Whistling in the dark

Recipe for my mom’s marble cake in Hebrew so translation below. Made this for the borotweetup on Friday.

Marble Cake

Ingredients

7 eggs separated
1 ½ cups of sugar
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
¾ cup orange juice
1/6 cup oil
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
—
2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tsp instant coffee
1 tbsp vanilla sugar

1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, add sugar, add yolks at medium speed
2. then add flour, baking powder, juice and oil
3. grease up a rectangular pan with oil (I use a large rectangular glass pyrex dish)
4. pour in 3/4 of the mixture
5. to the remaining 1/4 of the mixture in the bowl add the cocoa, coffee and vanilla sugar mix well
6. then add into the mixture already in the dish, use a fork to make the marble swirls.
7. Preheat the oven to 350/190. Bake for 40-45 minutes until a toothpick or fork can be inserted into the middle and come out clean.

Tips:

My mom listed vanilla sugar twice when writing out the recipe, once in the first mixture and then again in the chocolate mixture. I have made it with it in both, in just one and without.

If you don’t leave enough batter in the bowl the chocolate becomes denser/heavier and may sink to the bottom so you have a layer of chocolate at the bottom.

If you’re baking powder is not fresh you may end up with a flatter cake.

It’s an easy cake to make and it will taste good no matter what you do to it.

The batter is yummy too if you end up with some left in the bowl * innocent whistle *

The addition to the borotweetup cake was chocolate buttercream frosting and m+ms.

The chocolate buttercream frosting recipe I use is from cooks.com.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

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Ingredients:

• 100g Spinach
• 100g Broccoli
• 3 Eggs
• 3 Tablespoons of OSEM onion soup mix (You can probably substitute any other soup mix / powder or even stock cubes.)
• 1/2 Cup Mayonnaise
• Bread crumbs (or corn flake crumbs)
• Flour

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees. In a slightly greased pie dish scatter a light dusting of bread (or corn flake) crumbs. Quite thin, it just needs to stick.
2. In a large bowl combine all of the other ingredients. You can use a food processor to make it easy. If you are using frozen vegetables, soak them in some hot water and drain, before adding them to the mixture.
3. Bake 45 minutes or until a fork poked through the middle comes out dry.

Sarit, this is the recipe I promised you ages ago. Five minutes of work and then you stick it in the oven.

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Purim starts Monday night, the 9th of March this year. It is a Jewish holiday celebrating the way the beautiful Jewish Queen Esther saved the Jewish people from the villain Haman, an evil adviser to the king. Oznei Haman are traditional, triangular, baked goods with fillings made for the holiday. Depending on who you believe they are symbolic of the evil Haman’s pointy ears, pointy hat or a bastardization of the German mohntaschen – meaning poppyseed-filled pouches. Traditionally, Oznei Haman were made with poppy seed or prune filling. Both of these are horrifying flavors as children, the recipe below uses yummy strawberry or apricot.

Ingredients:

Pastry:

• 6-7 cups of flour
• 3 sticks of margarine (approximately 300gr)
• 2 cups of sugar
• 3 yolks
• 1 whole egg
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• Rind of 1 lemon
• Juice from 1/2 a lemon
• 1 tablespoon Vanilla Sugar
• 21/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 whole egg

Filling:

• Jelly / Jam – strawberry or apricot flavor
• Ground walnuts (or almonds)
• Sugar
• Sweet red wine
• Fine bread crumbs

Preparation:

1. Mix all of the ingredients for the pastry together. I put them all in a massive bowl, mixed briefly with the dough hooks on a hand mixer and then kept going with my hands.
2. In a separate, small bowl, mix all the ingredients for the filling together. There are no exact amounts, I tried getting my mother to be specific for each of the ingredients and she said “a little.” I don’t like walnuts in general, except for ground walnuts in cakes. I couldn’t find ground walnuts here, and didn’t want to take the time to bash whole ones so I used ground almonds and it worked fine.
2. Cover your work area with a light dusting of flour and take a bit under half the dough and roll flat with a flour covered rolling pin.
3. Cut out circles. I used a cup that had an approximately 3-inch diameter at the top to make the circles. Knead the scraps of dough from around the circles back into the larger batch still in the bowl.
4. Put about a teaspoon of filling in the center of each circle. Fold the circle down on three sides to make a triangle, pinching the corners to seal it.
5. Bake on a greased cookie tray at 190 degrees between 10 and 20 minutes (varies with the oven), until they start to brown up.
6. Keep doing this until you run out of dough. While you are in the middle it will seem like the dough is multiplying because every time you separate half you still end up with more in the bowl. It does run out eventually – makes 50-60 Oznei Haman.

Posted belatedly, but useful for next year.

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Yossi’s Shakshouka Recipe

I brought back an external hard drive with me from my recent trip to NY. It is filled with all sorts of randomness including scans of assorted ephemera including this recipe for shakshouka written in Hebrew from my time living in Tel Aviv.

On Ibn Gvirol Street, where I lived, every other shopfront seemed to belong to hairdresser. Among these was Yossi, a sweetheart, who I would drop in on from time to time. One day while I was hanging out, he made the most amazing shakshouka. The owner of the kiosk nearby brought some fresh bread and the group of us had a great meal dipping the bread into a communal shakshouka.

If you happen to be in Israel, you can always go to Dr. Shakshouka in Yafo for a nice meal. Or if you come across a Hebrew recipe you want to try here is a link for translating Hebrew or Yiddish spice names.

Ingredients:

• Olive Oil
• Sliced Chilli Pepper
• 3 Garlic Cloves (however you like them)
• Salt
• 1 Cup Water
• Tablespoon of ground paprika
• 4 Grated tomatoes
• Eggs (2-6)
• Additional Chilli Pepper (optional)
• Red and/or Green Bell Peppers (optional)

Preparation:
1. Fry oil, chili pepper, garlic, salt, 1/2 cup of water, ground paprika for 10-15 minutes.
2. Add 1/2 a cup of water and the grated tomatoes.
3. Cook on large flame for 5 minutes.
4. Turn down the flame and break the eggs over the mixture.
5. Cover the pan and let cook for a bit.
6. If you want it super spicy you can add an additional chilli pepper. This dish also works with red and green bell pepper strips or pieces thrown in.
7. Serve in the frying pan with a thick white bread for dipping.

For thos of you who can read the recipe you will see it is not very specific. I find it hard to tie people down to specific amounts when they are dictating a recipe they have made for years. This is the case with the next recipe I will post, an Oznei Haman recipe from my mom. Posted belatedly, but I do want to have a Food Friday post written for every Friday of this year.

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