Category: Dessert

Grain Free Granola

It’s been an emotional week for me. I opened up about a personal loss over on Instagram and the response was overwhelming. I truly felt a communal virtual hug that gave me so much comfort, and for that I thank you.

At a yartzeit gathering this week, one of the speakers mentioned an interesting thought. Why is it, he wondered, that so many communities do not read about the history of the holocaust on the saddest day of the year, the Fast of Tisha B’av? He reasoned that the atrocities of the holocaust were so unbearable, that the only way for the Jews to survive was to not look back – only forward. There was simply no other way. It was key to our survival.

If you think about it, he said, that’s why most holocaust survivors don’t and can’t talk about the past. That’s the only way they were able to put one foot in front of the other and continue living.

I’ve had this on my mind and it just so happened that this morning, a friend of mine posted a video of her grandfather giving testimony on a trip to the Death Camps. He goes into detail about the selection and how his life was spared, and the gruesome stories that he told left me choking on my tears. I can’t bear to listen to it, how could anyone actually have LIVED through it?

Not to make light of the very worst horror that the world has ever experienced, but many people go through their own personal holocaust. I know for myself that my family’s personal loss was the kind of stuff you only see on TV, not in real life. You never think it will happen to you. And I keep thinking back to the speech of this week – you can’t look back, you can only move forward.

It’s funny because my husband (who is a business coach) has been talking to me a lot about The Three Laws of Performance, a book that has literally changed his life. The popular self-improvement book gives you strategies to be able to create a new future that’s different from the past. In order to do that, we have to change our language, because the words and the meaning we attach to those words all have to do with our past – and it holds us back. Letting go of the past gives us the opportunity to create the future we really want.

We all use words that create our reality – we say things like “You always do such as such,” or “Because such and such happened to me, therefore I can’t …”. If we stop attaching meaning to everything we say (that is based on our past) then that allows us the possibility of a new future.

If you’re like me, you’re  probably rolling your eyes at what I’m writing, but the truth is, it makes a lot of sense. For most of us, it’s our pasts and the stories we tell ourselves based on our pasts that really hold us back from living our future.

Let me just say though that I am the last person to preach these ideas – psychology was never quiet my thing. And honestly when my husband got into self improvement and all that stuff – I just looked the other way. “You do you and I’ll do me” was my philosophy but it wasn’t a very healthy (or mature) one. I mean we can all learn methods we can use to improve ourselves – our outlooks, our responses, our behaviors. As a mom, how can I expect to tell my children to control their anger or “use their indoor voice” if I’m not doing that myself.

This week, and in fact the last couple of months (since I’ve been open to learning the Three Laws of Performance) have been really eye opening for me. I’m working on putting the past in the past and focusing on creating the future that I once thought I could only dream of. And with Passover just a short few weeks away, I always learned that the holiday wasn’t just about eating matza, but about passing over our own exiles and experiencing a personal redemption. I hope you (and I) will be lucky enough to do so this year!

I, for one, am passing over the heavy Passover food of yesteryear and moving onto some healthier and lighter options, like this fantastic grain-free granola. The recipe bakes up in clusters, just the way I like it, and you’d never believe it’s made from just nuts and coconut. Give it a try!

Related Recipes

marzipan crumble (gluten free)
chewy date granola bars
banana nut Greek yogurt bowl
yogurt parfaits with homemade granola

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Peanut Butter Buckeye Hamantaschen

If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably know that I’m not big on baking. I love to cook, but baking is just too scientific for me. You can’t just be creative and throw in a little of this and a little of that (trust me, I’ve tried!). Every year, I come up with such fun hamantaschen ideas, but I dread testing them. I push it off until I can’t anymore, and then I test batch after batch after batch until it’s just right.

With hamantaschen dough and the filling, there’s just too much margin for error. You’ve got to get the cookie to be soft, but crispy too. You can’t fill them too much, and you have to make sure they don’t open when you bake them. Just thinking about it makes me want to insert the eyeroll emoji.

After testing six batches of mamoul hamantaschen dough this year, I decided I wanted to come up with a no-bake hamantasch that people are going to want to eat. It had to be some sort of candy, but also a riff on a particular style – so I went with BUCKEYES, ‘cuz who doesn’t love peanut butter?!

Buckeyes are basically a peanut butter cup – except the peanut butter filling is rolled into a ball and only partially covered in chocolate. Basically it’s got peanut butter and chocolate and it’s addicting. Case in point: when my daughter came home to a platter of these on the table, she gave me a hug and told me I had invented the best recipe on the planet. “How did you turn the peanut butter into a dough?”, she wanted to know. Turns out, it’s pretty simple. And I can do simple.

Hello NO-BAKE hamantaschen and goodbye to the tricky scientic process of baked hamantaschen. Who’s with me on that?!

Of course you want to make sure you use good quality chocolate in this recipe, so I rely on my fave – California Gourmet. Their new mini’s melt SO quickly, plus the 51.3% cocoa content make them rich and easy to work with.

Enjoy this last taste of Purim here on BIB. I’m sure you’ll be making these in traditional buckeye shapes after the holiday too. Chag Sameach!


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

Related Recipes:

no-bake date and almond hamantaschen
peanut butter bars
peanut butter mousse
peanut butter fudge ice cream pie

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Ma’amoul Hamantaschen

If I had one word to describe these hamantaschen, it would be #proud. Yes they’re melt-in-your-mouth delicious, super buttery and also crispy, but the word I would use to describe them has nothing to do with how they taste. It has to do with how they make me feel.

I’ve always felt that food does so much more than nourish us. It connects us to our past, our present and our future. Traditional food, especially, has the power to bridge generations. Preparing the same dishes that my mother made, and my grandmother before her, allows me to pass on the flavors and smells of my childhood to my children in a way that nothing else can.

That’s why these hamantaschen mean so much to me. Not only do they reflect the traditions of my Ashkenazic heritage, they also represent the flavors and culture of my husband’s Sephardic hertitage.

While my husband is Ashkenazi like me, his mother was born and raised in Argentina, but her roots trace back to Syria. She grew up eating ma’amoul, rosewater-scented cookies filled with either date or walnut filling. When I got married, ma’amoul always made an appearance at parties and simchot and their interesting shape always intrigued me.

Traditional ma’amoul is molded into different shapes using a special cookie press. The cookie is shaped differently, depending on the filling. My mother in law always used tweezers to decorate her ma’amoul, which I found really interesting. When I came up with the idea to fuse the classic hamantasch with Syrian flavors, I went to my husband’s aunt, Esther, for a cookie baking class.

Esther is a cook after my own heart. She likes to do things simply, without fancy tools or supplies (which explains the tweezer method!). She mixed up the ma’amoul in no time, while I attempted to measure her pinches of spice and sprinkles of flour. She expertly shaped the dough faster than I could follow and before long, they were out of the oven and covered in a snowfall of powdered sugar.

Of course I went back home and it wasn’t all that simple. For starters, traditional ma’amoul dough does not have egg, so it wouldn’t hold as a hamantasch. I was determined to make it work, and 6 batches later, I struck gold (or should I say rosewater?!). These ma’amoul hamantaschen are the perfect blend of buttery and crispy, thanks to the butter and semolina, respectfully. I’m super proud of this Sephardic-Ashkenazi fusion and I hope I’ve started a new trend in my family tree.

Now that we’ve got the Purim party started, stay tuned for lots of other exciting holiday recipes, coming soon!

Related Recipes:

baklava hamantaschen
date and almond hamantaschen
healthy thumbprint hamantaschen

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Marzipan Date Truffles

I must. must. must. discuss these beautiful photos!!! After much deliberation, I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to a new full frame sensor camera, the Canon 6D. Do I even need to tell you how amazing the full frame sensor is, or should I just let the photos do the talking (all unedited, straight out of the camera!)?

I know most of you are not here for the photography. OK maybe you enjoy the mouthwatering food, but you can do without the technical jargon. Let me just say that the camera sensor is what lets in the light and a bigger sensor = more light and more light = beautiful photos. That being said, my “studio” is in a pretty dark room with limited light so a larger sensor is really important for me. The full frame sensor also allows me to fit more into the frame of a photo so you get a wider view.


Sensor aside, the 6d also has wifi capability so I can set my camera on a tripod and connect to it via Canon’s app to take hands free photos! Taking photos on a tripod removes any possibility of camera shake so you get crystal clear, sharp photos. I’m so in love!

Speaking of which, I am also very much in love with this healthy, raw, vegan, 4-ingredient (if you don’t count the salt!) snack that’s become a staple in my house. Marzipan is one of my favorite flavors (hello 3-layer rainbow cookies!) and the pure almond extract really brings out that flavor in these guilt-free chews. With Tu B’shvat around the corner, they are just the thing!!

Related Recipes:

Tu B’shvat truffles
date and almond hamantaschen
cowboy cookie dough bites
gingerbread truffles

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Funfetti Raspberry Palmiers

Aaaahhhh!!!! You guys!!! I can’t believe that it’s 2017 and I have been blogging since January 19th, 2011 when I posted this chicken breast with port wine cherry sauce. It’s crazy how much has changed since that very first blog post!

First up, I gotta give myself a big pat on the back. I have NEVER started a hobby that I actually stuck to until THIS. ALL. HAPPENED. And for 6 whole years I posted once to twice a week without EVER. TAKING. A. BREAK. I even birthed two beautiful children along the way (thanks to my amazing blogger friends who filled in with some guest posts during that time!). What is it about blogging that just stuck?

I’ll tell you. Honestly, when this blog started, I had just had my third kid, and I had always worked for a few hours a day because I like to keep busy. It was time to move on so my husband suggested that I start a blog (he came up with the name!) and the rest is history! I wasn’t a big cook back in the day and honestly my photography was TERRIBLE. But the spark was lit. I got so much amazing feedback, and I just wanted to keep sharing. I went to culinary school along the way, took a photography class, and just kept honing my skills. Like a flower in bloom, my passion for cooking blossomed into something beautiful. I feel truly blessed to absolutely LOVE what I do.

Of course like every human being, I get sick of cooking sometimes. And once in a while, I’m just so not in the mood of photo editing or writing, but I always come back. Because the passion is a fire that burns that you just can’t extinguish! And for that I have YOU to thank – my readers! You are the fuel to my blogging fire. Your comments, emails, messages and photos are what keep me going. They make me want to continue to share and push myself to create amazing things.

Of course when my first blogoversary came, I never imagined I’d celebrate many more, but each year I posted a little something to mark the date of my first post. I didn’t have a specific theme, but when my funfetti cake went viral on my 4th blogoversary, I decided I would stick to the funfetti theme from then on. My friend Melinda always goes red velvet for her Blogoversary and I loved the idea.

Last year, I continued the funfetti theme with some homemade pecan turtles because they’re pretty much my favorite candy, and because I really wanted to challenge myself to make homemade caramel for the first time! It took a couple of tries but my no-corn-syrup caramel recipe has been a huge hit ever since!

This year, I needed something easy because I’ve got a 5 month old who loves my attention, so I came up with these stunners! With Valentines Day ahead, as well as Purim not too far off (ducking now!), I thought these would be the perfect little bite to show my LOVE and APPRECIATION to you all for making BIB what it is today.

Palmiers, also known as elephant ears, are a French pastry that’s traditionally made with puff pastry and sugar. The puff pastry is covered in sugar, folded in layers and sliced thin. The sugars caramelize during baking and you’re left with a buttery cookie that’s crispy from the sugar and oh so pretty!

I decided to ditch the sugar in favor of sprinkles and fill the dough with raspberry jam to resemble hearts. The jam ends up caramelizing under the cookie, and the sprinkles add a nice crunch, so these make a great variation on the original. Plus they are super beautiful and versatile!

Thank you so much for following and making BIB the success that it is today. To many more Blogoversary’s to come!

 

Related Posts:

5th Blogoversary} Funfetti Pecan Turtles
4th Blogoversary} Funfetti Cake
2nd Blogoversary} BBQ Brisket
1st Blogoversary} Mulled Wine

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