Category: Passover

Chocolate Ganache Tart with Macaroon Crust

I don’t know about you, but chocolate is about the only way I make it through this holiday. Growing up, my family was pretty strict with our Passover customs so we didn’t eat many processed foods. There was some dairy and OJ for the kids, a stash of lady fingers, and chocolate. Lots and lots of Shmerling chocolate.

We didn’t have it that bad. I had friends who couldn’t use oil, just shmaltz (yes, I know it’s delicious, but not when you’re trying to dress a salad!), who swore off dairy and processed food, and who couldn’t eat chocolate. Even Paleo people (who swear off dairy and processed foods, and who load up on shmaltz) eat chocolate. Me? We ate lots of eggs, chicken and potatoes, and any veggies that could be peeled, like eggplants, cucumbers and beets. We used only kosher salt for seasoning (no spices!) and liquid sugar for sweetening (no homemade Pesach cookies!). Still, my mom made the most delicious Pesach food, and we survived 8-days of gluten free eating. Largely in part due to chocolate.

Nowadays, I don’t think 8 days of gluten free eating is that difficult. Maybe it’s because I’m used to eating Paleo and zoodles are one of my favorite foods. I definitely miss the spices though, and the natural sweeteners like maple syrup. But back to the chocolate. It’s what got me through Passover when I was a kid, and it’s what gets me through it now. And now that California Gourmet has come out with kosher for Passover chocolate chips, my Passover’s are complete. I’ve got homemade nutella, nutella banana ice cream, and now THIS.

‘
And by this I mean the most decadent, indulgent, GUILT-FREE chocolate ganache tart with a macaroon crust. The recipe is so good that it’s actually PRINTED ON THE BACK OF THE BAG. That’s right, my first back of the bag recipe!! It’s hard to believe that such few ingredients could turn out such a delicious treat, but I tested this recipe on a few people who swear off coconut and they were licking. their. fingers. If there was ever a vegan, gluten free, nut free, raw, Paleo recipe that you should try – it’s this. Trust me. Your Passover’s will never be the same again.

Thanks to California Gourmet for allowing me to share this back-of-the-bag recipe!

Chocolate Ganache Tart with Macaroon Crust
raw, vegan, nut-free, gluten-free

7 oz. sweetened coconut flakes or shredded coconut
9 oz. medjool dates, pitted (about 11 dates)
1 cup canned coconut milk (full fat)
8 oz. bag California Gourmet KFP chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of sea salt

For the crust, spread out the coconut flakes on a baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes, stirring every few minutes, until lightly golden. Set aside to cool. Add the dates and toasted coconut to a food processor and blend until a ball of dough forms and pulls away from the sides of the bowl, or is well blended.

Line a tart pan (see note) with parchment paper, so that it hangs over the sides of the dish. Press the dough out onto the pie dish, spreading it out and up the sides like a pie crust.

For the ganache, pour the chocolate chips into a medium heatproof bowl and set aside. Place the coconut milk in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Pour the hot milk over the chocolate and let stand for a few minutes, until chocolate softens. Stir the mixture until smooth and add in the vanilla and salt. Pour the ganache into the pie crust and freeze for 2-3 hours, or until firm.

Lift the tart out of the pie dish using the parchment paper. Slice and serve.

OPTIONAL TOPPINGS: coconut whipped cream, shredded coconut, fresh raspberries.

NOTE: You may use a smaller or larger tart pan (7″-9″). The smaller pan will have more ganache, and the larger one will have it more spread out (in which case you might want to consider making more).

STORAGE: This tart freezes beautifully. Thaw at room temperature for 1-2 hours before serving. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

SUBSTITUTIONS: If you cannot find kosher for Passover canned coconut milk, you may use heavy cream (dairy), pareve kosher for Passover whipping cream, or, you can make your own coconut milk.

To make your own coconut milk, place 4 oz. unsweetened shredded coconut in a blender and pour 2 cups of hot water over it. Blend on high for a few minutes until thick and creamy. Pour the mixture through a colander lined with several layers of cheesecloth (or a kitchen towel). Squeeze to extract as much of the milk as possible. Refrigerate in an airtight container for 3-4 days. The milk will separate so just shake before using. Continue as per the recipe using your homemade coconut milk.

This post is sponsored by California Gourmet Chocolate Chips. Follow on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.   View the list of stores that carry the brand here).

Related KFP Recipes:

raw date and almond hamantaschen
gingerbread date truffles

Post a Comment

Nutella Banana Ice Cream

Now that I’ve made my homemade nutella, I’ve got to find uses for it, right? As if eating it off a spoon isn’t good enough for me…

The truth is, I am in love with banana ice cream, and I really wanted to share it with you in time for Passover! I made it for the holidays last year, and I’ve been making variations ever since.

There’s not too much to banana ice cream, and that’s precisely why I love it so much. You can say goodbye to the dozen-egg-homemade-passover-ice-cream and say hello to this no-machine, easy, healthy and no-guilt variety that’s tastes just like soft serve.

All you have to do is just slice up some ripe bananas and freeze them until a solid, just a couple of hours. Then, you pulse the bananas in the food processor until they’re very finely chopped. Keep going until the bananas are creamy and add in your flavors of choice! I love adding nut butters – like my homemade nutella – for Passover. During the year, my favorite combo is banana, peanut butter, cinnamon and maple syrup. It’s so so good.

I mean would you just look at that creamy consistency? Don’t you just want to grab a spoon and dive right in?

The best part about banana soft serve is the possibilities. Blend with strawberries, top with coconut whipped cream, stir in some chopped macaroons, or add in your favorite candied nuts!

Nutella Banana Ice Cream

4 ripe bananas
½ cup nutella (use my easy homemade 4-ingredient recipe)
¼ tsp vanilla extract

Method

Peel bananas and slice into pieces. Place on a baking sheet and freeze until solid, a few hours or overnight. Place the frozen banana slices in a food processor or powerful blender and blend until smooth and creamy, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. If the bananas are hard to blend, let them thaw for a few minutes to soften. Add the nutella and vanilla and blend until incorporated. Serve immediately for soft-serve ice cream consistency. If freezing for later, store in an airtight container and remove from the freezer to soften before serving.

NOTE: If you’re making your own nutella from scratch, make sure it cools completely before adding it to the ice cream, or it will freeze on-contact and won’t incorporate as well.

VARIATION: For a fun frozen banana treat, you can dip the banana slices into melted chocolate (before you freeze them) and top with shredded coconut, chopped nuts or sprinkles.


Post a Comment

Homemade Nutella

Making my own nutella has been on my list forever. It’s just one of those things that I’ve always wanted to make, but I never got around to it. Now that I finally made a batch, it’s going to be a regular here – it’s just that easy and that good.

If you’ve never made your own nut butter, you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s so much better than the store-bought stuff that’s loaded with additives! You can make nut butter out of just about any nut, and there’s nothing to it! You just let it go in the food processor until it’s creamy. It goes from chopped to a sort of greasy chop, then it turns to a creamy consistency with lots of pieces in it, and finally it reaches the beautiful consistency of butter.

There are so many things you can add to nut butter too. Maple syrup, honey, molasses, cinnamon, gingerbread spices, pumpkin spices, and of course….CHOCOLATE.

Chocolate nut butter is definitely my nut butter of choice. Last year, I made chocolate walnut butter for Passover and put it on just about everything. Now that California Gourmet has come out with soy-free kosher for Passover chocolate chips, I’m so excited about all the chocolate nut butter possibilities!

This incredible new brand has 48% cocoa for a rich chocolaty flavor that’s not too sweet. It’s non-GMO, gluten free, nut free, dairy free and with just 3 ingredients, you know you are eating clean. The kosher for Passover chips are made with just cane sugar, unsweetened chocolate, and cocoa butter – that’s it!

I love that California Gourmet’s new product makes eating nutella feel guilt-free! You can eat it with fruit, drizzled over yogurt, mixed into cookies or cake, and smeared over matza (if your custom allows). Me? I eat a spoonful right out of the jar for a decadent treat!

Now if you want to pick up a bag of kosher for Passover California Gourmet chocolate chips, they’re making it into stores nationwide (view the list here). If your store carries the red bag (which contains soy and is not kosher for Passover), you can ask them to bring in the Passover variety as it is available through the same distributor. If you are unable to get the chocolate at a store near you, you can also order it online here or replace it with some good quality chocolate instead.

Now that we’ve got our nutella ready, stay tuned for some banana nutella ice cream, coming to the blog real soon!

Homemade Nutella

8 oz. skinned* and roasted hazelnuts (unsalted), about 1 1/2 cups
1 8 oz. bag California Gourmet KFP chocolate chips
½ tsp vanilla extract
pinch of sea salt

Method:

Melt the chocolate chips over a double boiler. While they are melting, add the hazelnuts to a food processor and blend until smooth and creamy, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add the melted chocolate, vanilla and salt and blend until incorporated. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week or refrigerate for up to 1 month.

*If you cannot find skinned hazelnuts, purchase raw nuts and roast them at 400 degrees for about 8-10 minutes, until the skins begin to crack. Remove from the oven and add to a kitchen towel. Rub the nuts vigorously to remove the skins and set aside to cool.

NOTE: When the nutella comes out of the food processor, it will be liquidy, like the consistency of melted chocolate. As it sits, it will firm up to the texture of nut butter, as pictured on the matza. If you refrigerate the spread, it will harden, but you can just bring it to room temperature so it’s easier to spread.

EQUIPMENT NOTE: You will need a powerful food processor in order to create the hazelnut butter. If your machine is not that good, the process may take longer, just be patient and let the machine do the work.

TIP: if your nutella is difficult to spread, place your sealed container in a bowl of very warm tap water to soften.

This post is sponsored by California Gourmet Chocolate Chips. Follow on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  

Related Recipes: cinnamon honey walnut butter

Post a Comment

Cheesy Zoodle Marinara + Zoodles 101

With Passover soon approaching, I think it’s time for ZOODLE school! Zucchini noodles, or zoodles, have taken the (healthy) food world by storm, and I am all over the trend.

I’m been zoodling for months now, and I’ve come to love zoodles even more than traditional pasta. Besides being fun and easy to make, zucchini noodles are cheap, very low in calories, and you can get lots of noodles out of a single zucchini. If you haven’t hopped on the zoodle train, it’s time for zoodle 101.

There are three popular tools on the market for making zoodles: The Veggetti, The Julienne Peeler and the Paderno Spiralizer. Each tool has it’s pros and cons. Lets get into it!

THE VEGGETTI – The veggetti works like a pencil sharpener – each side has a different size blade, one larger and one smaller to yield a thicker or thinner noodle. If you look at the picture below, you can see the leftover zucchini looks like the tip of a sharpened pencil. The veggetti makes long noodles, but perfect ones come with practice. Turning the zucchini is a bit difficult and the results can be a bit scraggly.
PROS: compact, inexpensive ($12-$15)
CONS: You can only make noodles out of veggies that fit in the veggetti opening – up to 2.5″ in diameter.
Purchase here

THE JULIENNE PEELER: A julienne peeler looks like a traditional vegetable peeler, except the blade has little micro blades that cut whatever you are peeling into julienned strips. I prefer the OXO brand.
PROS: compact, inexpensive ($10), easy to use, easy to clean.
CONS: yields the most waste, you get strips and not traditional-looking noodles, only works on straight vegetables that are easy to peel.
Purchase here

THE SPIRALIZER: The spiralizer is the most versatile tool. It allows you to create noodles out of many different vegetables, and even fruits. Any fruit or vegetable that is at least 2.5″ long and at least 1.5″ in diameter can be spiralized. It cannot be hollow or have a pit, and it must be firm. You can spiralize apples, pears, beets, jicama, plantains, kohlrabi, potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternut squash (the neck), turnips and more! The spiralizer also yields the most authentic looking noodle. I prefer the Paderno brand.
PROS: yields the most authentic noodle, various blades yield different noodle shapes, works with a variety of fruits and vegetables, easy to use.
CONS: takes up the most space, not cheap ($30-$40 for the 3-blade and $50 for the new 4-blade), endlessly long noodles tangle and are hard to eat (I recommend cutting them shorter with kitchen shears), hardest to clean (I recommend cleaning immediately otherwise it’s hard to remove dried residue).
Purchase 3-blade, Purchase 4-blade

Here you can see how the noodles look based on the tool that was used, and what you have leftover after making the zucchini noodles. Now, lets talk about cooking methods.

BLANCHING – blanching means to cook vegetables quickly in boiling water and then shock them in an ice bath. As you can see below, this yields a mushy noodle. Not recommended!
ROASTING – roasting the zucchini noodles at 400 degrees for about 5 minutes, yields tender zoodles that are evenly cooked.
SAUTEEING – this is my favorite cooking method as it is fast and easy. I saute my zoodles in a wok or large skillet over high heat for about 2-3 minutes for perfectly tender zoodles.

An important point to consider about zoodles, and which tool you want to use to make them, is that zucchini’s have a lot of water. When you use the veggetti or the spiralizer, the seedy center of the zucchini (where most of the water is), get’s incorporated into the noodles. When you use a julienne peeler, you can stop peeling once you reach the seedy portion (in fact you’ll need to, because the strips will just fall apart). Therefore, zoodles made with the julienne peeler have less moisture and won’t water-down your sauces (same goes for cucumbers btw). If you prefer to use a spiralizer or veggetti, one way to solve this problem is to salt the zoodles to draw out some of the moisture. Let the salted zoodles drain in a colander for a few minutes, rinse off the salt and then pat dry on paper towels. I prefer to skip this step. Instead, I only cook my zoodles until tender, and I serve them immeidately (the longer they sit, the more moisture they will emit).

Now that we’ve covered the zoodles – what can you make with them? Well, you are only limited by your creativity! One of my favorite zoodle dishes is this cheesy zoodle marinara. I whip it up for lunch at least once a week! It’s so hearty and indulgent, yet it takes under 5 minutes to prepare. I use the julienne peeler for this because it’s the quickest, and I don’t want my lunch to be a whole to-do. Also, because I don’t use the seedy center of the zucchini, the zoodles don’t water down my sauce.

What else do I make with zoodles? Zoodle Pad Thai (recipe in my ebook), Zoodle Bolognese, Pesto Zoodles with Parmesan, Minestrone Soup with Zoodles, Chicken Zoodle Soup, Miso Soup with Zoodles and more!

And my spiralizer? Well the skies the limit on that! I make everything from rice and risotto to pizza crusts and sandwich buns – all out of vegetables!

Cheesy Zoodle Marinara

1 zucchini, made into zoodles with your preferred tool of choice
2 tsp olive oil
1 cup prepared marinara sauce
heaping 1/2 cup Natural & Kosher shredded mozzarella

Method:

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet and add the zoodles. Saute for 2 minutes. Add the marinara sauce and bring to a gentle simmer. If your sauce is too thick, add a splash of water. Add the cheese and cook until melted. Serve immediately.

If you’re looking for more recipes using the spiralizer, I’ve got loads of delicious spiralized dishes in this months issue of Joy of Kosher Magazine, so be sure to pick up a copy! You’ll find great Kosher for Passover recipes like beet-crust pizza with arugula walnut pesto and fresh mozzarella, cucumber salad with almond butter dressing, Spanish sweet potato rice with lime marinated chicken and no-bean minestrone with zoodles.

You can also check out the new Inspiralized cookbook by Ali Maffucci of Inspiralized.com.


This post was sponsored by Natural & Kosher Cheese. Follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Google+, or via their Blog

Other Zoodle Recipes:

spinach white bean minestrone with zoodles
harissa roasted chicken with zoodles

Post a Comment

Pumpkin Banana Souffle

It’s been a while since I’ve updated you on my Paleo journey and I think it’s about time! I first wrote about my diet struggles back in June, and I’ve since completed two (and a half) Whole30’s. The 30-day cleanse is based on the Paleo diet, with some more stringencies to help the body reset it’s natural rhythm. I love what the Whole30 did for me! It completely eliminated my sugar cravings, and got me back on track to a healthier lifestyle. Hundreds of you have jumped on the Whole30 bandwagon and purchased my Paleo 30-day meal plan filled with over 100 Whole30-compliant recipes!

Now while I fully support the Whole30 concept, I think it works best as a 30-day cleanse, which is exactly what it is. It’s too hard to live a Whole30 lifestyle all the time, especially being a foodie and recipe developer. Which is why I’ve transitioned to a mostly Paleo diet – rich in healthy proteins and fats, and limited to natural sweeteners and no-grain alternatives like almond flour.

I find that the Paleo lifestyle is pretty easy to stick to. I eat lots of eggs, chicken, meat, veggies and healthy carbs like sweet potatoes and pumpkin. Of course my spiralizer keeps things exciting with lots of zoodles (zuccchini noodles), veggie fries and cauliflower rice! I try to always think outside the box, preparing burgers with portobello mushrooms “buns”, making eggrolls with an omelette, or sushi with cucumber ribbons. These original recipes can all be found in my ebook, which you can read about in more detail here.

Although I’ve adopted a mostly Paleo lifestyle, I’m still a huge foodie who enjoys eating out, and developing fun and unique recipes for my blog. In those cases, I believe strongly in the principal “everything in moderation,” so I try and give myself a break to enjoy every now and then. I still have lots of weight to lose, and I think it’s time to head to the gym to get that ball rolling (literally!)

My blog is a reflection of my lifestyle, so I thought it was time to bring back some tried and true Paleo/Whole30 compliant recipes for all of my loyal Paleo followers to enjoy. This incredible pumpkin banana souffle is so ridiculously easy to make, you won’t believe how good it tastes! The banana adds all the sweetness you need, so you can eat this without any guilt. I love that I can eat it warm or cold, for breakfast, dinner, or even dessert! It’s nice enough to serve for company, and it’s so versatile too! Top it with some bacon or sausage crumbles, eat it with some roast turkey, or spoon on some coconut whipped cream for a truly decadent treat!

Pumpkin Banana Souffle

1 15oz. can pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
2 very ripe bananas, mashed
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2 eggs
1/2 cup full fat canned coconut milk (from the top of the can)

Method:

Add all the ingredients to a bowl and mix to combine. If desired, use an immersion blender to make it ultra smooth, or if you like bits of banana, you can leave it as is. Pour into a greased pie dish, or individual ramekins. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes (for ramekins) or about 45 minutes (for pie).

Paleo Variation: Add 1 tbsp maple syrup for some added sweetness and flavor.

Yield: one 9″ pie or 7 individual ramekins.

Other recipes that use pumpkin puree:

pumpkin ricotta pancakes
pumpkin pie smoothie
baked pumpkin oatmeal
pumpkin crisp
pumpkin whoopie pies

Post a Comment