holidays and celebrations

malabi macaroons

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happy almost passover!! i spent the weekend in new york trying to get as sick of chametz as possible by way of dizengoff pita, breads bakery bourekas, xi’an dumplings, and sprinkle cake!! spoiler: i didn’t get sick of chametz and i don’t think i’ll ever get sick of it.

it was a 1 1/2 day trip that was supposed to be more like three. oops! but if you’re going to have an unintended 30-hour layover due to batshit weather delays, i couldn’t possibly think of a better way to spend it than with my minneapolis homies, over pizza and pastries. so in the end i had the loveliest unexpected few days.

i was in new york for the cherry bombe jubilee, which was just as sweet and delightful as it sounds. is the word jubilee not the best? it was packed with hugs, with old friends, with new friends, and with friends i’d internet fangirled over for such a long time but had never actually met. i demoed a sprinkle splatter cake with my new friend jen, and then also sat on a panel about blogging with daphne, joy, jocelyn, lyndsay, and deb! it was nerve-racking to be in front of such a huge room of people and i almost dropped a glass bottle of kombucha up on stage but we had a great time and decided we should probably start a band. 

one of the questions that daphne asked was about our go-to hostess gifts. i had macaroons on my mind because i’d just come down off of a week of making them every single day, so i said macaroons. they travel well, they come together extraordinarily quickly, they’re fit for gluten free and k for p friends, and they don’t have to be eaten immediately if by chance you're way too stuffed for dessert. like all of the macaroons that i make these days, they are inspired by the recipe in danny macaroons’ book. danny’s were the macaroons that made me love macaroons and get over those canned manischewitz plops that i grew up with. they are crispy on the outside, chewy and moist on the inside, and a standard for passover desserts that is so high, you won’t even want to stop making them once passover ends.

these guys are flavored like malabi, the middle eastern rosewater milk pudding. i like mine with toasted pistachios and a bit of cinnamon and cardamom, and here i’ve added a little bit of sour fruitiness from some raspberry purée (bonus: it turns the glaze millennial pink-ish). they are rich, floral, warm, and bright, all at the same time and they are exactly what you need to fuel a fierce afikoman hunt! 

alright, i'm at mum's house in chicago now and we have a billion people coming over tonight, so i gotta go start the brisket! 

malabi macaroons

makes 16 - 18

ingredients

1 c sweetened condensed milk (reserve the rest of the can to add to your morning coffee!)

1/8 tsp cardamom

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp rosewater

2 tsp vanilla

14 ounce bag sweetened shredded coconut

2 large egg whites

1/4 tsp kosher salt

 

for the glaze

2 ounces fresh raspberries (or sub 2 tb raspberry jam)

About 1 c powdered sugar

1/8 tsp rosewater

a pinch of kosher salt

 

chopped toasted pistachios, for topping

clues

preheat oven to 350ºf. line two baking sheets with parchment and set aside.

in a large bowl, combine the condensed milk, cardamom, cinnamon, rosewater, and vanilla. mix in the coconut and set aside.

in a separate bowl, beat the egg whites and salt until stiff peaks form. 

fold the egg whites into the coconut mixture and then spoon 2" balls of it onto the baking sheets, 1" apart.

bake until golden brown, begin checking for doneness at 18 minutes. remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes on the pans. transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

for the glaze:

Place raspberries in a fine mesh sieve and give them a rinse. Place the sieve over a bowl and use a stiff rubber spatula or wooden spoon to smash them and press the juices and purée through the sieve into the bowl until you’re just left with the seeds in the sieve. Be sure to scrape the bottom of the sieve to get the stuff that’s sticking to that down into the bowl. You should be left with about 2 tablespoons of seedless puree. If it’s a tiny bit more or a tiny bit less, that’s fine. Add 1 c powdered sugar, rosewater, and salt and mix to make a thick glaze. If it's too thick, add a few drops of water to thin it out, and if it's too thin, add a few more spoonfuls of powdered sugar. it should be the consistency of a thick glue. 

spoon the glaze over the tops of the macaroons and top with a sprinkle of pistachios. enjoy!

they can be kept at room temperature for about 3 days or in the fridge for up to a week.

-yeh!

hazelnut + almond flour chocolate chip cookie cake (gluten free & kosher for passover)

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we are in full blown passover mode up in here. this past week i’ve tested three briskets, batch after batch of baked matzo brei, and millions of millennial pink coconut macaroons that i am so gosh darn excited to share with you. and of course one dozen iterations of this cookie cake (we’ll get to that!). alas there is no carp in our bath tub, as i’m pretty sure sven cat would get to him before we would, but that’s a dumb excuse, we should have at least tried, right? next year, with a carp!

i’m having three seders + easter next week! seder one will be in chicago with mum and stoop and marshy’s famous gefilte fish, seder two will be in fargo with a city wide afikoman after (i don’t actually know about the afikoman thing but i feel like if any town were to do this first around here, fargo would be the one, right?), and matzo pizza night seder with eggboy, rugrats passover, and the hogwarts haggadah. the jdate haggadah has been good to us but we’re moving onto the hogwarts one because you can only laugh at pharoah’s dating profile so many times.

after all that i’m going to help eggmom with easter! let’s do harissa carrots. and minty potato salad. and some beet pickled eggs! and what would be fun to hide in an easter egg hunt for the family egg to search for and find? a pet baby goat? a mozart kugel? 

it’s going to be a great spring holiday season. 

i want to sing from the rooftops about this cookie cake!!!! it is the descendant of three things: a really gooey tasty vegan gluten free cookie bar from the town co-op that was essentially almond flour and agave, the baked marzipan center of my sprinkletaschen, and the massive cookie cakes that all of my campers got during parents weekend back when i was a camp counselor in 2011. After two days, the counselors were instructed to take away any uneaten cookie cakes and the story was that they had to be thrown away so they didn’t attract bugs but the truth was we ate them all over the course of the following week when we sat on late night duty reading gossip magazines. Aside from the spray can cheese, those cookie cakes were the most delightful things that summer, so chewy and satisfying. 

My recipe testing journey with this cookie cake began when I baked some of the leftover sprinkletaschen filling on its own and realized that it had a great chewy texture. I wanted this cake to be a chocolate chip cookie though, and not a big hunk of baked marzipan (although that wouldn’t be so bad), so I added some brown sugar, chocolate chips, a huge splash of vanilla, and subbed half of the almond flour for hazelnut flour, which gave the whole thing this awesome darker toastier flavor. I’m using Bob’s Red Mill’s Hazelnut Flour and Almond Flour here which both taste amazing and are fluffy and eliminate the step of grinding your own nut flours, so I got the whole dough mixing process down to about three minutes. There's no need to cream any butter, you just need one big bowl, one smaller bowl, and a spoon. It’s really stupidly easy, and really stupidly good. Not just Kosher for Passover good, but good good. 

Two kosher for passover notes: 

-the baking soda can be omitted if you avoid it on Passover. The texture will be slightly denser and more gooey, but it will still be great! 

-the frosting in the photo is a basic butter + powdered sugar buttercream but for a dairy free dessert, you have many options: use this great dairy free frosting, serve it hot with a scoop of dairy free ice cream, drizzle on melted chocolate or a simple powdered sugar glaze, or serve it with just a light dusting of powdered sugar. 

hazelnut + almond flour chocolate chip cookie cake

makes one 8-inch cookie cake

ingredients

1 c bob’s red mill almond flour
1 c bob’s red mill hazelnut flour (or 1 more c almond flour)
1/2 c lightly packed light brown sugar
1/2 c sugar
3/4 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp baking soda (can omit if you don’t have it on passover, it’ll be denser but still super tasty!)
1 large egg
1 tb vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 c chocolate chips

to decorate:
buttercream
or for a dairy-free alternative: dairy free ice cream, coconut whip, or glaze made with powdered sugar and dairy-free milk

clues

preheat the oven to 350ºf. grease an 8" cake pan and line it with parchment. set aside.

in a large bowl, combine the flours, sugars, salt, and baking soda. in a small separate bowl, combine the egg, vanilla, and almond extracts.

add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, add the chocolate chips, and stir to combine. it may seem dry at first but keep on stirring. pat the dough out evenly in your prepared cake pan.

bake until golden brown on top, begin checking for doneness at 22 minutes.

remove the cake from the oven and let it cool fully in the pan- or serve it warm! wait for it to cool fully if you're decorating it with frosting though.

the cookie cake can be baked a day in advance. once cooled, wrap tightly in plastic wrap and store at room temperature. 

-yeh!

Thanks to bob's red mill for sponsoring this post!

mint coconut chocolate cake

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I needed to improve my cake track record because, you know, there was valentine's day and then in Arizona when I tried demoing tahini buttercream in a 90 degree tent it got all gloopy and ploppy. So I called a quick meeting with my editorial calendar and very subtly changed the words “salad pizza” to “mint coconut chocolate cake.” Because I love using coconut milk in chocolate cake for the rich, almost fudgey texture that it lends, and the super target has started stocking fresh mint again just in time for St. Patrick's Day! And I simply cannot think of a better threesome than coconut, mint, and chocolate.

lemon, feta, mint

peter, bjorn, and john

cheese, tortillas, ketchup

chocolate, tahini, more tahini…?

Anyway, the fact that I subbed salad for cake did not mean that I was an unhealthy ursula for the rest of the week. On the contrary, this week was one of those wonderful awesome weeks where at the beginning of it I sat down and did dinner planning! I do that once every five weeks or so and it’s just the best, I should really do it more often. I sit with my dinner planning notebook, a very large stack of cookbooks, my notebook where I keep my grocery lists, and the internet opened up to about 30 different good looking recipes, and then I compose four days of meals, leaving Friday open for pizza Friday. This week’s theme was yogurt because did I tell you that I am writing a yogurt short stack book??? It will be out a year from now and I am so excited because yogurt is one of my very favorite ingredients, not just for the flavor and texture, but also because it makes me feel de-puffed. As in, it has the exact opposite effect of eating a bunch of salt.

So we ate farro and kale with yogurt green goddess, yogurt marinated chicken (I am extra excited about this recipe), a yogurt frittata, yogurt on tacos, yogurt fattoush… and on top of all of this we went to the gym every night (!!) so am I feeling like a million bucks and ready to poke fun at it all with a week of schnitzel in Berlin? Maybe so! Or maybe I'll hunt down a vegetable in Germany, which I have never been very successful at since I am always so enthralled by Amerikaners and Brezeln and Döner kebabs, but there is no time like next week to change all of that. Do you have a favorite salad in Berlin? Tell me tell me.

But Molly what happened to the cake?? 

We had one large slice and then I redecorated it by frosting the inside where the slice was taken out so that it could lock in all of the moisture:

And then we brought it over to Emily and Evan the cow farmer along with a hotdish because they have a brand new tiny human in da house!!! Yay! I am like a little bummed that spontaneous gin and tonics and cheesy pickles with Emily at the Toasted Frog have been put on temporary hold, but I am also really getting into this new hobby of making freezer meals for E and E. It's so fun. Expect some more freezer meals up on this blog. 

So this cake is essentially this chocolate mint cake, oomphed up with coconut milk, coconut oil, and a bit of coconut extract. Mint and chocolate are awesome together but I often find I want a bit more richness to support it and coconut does just that. It also makes the cake part dairy free, so if you have a great dairy free frosting or want to mix up a quick coconut milk with powdered sugar glaze, you’ve got an awesome df dessert option on your hands. The cake pictured here is six inches-- this batter is enough for four six-inch layers, but I gave the fourth layer to eggpop as a thank you for driving us to the airport. You could also make a two-layer eight-inch cake. Or 24 cupcakes. You know the drill. 

mint coconut chocolate cake

makes one 2-layer, 8-inch cake or one 4-layer, 6-inch cake (see notes above)

ingredients

10 fresh mint leaves

1 can full-fat coconut milk

1 3/4 c sugar

1 3/4 c all-purpose flour

3/4 c unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp kosher salt

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1/2 c coconut oil, melted and cooled slightly

1 tsp coconut extract

2 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 c boiling water

 

frosting:

10 fresh mint leaves

3 sticks unsalted butter

4 c powdered sugar

1/2 tsp coconut extract

1/8 tsp salt

2 tb coconut milk

 

assembly:

food coloring, sprinkles, marzipan, rubber stamps, all optional but all very fun

clues

preheat oven to 350.

grease two 8-inch round cake pans or four 6-inch round cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment.

muddle the fresh mint leaves in a saucepan and pour in the coconut milk. bring to a simmer over medium heat, and keep it at a low simmer (lowering the level of the heat as needed), stirring often, for 15 minutes. remove it from the heat, strain out the mint leaves, and measure out 1 cup of coconut milk. set it aside to cool slightly and save the remaining few tablespoons of coconut mint milk for the frosting in the refrigerator. discard the mint leaves. 

in a large bowl, whisk together all of the dry ingredients. in a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, mint coconut milk, coconut oil, coconut extract, and vanilla extract. (it's important to make sure that the milk has cooled enough so that it doesn't cook the eggs, and that the eggs aren't so cold that they firm up the oil.) whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and then gradually stir in the boiling water. pour into cake pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. begin checking 8" cakes for doneness at 28 minutes and 6" cakes for doneness at 25 minutes.

let cool in the pans for 10 minutes and then turn the cakes onto a lightly greased cooling rack.

to make the frosting, muddle the fresh mint leaves in a saucepan and add the butter. melt the butter and heat over medium low for 15 minutes, stirring. strain out the mint leaves and then add the butter to a large metal bowl. place the bowl in an ice bath and use an electric mixer to beat it until it becomes pale and fluffy. (alternatively, you can let it sit overnight at room temperature, allowing it to firm back up.) beat in the powdered sugar, coconut extract, and salt, and then add 2 tablespoons of the reserved coconut mint milk. when creaming the butter, it may look a little grainy and congealed, but keep on beating it, and add a bit more coconut milk if you'd like, which will help smooth it out. 

to assemble the cake, mix in some green food coloring to the frosting if you'd like. spread a layer of frosting between each layer and then frost all over the sides and top. top with additional frosting decorations and sprinkles. to make a little marzipan label, cut out a marzipan square and then use rubber stamps brushed with a tiny bit of gel food coloring to stamp out your words! enjoy!

-yeh!

cake stand by anna wallace! 

marzipan sprinkle hamantaschen

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ok i have come closer to achieving my third my new year’s resolution, the one about having one or two more hangovers than i did in 2016! i had a hunch that it was going to happen this weekend when i landed in louisville and the first person that i met said that the best local food to have in louisville is… bourbon. and then i found myself surrounded by all sorts of super hilarious awesome food writers who were ready for a party and then molly on the range won an iacp award (!!!), and so did ingredient by my new bff ali and so did harvest and honey and food nouveau and alanna's book, and and--here are all the winners! so bourbon was in order. funny faces too. and goofy boomerangs. promises were made to make other people’s wedding cakes, plans were started for a pickle farm visit outside of berlin, it was the silliest, it was the best time ever, i got two hours of sleep on sunday night and it was a-ok.

before this weekend i had never been to a big conference except for the percussion conference that i went to in high school, and i was so nervous about meeting all of these new people whom i have admired and fangirled over for such a long time. but then everybody was *so* nice and welcoming and supportive of one another and it made me so gosh darn grateful to be part of this community. ugh i am getting so mushy!!!! but look i even got a neck scarf selfie with sweet dorie:

so let’s cover some things with sprinkles!!!! purim is coming up this weekend and eggboy and i will be in arizona for the tucson festival of books. so i was thinking that my purim costume could be to just get a tan on our friday hike and be the tan version of myself? i’ll keep thinking... are you dressing up? can i interest you in a schnitzel costume? 

these marzipan sprinkle hamantaschen are not too far off from the bakewell tart in that the filling consists of a thin layer of jam and and a frangipane-type almond concoction. the result is a chewy nutty cookie that also gets some crunch by way of a small sea of sprinkles. i’ve made these now with a couple of different dough recipes— the one from the breads bakery book, which is buttery, light, and almost flakey like a pie crust, and the one from leah koenig’s modern jewish cooking, which yields a denser oil-based cookie (there’s no need to get out a stand mixer) and is graced with some nice citrus flavor. the recipe below focuses on the filling, which can be used with one of those two dough recipes, or your favorite go-to hamantaschen dough recipe.

a bonus: if you have any marzipan filling leftover, you can bake it into chewy little gluten-free, dairy-free, dare i say passover-ready cookies! 

marzipan sprinkle hamantaschen

makes about 30

ingredients

for the dough:

1 batch of hamantaschen dough from the breads bakery book or modern jewish cooking (or feel free to use the dough of your choice)

for the filling:

2 c almond flour

1 c sugar

1/4 tsp kosher salt

2 large eggs, separated

1 tsp almond extract

a tiny splash of rosewater, optional

All-purpose flour, for dusting

lots of sprinkles (I use a mix of sanding sugar and cylinder sprinkles)

6 tb raspberry or cherry jam

clues

Make your dough, and refrigerate it for the amount of time listed in the directions. 

Preheat the oven to 350º. Line two baking sheets with parchment and set them aside.

To make the marzipan filling, in a large bowl, combine the almond flour, sugar, and salt. In a separate small bowl, combine the egg whites, almond extract, and rosewater, if using. Add this to the dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until combined. It always seems like there won’t be enough liquid at first, but keep on stirring until it comes together into a dough. (If you’re preparing this in advance, at this point you can wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for up to two days.)

On a work surface, roll out the marzipan until it is 1/4” thick, dusting with additional almond flour or all-purpose flour if it gets sticky. Cut out 1 1/2” circles with a round cookie cutter, or if you don’t have a 1 1/2” cookie cutter you can simply roll little balls by hand and flatten them into circles. In a small bowl, make an egg wash by whisking together the egg yolks and and a splash of water. Brush the marzipan circles with egg wash and dip them in sprinkles so that the tops get evenly coated. Set aside them aside.

Dust your surface with more flour, if needed, and roll out your hamantaschen dough until it is 1/8” thick. Cut out 3” circles, re-rolling scraps as needed. Brush the tops with egg wash, place a 1/2 tsp jam in the center and then top with a marzipan sprinkle circle. Fold the edges up to form a triangle shape and pinch the corners firmly to seal. Place on the baking sheets, 1” apart and bake until the bottoms are lightly browned, begin checking for doneness at 13 minutes. Let cool slightly and enjoy! 

(And if you have any marzipan leftover, bake the circles by themselves (with or without sprinkles) for about 8 or 10 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned. Let cool and enjoy!)

-yeh!