers. I made this sweet honey cake (actually two of them) to bring the traditional taste of sweetness to the new year along with apples & honey.  This cake is just amazing - warm, soft and moist. It's one of the best cakes that I have made, and its sweet with honey for a L'Shana Tova (Hebrew for a sweet new year.  I got the recipe from one of my favorite other blogs, Smitten Kitchen, and adapted it a bit in my own kitchen for the perfect honey cake.  This makes gorgeous, moist and marvelous honey cakes, and I was quite pleased with our Rosh Hashanah treat.The original recipe that I adapted comes from Marcy Goldman's Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking.  The recipe is pareve (non dairy) so it is the perfect finish for that holiday meal.

Honey Cake (makes two 9 inch cakes)
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp kosher salt
4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp allspice
1 cup canola oil
1 cup honey
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 large eggs at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup warm coffee
1/2 cup apple cider
1/4 cup rum

Prepare two nine inch cake pans using Pam.  Preheat the oven to 350.  In a large bowl, combine the flour baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves and allspice and mix well.  Mix in the sugars next.  Make a well in the center and add the oil, honey, eggs, vanilla coffee, juice and rum.  Measure the oil just before the honey, which will help the honey slide out of your measuring cup.  Using an electric mixer, beat the batter until well blended and making sure that the ingredients are combined evenly.  Divide evenly into the two prepared cake pans and bake for 60-65 minutes. Bake on two stacked baking sheets to ensure the cakes bake properly and evenly.  Allow to stand for 15 minutes before removing the cake from the pans.  L'Shana Tova - Have a sweet New Year!

Sasha's Kitchen: Rosh Hashanah Honey Cake

Sasha's Kitchen: Moroccan Beef Tagine with Honey, Apricots and Butternut Squash

I recently received a gift card from ShopRite to do some holiday grocery shopping, and discovered that ShopRite had a huge selection of Kosher meats that were perfect for Passover. I picked up a cut of Kosher pot roast, that looked to be perfect for cooking for a holiday meal. I decided to use it in preparing a moroccan beef tagine, a lovely, cinnamon and fruit flavored Moroccan dish that is named after the type of pot it is traditionally cooked in. When we were in Paris last summer, I had hoped to try some of the tagines at many of Paris's Northern African restaurants but we didn't have time, and the one I had really wanted to try was closed for August vacation.  Never mind, it's actually not that hard to make at home, and you will have plenty of leftovers from this meal to avoid having to cook the next night. This would be perfect with couscous, which I left out since it's Passover now. The process for cooking the meat, as well as the high quality cut of Kosher pot roast from ShopRite that I used resulted in a very tender dish. Yum! This is perfect for just about any holiday meal, and was a big hit with my husband.

Sasha's Beef Tagine
2 lb lean pot roast or shoulder roast
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp ginger
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp coriander
3 T extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 large cloves of garlic, diced
1 1/2 cups low sodium chicken stock
pinch of saffron threads
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1 14oz can diced tomatoes
1 cup dried apricots, halved
2 T honey
1/4 tsp pepper
1 granny smith apple peeled and diced
1/3 cup almond slivers
2 cups chopped butternut squash

Cut the beef pot roast or shoulder roast into 1 1/2 inch cubes using a butcher's knife. Place in a bowl. Mix 1 1/2 tsp of the cinnamon with the ginger, salt, coriander and turmeric (be careful, as turmeric stains), and toss to coat the meat. Add 3 T of olive oil to your dutch oven and cook the mean until browned on all sides over high heat, for about five minutes. Add the diced onions and cook over medium heat for about three minutes, before adding the garlic and cooking for another minute. Add the diced tomatoes, chicken stock and saffron, and bring the mixture to a boil. I used a bottle of lovely Spanish saffron brought home from Madrid. Bring to a boil and the reduce to medium low, and cook, covered, for about an hour and a half, until cooked through and tender.

Strain out the meat/tomatoes/onion and reserve the broth. Return the broth to the pot. Add the apricots (after soaking the apricots first in hot water for half an hour). Add the butternut squash and diced apple, as well as 2 tablespoons of honey and a tablespoon of cinnamon. I have some great honey that was made by a family friend who raises his own bees and makes his own honey, so I used that. Simmer for about 20 minutes until the squash is tender (but not mushy) and the sauce thickens a bit. Then add the beef back to the dutch oven. Serve hot.

Sasha's Kitchen: Moroccan Beef Tagine with Honey, Apricots and Butternut Squash

Sasha's Kitchen: Cinnamon Buns for Sunday Brunch

A week ago for Sunday brunch, I made cinnamon buns. These were a perfect, sweet brunch treat, only to be rivaled by the hazelnut french toast I made the following weekend. I had never made cinnamon buns before, but I was inspired to try it out using a recipe from the new Kosher baking cookbook that I had received to review. It's a terrific cookbook and the cinnamon bun recipe was a winner, and not too difficult to make. If you are making it for brunch, you will want to give yourself a bit of a head start, as it takes a bit of time to let the dough rise, just like with any recipe that uses dry active yeast. These are the perfect way to start your day.

Cinnamon Buns (recipe from Paula Shoyer's the Kosher Baker)
Dough
1 cup soy milk (I used Silk)
1/2 oz (two envelopes) of dry active yeast
1/3 cup plus 1 tsp granulated sugar
4 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 large eggs
4 T margarine
1/2 cup canola oil

Filling
1 cup (2 sticks) margarine
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon

You can also glaze with a confectioner's sugar , water and vanilla mixture, but I made them without the glaze, which was also terrific.

To make the dough, heat the soy milk in a microwave until lukewarm. Place in a large bowl and add the yeast and a teaspoon of the sugar and let sit for 10 minutes until the yeast activates and gets all foamy. Add the flour, eggs, remaining sugar, margarine and oil and mix well. I did this in a stand mixer.  I absolutely love making bread and dough because I love the way that activated yeast smells in the kitchen. Place in an oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to rise at room temperature for one hour.

While the dough is rising, make the filling. In a mixer, beat the margarine, cinnamon and brown sugar to make the filling until smooth, again using the electric mixer. Set aside. When the dough is done rising, place the dough on flowered parchment paper and roll into a 15 x 24 inch rectangle. Spread the filling evenly on the dough and roll up the dough into a long log. Use a sharp knife to cut the roll into 1 inch slices, which will be your individual cinnamon buns. Grease a baking sheet with margarine or Pam and bake in an oven heated to 350 for about 25 to 30 minutes, until golden brown.

This is another winning recipe from a great new cookbook that I really have enjoyed.

Sasha's Kitchen: Cinnamon Buns for Sunday Brunch

Sasha's Kitchen: Carrot Cake (Kosher Cookbook Review)

I have been meaning to make a carrot cake for some time. So when I received a copy of Paula Shoyer's The Kosher Baker from the publisher for review on A Kitchen In Brooklyn, and saw a delicious and healthy recipe for carrot cake, I new it was time. Although I am Jewish, I don't keep strictly Kosher. But I certainly do appreciate Kosher cooking and baking. Plus, one of the best aspects of this book is also how healthy the recipes are. Because they are all intended to be parve (non-dairy), none of them us any butter, which makes for some healthier baking. I confess that my carrot cake is not fully non-dairy because I used low-fat cream cheese in the frosting (as I was unable to locate the non-dairy cream cheese that the book recommended). The recipe was so good that maybe I will try that next time using Tofutti or something.

Carrot cake is great for the fall - fresh carrots and all that cinnamon make for a lovely, fall spiced dessert. The book recommends making two cakes, trimming them, slicing them in half and making a four layer carrot cake. I confess that even though I bake extensively, I am not skilled at cake trimming. I always mean to try it out, but in the end, every time, I just make two cakes and it tastes the same anyhow. So, my adaption of the recipe from the book is for two separate carrot cakes. But if you're in the mood, feel free to trim them into a layer cake!

Paula Shoyer's Kosher Carrot Cake
Cake(s)
PAM spray
4 large egfs
1 cup sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup canola oil
1/2 cup orange juice
2 tsps vanilla exract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsps ground cinnimon
3 cups peeled and thinly grated carrots

Cinnamon Honey Cream Cheese Frosting
12 oz parve cream cheese (I used regular low-fat cream cheese this time)
1 1/2 tsps vanilla extract
2 1/4 tsps ground cinnamon
3 T of hney
7 cups of confectioner's sugar (I always cut down this ingredient in frosting so I used 4 cups and it was still great!)
1 1/2 T soy milk

To make this recipe, first preheat the oven to 350. Grease 2 8 or 9 inch round pans with PAM spray. In your mixer (or in a bowl using an egg beater), beat the eggs and sugars for a few minutes until thickened. Add the oil, orange juice and vanilla and mix on low speed to combine.

In a separate bowl, combine the flours, salt, baking powder and cinnamon. Add half of the dry ingredients to the bowl with the eggs and sugar and mix on low speed gently to combine. Then, do the same with the rest of the dry ingredients. 

Grate and measure the carrots into  small threads and add to the batter, mixing well.  Divide the batter between the two prepared pans. Bake for about 40 minutes until a skewer or toothpick inserted into the cakes comes out clean. Personally, I think it is probably best to bake the cakes one at a time in the oven.

Allow the cakes to cool completely. If you are going to trim the cakes and slice in half to make a four layer cake, now would be the time! if you are not going to trim the cakes like this, you may need less frosting, so it would likely be okay to cut the frosting recipe in half (if you are making two separate cakes  like I did).

To make the frosting, beat the cream cheese, vanilla, cinnamon and honey well to combine. Add in about 4 cups of confectioner's sugar and beat until it forms a frosting (much the same was as cupcake icing). The book also makes a good point - wrap plastic wrap around the top of the mixer when you do this so you do not get sprayed in a white snowfall of confectioner's sugar! Add the soy milk and beat for 30 seconds until the frosting looks creamy. 

Last, frost the cakes accordingly - either in layers or separately. If you are trimming, you will want to trim the sides of the cake as well. I simply frosted two separate cakes using a spatula.

This cake tasted great - the cake was delicious with the cinnamon and carrots, and nice and moist! And the frosting was sweet, cinnamony and delicious! I will certainly be trying more healthy, Kosher recipes from this great cookbook soon, so stay tuned!

Sasha's Kitchen: Carrot Cake (Kosher Cookbook Review)

Sasha's Kitchen: Matzo Ball Soup

We're having a little Matzo Ball Soup-Off here on A Kitchen In Brooklyn.  I love my mother's Matzo (also Spelled Matzoh) Ball Soup.  In my opinion, her soup is a panacea for healing everything from colds to grumpy moods.  I like my Matzo Ball Soup and chicken stock prepared a very specific way, but it seems like everyone like's their mom's version the best.   We have not one, but three Matzo Ball Soup recipes that we will share with you here on A Kitchen In Brooklyn.  Eric's Matzo Ball Soup Recipe can be found here on this site.  In addition, another contributor to this site in Seattle, Emily, will be sharing her Matzo Ball Soup Recipe in a future post.  So, with Passover (and Spring!) around the corner, it's time for a friendly "Soup Off."

My Matzo Ball Soup is prepared just the way my mother makes it, with plenty of Jewish momma's love and a homemade chicken stock prepared from a whole Kosher chicken.  I like a hearty Matzo Ball Soup all winter long, rather than appetizer style.  To prepare the soup as an appetizer, you would want to discard the chicken after preparing the chicken stock.  However, I never do that.  I always prepare the soup as a main course and shred quite a bit of the chicken and put it back into the soup.  I just can't let a good chicken go to waste, and in my opinion, the chicken pieces help complete the soup.

Sasha's Matzo Ball Chicken Soup (with thanks to my mom)
Water (enough to cover the chicken in the pot)
One 3-4 lb whole chicken
1 parsnip
small handful of parsley
1 onion, quartered
a couple of large handfuls of baby carrots
3 stalks of celery
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup matzo meal
4 eggs
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup water (for the Matzo Balls)

The first step is to prepare the chicken stock.  Break up the chicken into a couple of pieces.  I used a whole Empire Chicken,  In my opinion, to make the perfect chicken stock, it's best to use a Kosher chicken for this recipe.  My mom actually lives around the block from a Kosher butcher in Rochester, New York that sells perfect small chickens just for making soup.

Cover the chicken with water in a large pot with the water an inch or two higher than the chicken.  Bring it to a boil.  Then simmer for 30 minutes, while skimming off the top every couple of minutes.  After a half an hour, add the parsley, parsnip, onion (does't have to be diced because it will be discarded from the stock later), carrots, celery and bay leaves to the pot.  Add a couple of pinches of salt.  Simmer (on low) for about two hours with the lid of the pot half on.  After about two hours, the stock should be yellowish in color and have the flavor of the chicken stock, plus all those vegetables and bay leaves that you added.  The salt is important here too, so make sure to add a couple good size pinches.

Use a strainer to strain the broth into another large pot.  Then, add the celery and carrots back in, but discard the onion, parsnip, bay leaves and parsley.  At this point, you can also remove the chicken when you strain, and discard the skin, and shred some of the chicken off the bones.  Add this shredded chicken back into the soup.

To prepare the Matzo Balls, combine one cup Matzo Meal with four eggs, 1/4 cup of water and 1/4 cup of Canola Oil.  Mix well and refrigerate covered for about half an hour.  Form into 11 or 12 Matzo Balls, just a bit larger than golf balls.  Don't make them too small, or they will be hard.  However, don't make them too large, because they will expand when added to the pot.  Bring the chicken soup to a boil and add the Matzo Balls.  Then reduce to a simmer for about 20 -30 minutes.  Serve, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

This soup makes enough to serve 4 to 5 people as main courses, which means plenty of leftovers!

Sasha's Kitchen: Matzo Ball Soup

Gilly's Kitchen in Queens: Vegan Pumpkin Pie

If you are vegan (or just allergic to certain ingredients), store-bought pumpkin pies are most likely just a hazy memory. I experimented with several recipes just prior to Thanksgiving and settled on this particular pumpkin pie recipe. Please note that this pie does not taste like a store-bought pie, which may tend to have a very dense filling and a very certain taste (I cannot describe it, but store-bought pumpkin pies all seem to taste the same delicious way). This filling, which is also somewhat dense, has a slightly different taste -- still perfectly pumpkin-y, however -- so you might need a few bites to adjust. As usual, my vegan pumpkin pie passes the stepson test (it is also pareve), and is therefore worthy of publication.

This recipe comes from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's "The Joy of Vegan Baking."

You will need:
a pie crust (I used a 9-inch pre-made graham cracker crust from the supermarket, but you should feel free to make your own -- and if you do, 9 inches should be the absolute minimum size)
12 ounces silken firm tofu
2 cups pumpkin puree (I used Libby's)
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch or arrowroot powder
1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. In a food processor, blend the tofu, pumpkin puree, syrup, sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg, ginger and cloves until smooth and creamy. Scrape the bowl if necessary to get everything fully blended. (my own note - my food processor was actually a touch too small to hold all of the ingredients, and I therefore had to make some creative mid-recipe ingredient adjustments, but it turned out well because generic, store-bought pie crusts tend to run a bit small sometimes anyway.)
3. Pour the mixture into the crust and smooth as necessary. (my own note - to get the "homemade" looking swirls as in my photo, don't smooth the mixture perfectly in the crust. Store-bought pies are always perfectly smooth, probably because they are made by machines.)
4. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until the crust is lightly browned and the outermost inch of the filling appears to be set. The remaining filling towards the center will firm up a bit as the pie cools.
5. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. (my own note - I left the pie in the pie pan and just put the pie pan itself on a wire rack to circulate the air.)
6. Let the pie cool until it is at room temperature and then put the pie in the fridge for 1-2 hours to set.

I find that this pie holds well in the fridge for at least 3 days. For all I know, it holds even longer, but we always eat it all by day 3!

Gilly's Kitchen in Queens: Vegan Pumpkin Pie

Sasha's Kitchen: Green Pasta & Vegetable Medley

When I was in college at Haverford College, once a month or so, the Haverford dining center has a dinner special called Pastabilities, that just about the entire student body looked forward to.  Pastabilities basically involved stir fry pans where students could pick their own ingrediants to be mixed in with the pasta of their choice, to create their own pasta dish.  This was by far and away the most popular night at the dining center (yes, even more so than chicken tender night).

My concept for dinner tonight reminded me a little of those days.  I decided that I wanted tonight's pasta to be as green as possible (which meant no juicy red tomatoes), so I basically took every vegetable I could find in the kitchen that was green, yellow or white.  I diced them all together and cooked in our saute pan with some olive oil and spices. 

All of the senses are pretty important when it comes to food.  Taste and smell are the obvious ones - you're not going to eat something that tastes or smells unappealing.  However, our sense of sight when it comes to food is underrated.  I wanted to create a visual appeal with this dish by the use of color, having a strong sense of fresh green, created by various vegetables from our local market (I can't wait to make this again when the farmer's market returns in the late spring).  For this reason, I felt the presentation would be better without the use of red tomatoes (though perhaps yellow tomatoes would have been a fine addition, had they been seasonally available).  Also, my husband sometimes finds tomatoes to be a bit harsh on his stomach.

4-5 T of olive oil (I used Napa's Round Pond Estate's Blood Orange Oilve Oil, my favorite olive oil)

 1 onion, diced

2 shallots, diced

1 head of broccoli, cut up into small pieces

1/2 cup sugar snap peas

About 15-18 smallish artichoke hearts

5 large sprigs of thyme

1/2 an anaheim chile (not spicy, just flavorful and pretty)

2 zucchini

1/2 tsp saffron
salt and pepper to taste
juice of half of a fresh lemon
box of penne

To prepare the dish, saute the onions, shallots and anaheim chile to the olive oil,  and cook on medium high, until soft.  Add the sugar snap peas, broccoli, artichoke hearts and zucchini, and cook for about 10 minutes, until all of the vegetables are cooked to your liking.  Mix in the saffron, thyme, salt and pepper towards the end.  Aftertaking off the heat, mix with the juice of half of a lemon, squeezed fresh, and stir in the penne.  Serve hot.

 The use of the spices here is key.  While a lot of other spices might be overpowering, saffron and thyme give a perfect, unique flavor to this dish, and the lemon provides an excellent pick-me-up freshness.  This dish is obviously a great kosher, vegetarian, or otherwise healthy meal, and I highly recommend it with farm to table ingredients from a local farmer's market sometime other than the dead of winter.  This was a pretty off-the cuff experiemental recipe for me, especially the choice to use saffron, but it was a huge success.  I plan on making this healthy vegetable medley again, very soon!

Coming soon from my kitchen to this site: how to make limoncello, honey-vanilla cupcakes, date spread with goat cheese, berry tarts and carrot-potato souffles.

organic

Sasha's Kitchen: Green Pasta & Vegetable Medley

Sasha's Kitchen: Simple Blueberry Goat Cheese Salad

My Dad and my stepmother, Kim, keep a kosher home.  My husband and I are not as great about keeping kosher, but we do try in certain regards (which is why I never prepare pork-based products, and use Empire chicken;  I'm not so great with sea-life, however).  When we first moved to Brooklyn, they gave us a kosher cookbook as part of our housewarming gift, called Kosher By Design, Short On Time.  This book actually has some pretty tasty kosher recipes, all of which are easy to make, including a recipe for blueberry salad.  My blueberry salad is very different from the one in that book, but it does contain blueberries and a blueberry colored dressing that is just the pretties shade of purplish-blue.  Also, it looks creamy, but there is no cream at all in the dressing and its actually pretty healthy (not to mention all those antioxidants in the blueberries).

Dressing
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
handfull of blueberries
2 T water
1/2 tsp dijon mustard
1/2 tsp honey

Salad
romaine lettuce or hearts of romaine
a couple handfulls of blueberries
1/4 cup chopped pecans
crumbled goat cheese

I should probably mention that it is a blustery and cold five degrees outside.  Blueberries are not in season and will not be in season for some time, but I had a blueberry craving, probably because I wish it was warm again.  Thus, although the blueberries I found at the grocery store are actually pretty high quality, they were a bit on the expensive side.  However, this does make wonderful and fresh summer salad, especially with a glass of Chardonnay.

If you prefer strawberries, I encourage you to check out Eric In Jersey City's Strawberry Salad, and if you like citrus fruit, check out my Mandarin Orange Salad With Caramelized Almonds.

Sasha's Kitchen: Simple Blueberry Goat Cheese Salad