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Chocolate & Nut Hamantaschen Filling (Dairy)

Hamentaschen (Dairy)

This is the BEST sweet kugel recipe I know of, but it's very sweet! I received it as a subscriber to The Happy Cook's Recipe Exchange Newletter, so the original contributor is credited at the top of the recipe. The Newsletter is a once a month free email publication, but most of the recipes are not kosher. However, if it interests you let me know and I'll be happy to post subscription information to the board.

This is a recipe I invented recently, and I can't classify it in the Ashkenazi or Sefardi categories. But my father loved it!

My grandma was not much for the whole mid-20th century jello mold thing. And this recipe was not stained and the paper was not crumpled like it had seen much use. But I’m including it because it sure is interesting if you’re into this sort of thing… the borscht as an ingredient makes this fascinatingly Ashkenazi. The directions are somewhat confusing, so I am transcribing them verbatim and will offer an opinion (untested!) as to what they mean below.

Once upon a time fish was inexpensive and this was a great way to stretch a meal on a budget. Even though fish is now expensive, this is still a great recipe to use for when you have fish leftovers... handy for not wasting that expensive piece of fish! Unlike a lot of fish, the recipe scales pretty easily.

It seems that if you are going to make frozen drinks, you'd need to pour them into their glasses before freezing. But I don't know, having not made this particular recipe. I added that suggestion into the directions, just in case.

In the 41 years I knew her, I never knew my grandmother to make cupcakes. It just wasn’t the sort of thing she made. I know this pale blue scrap of paper is very old, but with nary a spatter or folded corner… I think it’s safe to say she didn’t use this recipe much. Still, she kept it all those years. So here it is.

This recipe is handy for Pesach, when you don’t want to have to use the typical kosher l’pesach yogurt full of guar gum, pectin, modified food starch and other low quality ingredients. You can make this directly in the metal instapot lining pot, or you can choose to use containers placed inside the instapot lining on a rack. I have come to prefer the latter. I use quart mason jars, and can get 3 into a pot at once on the rack and still close the lid. I know this looks like a wall of text, but it really takes more effort to explain than to do.

The advantage of making your own coffee ice cream is that you know with certainty that it's decaf. Also, home made ice cream is just exceptional, generally speaking. We use an ice cream maker - just follow the directions for whatever device you are using.

This is the frozen yogurt version of the ice cream recipe. It's marginally healthier than the ice cream version if you're worried about saturated fats, calories, or sugar content. We tried reducing the sugar content further and using stevia, but wound up with a tart block of ice with figs and walnuts. The bottom line is that in order to make non-fat frozen yogurt at all edible from a texture standpoint, you need to add things to alter the freezing point. Normal humans do this by adding things like sugar, fat or alcohol. Mega-conglomerate food corporations achieve this result by putting in highly processed emulsifiers and thickeners that alter viscosity and freezing point without changing fat content or sugar content. So... in the end, we realized it's a "devil you know" vs. "devil you don't know" predicament when it comes to balancing the conflicting aims of making frozen yogurt palatable/edible vs. "heart healthy" and low glycemic-index. We've opted for the devil we know and love, and just don't indulge all that often.

Home made ice cream is just exceptional, generally speaking, but it's also generally kosher for Passover. This is handy, especially for those of us with spring birthdays. I can't subscribe to lousy excuses for cake on Pesach, but at least with ice cream, no sacrifice in quality is necessary. We use an ice cream maker - just follow the directions for whatever device you are using. Mr. Yakityak was inspired to create this recipe after coming home from Italy, having had a stellar gelato version there.

Home made ice cream is just exceptional, generally speaking, but it's also generally kosher for Passover. This is handy, especially for those of us with spring birthdays. I can't subscribe to lousy excuses for cake on Pesach, but at least with ice cream, no sacrifice in quality is necessary. We use an ice cream maker - just follow the directions for whatever device you are using.

We gave up on trying to make this super healthy. It’s probably healthier than ice cream in that it is lower calorie and higher in protein, but don’t kid yourself… it’s still high in sugar and fat. It’s just not possible to make it lower in sugar and fat without making it turn out like a sour block of ice.

Filling:

My aunt and uncle lived next door to me in childhood, and I grew up in my aunt’s kitchen as if it were my own. Her Sephardic cooking was very different than the Ashkenazic cooking of the rest of the family, but I thought nothing of this because I ate it so often. Somehow all these different flavor profiles worked just fine together, with little to no distinction being made. I wish more of the world worked together just as easily.