Category: Dessert

Unicorn Cheesecake Mousse

CAN’T STOP, WON’T STOP. That’s my motto this holiday season! When the internet went gaga over Starbuck’s unicorn frappuccino recently, I knew I had to get in on the unicorn fun – and here. it. is. Feast your eyes on this strawberry cheesecake mousse with a swirl of sour icing – so much yassssss!

To be honest, I haven’t actually tried the unicorn frap, but I watched as my fellow foodies and blogger friends scrambled to get to their nearest Starbucks for a taste. Most of them found the drink underwhelming – but the general consensus was that the elements of sweet and sour were a cool combo for a shake. And I couldn’t agree more!

Figuring out what to use for the sour element in these was the biggest challenge. At first, I wanted to keep things natural, so I tried fresh blueberries and sour cream – too watery and not sour enough. Plus the blueberries were purple and not blue. Then I headed to Target for some freeze dried blueberries, but that worked out purple too. I finally decided to nix the healthy aspect, since this is an indulgent cheesecake mousse after all (and a little blue food coloring won’t kill anyone either) and went the route of white chocolate (a la the original Starbucks version, which was a white chocolate mocha sauce). But that was a mess. G-d was that a mess.

So, many tries later, I finally hit the nail on the head using my friend Shushy’s suggestion  (check her out @cookinginheelss!) of a thick icing made with powdered sugar. It was the perfect consistency for my sour swirl – made using citric acid, aka sour salt, that gives the icing that special pucker.

I’m super proud of these cuties and I think you will be too if you choose to serve them for dessert this Shavuos holiday! Just hush hush on the secret sour sauce and let your guests be surprised when they take their first bite. Serve with a side of fresh berries for a light and healthy(er than cheesecake) dessert!

Unicorn Cheesecake Mousse

for the mousse:

1 cup heavy cream
8oz. whipped cream cheese
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup chopped strawberries

for the sour swirl:

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3-4 tbsp water
2 tsp sour salt (citric acid), or, to taste
blue food coloring

for topping:

whipped cream
blue and pink colored sugar* or sprinkles

Method:

For the mousse, whip the heavy cream until stiff and set aside. In a separate bowl, beat the cream cheese, powdered sugar and vanilla until fluffy.

Puree the strawberries in a food processor or blender, leaving it slightly chunky if you want large bits of fruit or strain if you want a smooth puree. Gently fold the strawberries into the cream cheese mixture and then fold that mixture into the whipped cream. Taste and adjust sweetness by adding more powdered sugar, if needed. Place the cheesecake mousse into a piping bag.

In a small bowl, combine the powdered sugar, water, food coloring and sour salt. Place the sour icing into a piping bag and pipe a swirl around the mousse cups.

Pipe the cheesecake mousse into the cups and top with whipped cream and colored sugar.

*if desired, mix some sour salt into the colored sugar for a sweet and sour topping.

YIELD: approximately six 4oz. servings or twelve 2oz. servings (mini mousse cups).

Related Recipes:

rosewater cheesecake mousse parfaits
easy no-bake cheesecake
Torah cannoli

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Fruit Salad with Basil Honey Lime Dressing

To me, Passover, or Pesach, is all about tradition. I’ve never actually hosted the holiday in my own home, but I imagine that when I do, I’ll be making the same foods that my mother always made.

I have fond memories of my mom’s Passover ratatouille, mock chopped liver, beet salad and cucumber salad all neatly arranged in mason jars on the door of the fridge. She always had big jars of simple syrup on the counter, which she used to sweeten everything from chicken to fish, meat and nuts. Towards the second days, when everyone had enough of the heavy meals, she always diced up a huge fruit salad in our giant glass Pyrex. And she doused it in simple syrup too.

The simple syrup didn’t bother me, especially as a kid, because the fruit tasted like candy. But the bananas – they just threw the whole thing off. There were never really rules to what went into the fruit salad – it was whatever was leftover around the house – but it almost always had melon, kiwi, sliced bananas, walnuts, and oranges.

There was always someone in the house who was walking around scratching their throat from one of the fruits – probably the kiwi, and I think it was usually my sister. But we still ate it – bananas, oranges and all – and we sipped up all those sweet drippings from the bottom of the bowl like they were liquid gold. Ah, Passover memories.

While everyone is busy preparing trays of Passover brownies, whipping up macaroons and fancy pavlovas – I’m here to say that it’s really just about the tradition. Fruit salad may be simple, but it’s what my Momma always made, and it’s what I plan to make when I host Passover in my home in the coming years.

For this recipe, I’ve done away with all the fruits that I picked out of my Mom’s fruit salad – the awful mushy bananas, pithy oranges, and throat-scratching kiwi’s. Instead, I used melons, mangos, plums and nectarines, and fancied it up with a basil honey lime dressing (a lot healthier and more flavorful than the simple syrup of my youth!). Feel free to adjust this salad to your liking – adding more lime juice for extra tartness, or more honey for extra sweetness. And you can also switch up the herbs with some fresh mint instead of basil, if you so desire. Don’t forget to top it off with some coconut whipped cream and chopped nuts to really take it over the top!

Wishing you and your loved ones a very fruitful and happy Passover!

Fruit Salad with Basil Honey Lime Dressing

1/2 cantaloupe, peeled and diced
1/2 honeydew, peeled and diced
3 mangos, peeled and diced
4 nectarines, diced
4 plums, diced
handful of basil (about 20 leaves)
juice of 2 limes (3-4 tbsp)
1/4 cup honey
coconut whipped cream, optional
chopped nuts, optional

Method:

Add all the diced fruit to a bowl. In a food processor or blender, blend the basil, honey and lime juice. Alternatively, you may chop the basil into thin ribbons and mix with the lime juice and honey. Pour the dressing over the salad and mix. Serve with whipped cream and chopped nuts.

VARIATION: Feel free to use any fruit of your choice. Try using fresh mint instead of basil. Add lime zest for a stronger lime flavor.

NOTE: Add more or less honey, depending on the sweetness of the fruit.

YIELD: approximately 2 quarts.

Other Passover Desserts:

marzipan apple crisp
nutella banana ice cream
chocolate ganache tart with macaroon crust
raspberry sorbet

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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!

Grain-Free Granola

1 1/4 cup raw whole pecans
1 c raw chopped walnuts
1 c sliced raw almonds
1/2 c shredded unsweetened coconut
1/4 c coconut oil
1/3 c maple syrup
2 tbsp brown sugar (may sub coconut sugar for Paleo)
1 tsp salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Place the pecans in a food processor and pulse until the nuts are chopped into small-medium pieces. Add the almonds and walnuts and pulse again until all the nuts are roughly chopped into small bits, but not as fine as a meal or flour. Place the chopped nuts into a large bowl and stir in the coconut.

In a small pot, melt the coconut oil, maple syrup, brown sugar and salt and pour over the nuts. Mix well and spread on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for one hour, do not mix. Cool completely and break into chunks. Store in an airtight container.

NOTE: Size matters here because 1 cup walnuts nibs does not weigh the same as 1 cup whole walnuts and 1 cup sliced almonds does not weight the same as 1 cup whole. If you want to use whole nuts for the recipe, chop each individually in the food processor and measure after chopping. As long as you have 3 cups total at the end, the measurements for the remainder of the recipe will work.

VARIATION: You can use an combination of nuts and/or seeds that you like, such as cashews, hazelnuts, pumpkin or sunflower seeds, but you should have roughly 3 cups of chopped nuts/coconut when you are done processing.

SUBSTITUTIONS: if you are making this for Passover and you don’t use all of the above ingredients, you may substitute as follows:
coconut oil: any type flavorless or mildly flavor oil would work.
maple syrup: honey, or simple syrup
brown sugar: you may leave this out and use a bit more honey or simple syrup. Add vanilla or almond extract, if desired, for additional flavor.

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!

Peanut Butter Buckeye Hamantaschen

3/4 cups natural peanut butter*
1/4 cup butter or margarine (1/2 stick)
1 tbsp honey
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 tsp kosher salt
honey roasted peanuts
8oz. California Gourmet chocolate chips
2 tbsp coconut oil

Method:

In a large bowl, beat the peanut butter, margarine, honey, vanilla and salt. Add in the powdered sugar and mix until a soft dough forms. If the mixture is too sticky to handle, add a bit more powdered sugar.  Roll the dough into balls and form each ball into a triangle. Fill each triangle with honey roasted peanuts.

Melt the chocolate over a double boiler and stir in the coconut oil. Using a fork, dip the peanut butter triangles into the chocolate so that the edges are covered all around. Shake off excess chocolate and place on parchment paper. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

*I use peanut butter that is labeled as natural but it still has sugar added.

YIELD: approximately 20 hamantaschen


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!

Ma’amoul Hamantaschen

1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup semolina
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 egg yolks
1/2 c sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
3 tsp rosewater
7 tbsp butter or margarine, softened
powdered sugar, for dusting

Date Filling:

10 plump medjool dates, pit removed
1/4 cup hot water
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Walnut Filling:

1 cup chopped walnuts
3 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp orange blossom water

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

To prepare the date filling, place the dates in a food processor with the S blade attached. Add the hot water and let it soak for a few minutes. Add the cinnamon and puree until a smooth paste forms. Add more water, if needed.

To prepare the walnut filling, mix the chopped walnuts with sugar and orange blossom water and set aside.

In a bowl, whisk the flour, semolina, baking powder and salt. In a second bowl, whisk the egg yolks, sugar, oil and rosewater. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix to combine. Add in the butter or margarine and gently knead until you have a soft dough. Don’t overwork the dough.

Divide the dough in half so you can work with one portion at a time, and flour your surface. Cover the dough with a piece of parchment paper and roll it out until it’s a little more than 1/8″ thick. Using a 2.5″ round cutter (or larger, if you prefer larger hamantaschen), cut the dough into circles and fill with about 1/2 tsp of your filling of choice (or make half a batch of each!). Fold the dough over to form a triangle and place on a parchment lined baking sheet.

Bake for approximately 12 minutes, until the hamantaschen are crisped and just starting to lightly brown underneath. Allow the hamantaschen to cool completely before removing from the parchment and dust with powdered sugar.

NOTE: If you prepare the dough in advance, you may need to add a teaspoon of water to soften it up before rolling.

VARIATION: If you’d like to omit the rosewater, use 1 1/2 tsp of vanilla + 1 1/2 tsp water instead.

Related Recipes:

baklava hamantaschen
date and almond hamantaschen
healthy thumbprint hamantaschen

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