Hamantashen

It's Purim and time to make the hamantashen, filled cookies designed to symbolize the defeat of Haman, an enemy of the Jewish people. They appear in bakery cases all over NYC this time of year, and are beloved by tribe members and others. And homemade ones abound -- people who rarely bake the rest of the year are known for making these triangular treats.

So I made them, using a c. 1960s recipe in the Temple Israel (of Akron) Synagogue Sisterhood Cook Book. 

Dear readers, I will probably never make them again. The dough was difficult to work with and the process was rather tedious. Everyone who tried them loved the cookies, though, so there was that. And the dough is rich and delicious.

So for those of you interested, hang on to your three-pointed hats and let's get started. Place all the ingredients in a large bowl. I misread the instructions and did not beat the egg yolks with the sour cream first, but it didn't seem to matter in the end. And I saved a step.

Mix until it forms a dough.

Form the dough into a couple of spheres and refrigerate until firm, usually an hour or two.

Roll out on parchment paper or a lightly floured surface. I sandwiched the dough between to sheets of parchment. Using a 2.5 or 3-inch cookie cutter, make the circles.  At this point, I refrigerated the sheets of cutouts to firm up again.

There are many fillings for these cookies. I used prune lekvar because I happened to see it while shopping at Pomegranate, an upscale Kosher restaurant in Brooklyn.

Place a teaspoon, or less, of filling in the center of each cookie.

There are many ways to create the triangle shape. At first, I used the old-fashioned one, below, of pinching the sides together.

Brush the formed cookies with egg white before baking.

But my first batch was a fail. See how many opened up?

But then I discovered a webpage on how to make them perfect. You can see it here. In the tutorial, Tori Avery demonstrates a folding technique. You can see how much better my second batch looked following those instructions.  (There was no third batch, as I ate the dough raw for dinner!)

Production notes: I halved this recipe, using only butter and not Crisco, and followed it exactly save for mixing the sour cream and egg yolks together first. I brushed the tops with egg white before baking. Each batch took about 12 to 15 minutes. (Eleanor Applebaum was the rabbi's wife at Temple Israel, and an editor of this cookbook.)

French Silk Chocolate Pie

Last week, when my mother fell ill, I unexpectedly found myself in Akron. While I spent most of my time with her, I did attend one estate sale and purchased a c. 1987 dessert cookbook published by the PTA of my elementary school, Fairlawn.  (Its name has since been changed to the Judith A. Resnick School; the Challenger astronaut was a former student.)

The Fairlawn PTA, I read in the cookbook, received national recognition in 1957 when it began sponsoring French classes for grades one to six. I am forever grateful for those classes, as I still remember the French I learned as a young child. (It stayed with me more than the high school French I studied.)

Anyway, I wanted to bake something chocolate for my mother, for there's little she loves above chocolate, but was daunted by the limited baking tools in her kitchen. Then I discovered this French Silk Chocolate Pie recipe -- easy and perfect! The only tools required are a bowl and beater (and a pan or microwave to melt the chocolate).

The recipe says it's "very rich and chocolaty" and it is. French silk pie is basically a chocolate mousse in a pie crust.

I began with some supermarket Baker's semi-sweet chocolate.

After melting the chocolate (and setting it aside to cool), beat the butter and sugar.  Add the eggs, beating well after each addition.

Stir in the melted chocolate...

and pour into a pre-baked pie crust. Refrigerate for several hours.

Production notes: I cheated and used a store bought crust (not recommended unless you're as desperate as I was). Make sure the butter is really soft and beat the sugar in for a long time, or better yet, use superfine sugar. (I didn't do either, and there were still some sugar crystals in the finished product.)
To serve, whip some heavy cream and place a dollop on each slice. With a knife, grate some of the chocolate on top for a nice presentation.

Muriel Clar's Poppy Seed Bars

Yesterday while cleaning out my files (one of many, many New Year's resolutions), I was delighted to discover a recipe given to me by my mother's friend, Muriel Clar.  Mrs. Clar, as I always called her despite her constant pleading to call her Muriel when I became an adult, was renown for both her cooking and baking skills. She and her husband Mr. Clar (Bob) raised three sons in Akron -- and she ran a household in suburbia without ever driving a car. How she managed that is something I can't imagine, for nothing was in walking distance.

Many years ago while I was visiting Akron, Mrs. Clar arrived at my mother's house with these delicious poppy seed cookies, and happily wrote out the recipe. Mrs. Clar died last year, but I'll always remember her warm smile, gregarious personality and her stories, which were every bit as good as her cookies.

These are buttery cookies, not too sweet and wildly addicting. Good thing the yield is high; depending on how big you cut them, you can easily get 70 cookies from this batch. And, they are so easy to make that you just need one bowl and a pair of hands to put the recipe together.

Start by combing all the ingredients in a bowl.

I used my Kitchen Aid, but the recipe says to mix everything with your hands.

Pat the dough evenly in a sheet pan. I lined it with aluminum foil for easy clean-up.

Sprinkle the poppy seeds on top.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes.

Cut into squares while the cake is still hot.

Below is the note card with the recipe. I followed it exactly, using butter instead of shortening.

Salvation Army Whip Cream Cake with Lemon Butter Frosting

I just returned from a whirlwind 36-hour visit to Akron to celebrate my mother's 85th birthday.  While I have mixed feelings about my hometown (are there any good restaurants?), one thing that never disappoints are the fabulous estate sales held each weekend.

At a particularly interesting one (read: house packed with treasures) on Sunday, I discovered a c. 1960 cook book filled with the recipes of members of the Women's Auxiliary of The Salvation Army of Akron.  (The Salvation Army is not an army at all, but rather a Christian church.)

I was especially interested in the recipe for Whip Cream Cake, as I had recently purchased some fabulous and hard-to-find heavy cream that was not ultra-pasteurized.  This is a rich, almost yellow, cream that is a completely different (and much better) animal than the supermarket heavy cream.

For the frosting, I chose a recipe I've wanted to try for a while -- something called lemon butter, which is really lemon curd but with an easier method.

Old-fashioned whipped cream cakes use cream in place of butter.  As such, they are really easy to prepare.

To make the cake, whip the cream until it thickens and resembles whipped cream.

Add the rest of the ingredients and blend.

Pour into greased and floured eight-inch pans.

For the frosting, zest and juice a couple of lemons.

Place eggs, sugar, the lemon juice and zest, a dash of salt and butter in a saucepan and cook over low heat until thickened.

Better cooks may skip this step, but I always need to strain the lemon curd to remove the egg protein which "cooks" in the sauce.

Voila.  A gorgeous lemon curd.  Refrigerate until cold.

Place a small amount between the layers and the rest on top. Some fresh fruit is a nice finish.

Production notes:  I baked this for 19 minutes (but was using my Chambers oven, which doesn't have a reliable thermostat).  I followed the recipe exactly, but only sifted the flour once.  Grease and flour the pans for an easy release.

The Lemon Butter is a variation of lemon curd.  I followed this exactly, but needed to strain it at the end.  I also used butter instead of Oleo.

Fourth of July Cake -- Washington Pie

An Independence Day dessert recipe, named for our first president, and so good, it deserves reposting! 

I wanted to make a July 4th dessert that was nothing like the clichéd concoctions that appear in mainstream women's magazines, predictably featuring an array of blueberries and raspberries arranged *just so* on a tart or ice cream cake.

Hence, I made Washington Pie. A simple and tasty alternative.

Washington Pie, a precursor to  Boston Cream Pie, is really a cake.  And it couldn't be easier to make because unlike most cakes, there's no frosting or filling to prepare separately.  The cake layers are spread with raspberry or apricot jam (hmmm....shouldn't it be cherry?) and the top is dusted with a fine layer of confectioners sugar. (Boston Cream Pie, also a cake, is filled with vanilla custard and topped with chocolate.)

This is a light and delicious cake, and was much appreciated by the ladies of Henry Street Settlement's Home Planning Workshop, led by the amazing Ruth Taube, 86, (below, pretty in pink, in a dress she designed and sewed) who has been teaching sewing, knitting and crocheting to Lower East Side residents for more than 40 years.

The workshop, located in the basement of the Vladeck Houses, a public housing project, hasn't changed much in 50 years.  Inside, ladies (and sometimes men) sit around two tables, or at sewing machines, busy at work on projects, while Ruth goes from person to person, teaching a technique here, solving a problem there, offering all manner of advice, not all of it limited to the needle crafts.  (Instruction and advice are free.) There's laughter, gossip, camaraderie and, almost always, cake or another sweet. I was thrilled my contribution was so well received -- this is a tough audience!

Topping the cake with confectioners sugar is easy if you use a strainer, pictured above, as it allows for an even coating.  This also works beautifully for topping a dessert with cocoa powder.

I found a few recipes for Washington Pie (also called George Washington Pie), but the one I used is from Tested & Tasty Recipes, a 1936 book complied by the Dorcas Class of the East Market Evangelical and Reformed Sunday School in Akron, Ohio.

My Mother's Chocolate Birthday Cake

I subscribe to the theory that people don't really change; instead, we just become more like we are.  And so I found myself in Akron a few weeks ago, along with my brother, both of us there to help our mother Bee move into the independent living place with the French name just a few miles from her house.

My brother Steve (aka Mr. Wonderful, so named by my mother, a moniker his wife and I will not let die) hung flat screen televisions and oil paintings on the walls of Bee's new place, assembled furniture (which he had purchased and transported from his home in Ann Arbor after creating a complex computer generated 3-D floor plan), and otherwise performed a lot of necessary and wonderful tasks.  While he was doing all that, I baked a cake, helpfully messing up the kitchen of the house I was supposed to be packing up. (If you haven't already guessed, I was am the black sheep.)

This chocolate cake -- baked for my mother's 83rd birthday -- is really, really good and it couldn't be simpler.  (And I even managed to pack the Waterford and Llardro while it was in the oven.)

The recipe called for clabbered milk, easily made by squeezing some fresh lemon juice into milk and letting it sit until it thickens.  You can swap this out with buttermilk (and vice versa).

As often happens at family gatherings, there was some drama -- in this case, pastry separation anxiety.  One of the cake layers didn't release from the pan properly and things were looking grim.

But I simply (and carefully) removed the cake left behind in the pan and placed it on the larger piece (think edible jigsaw puzzle), while my sister-in-law wondered if  "cake glue" was available.  (It is, but you make it yourself by crumbling some cake and mixing it with frosting. However, you need to plan ahead and bake an extra layer to be used in this truly ingenious cake "spackle" that I learned in a class taught by cake genius Toba Garrett.

When it was all finished , the damage was well hidden.  See, you can't even tell that this cake ever suffered any trauma at all.  If only the human heart could be so easily repaired.  (Though I suppose chocolate can play a role in that, too.)

My mother quite enjoyed her birthday cake.  After leaving some for the moving men, I transported the rest by car to her new place. And then returned to finish packing with the realization that, while I'll never live up to the standards set by Mr. Wonderful, I might just beat him in a bake-off.

The recipe card, below.  And as this is simply a list of instructions, I included the method, which is one likely was used the author of this recipe.
For the frosting, I used a version of the Magnolia Bakery buttercream (I did not have my recipe collection with me) and added some unsweetened melted chocolate and brewed coffee for a mocha frosting.  Sweet, but good.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour two 8-inch cake pans.

Combine sugar and butter (in place of lard) and mix until light and fluffy.

Add egg and mix.

Combine flour, baking soda, and cocoa in a bowl.

Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk to the butter-sugar mixture, beginning and ending with the flour.

Pour into cake pans.  Bake about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick