Friends. I’m going to be real honest with you. Every year there are unspoken latke and hamantaschen ‘wars’ between Jewish/Kosher food bloggers. And yes, I have fallen victim to these ‘wars’ ever since starting this blog. I’ve tried to create the next great latke or the next great hamantaschen. I’ve spent hours carefully crafting, photographing and editing posts int he name of this ‘competition’. It was kinda fun, but mostly exhausting. This year, however, I just wanted to make some cookies with my kiddo for no other reason then it’s fun and we like cookies. Plus, this year there are some AMAZING hamantaschen out there like this one and this one. Oh, and THIS one! The savory ones are really having a moment. It’s awesome. So, in the name of the kiddo’s latest obsession, pixie dust, we made these guys. They are tasty and they have TONS of sprinkles on them, but they aren’t the prettiest hamantaschen I’ve ever made.
I’m not quite sure what started her new obsession with pixie dust but it is deep and it is real. We even made pixie dust necklaces one Sunday, which was just a little bit of pink sand in a tiny glass bottle ona sparkle lanyard. It’s funny the obsessions that preschool-aged children have and how they come to be. Be it wanting to wear the same shirt every day or watch the same episode of Jake and the Neverland Pirates or wanting the same book every. single. night, there is a comfort in the familiar for this age. I work very hard on being mindful of just how much newness she’s encountered with on a daily basis being on 3 years old. It’s hard as a parent; you get so sick of all the redundancy. But they need the familiarity of it all. They’re little brains are taking in so much newness that the safety they find in the familiar is an easy and necessary comfort. And so, armed with every ounce of pink sprinkles and edible sprinkle hearts we had in the cupboard, we set out to make ‘pixie dust’ hamantaschen (which I later decided would need a name change for fear that if I advertised a recipe for ‘pixie dust hamantaschen’, I might get some seriously confused readers looking for a different kind of cookie, ifyouknowwhatimean). #saynotodrugs.
Cooking with my ladies.
Our pixie dust necklace — 1 tiny glass jar + pink sand + super glue + shimmery gold lanyard string.
My assistant being extremely intentional with every. single. sprinkle.
Chocolate Cheesecake Hamantaschen (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)
Ingredients
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
3 ounces whipped cream cheese at room temperature
3 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1 1/3 cups plus 4 teaspoons flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
Stawberry Jam
*Sprinkles Optional
For Chocolate Dipping:
8 ounces dark chocolate chunks
2 tablespoons coconut oil
3 tablespoons coarse sea salt
Instructions
Cream butter and cream cheese together until smooth.
Add sugar and mix for one minute longer, then egg, vanilla extract, lemon zest and salt, mixing until combined.
Finally, add the flour. The mixture should come together and be a tad sticky. If it feels too wet, add an additional tablespoon of flour.
Form dough into a disc, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least an hour.
Preheat oven to 350°F.
To form the hamantaschen, roll out the dough on a well-floured surface until it is about 1/4-inch thick. Using a round cookie cutter or wide-rimmed glass, which is what I use, (cut the dough into circles. Spoon a teaspoon of you filling of choice in the center.
Fold the dough in from three sides and firmly crimp the corners and give them a little twist to ensure they stay closed.
Leave the filling mostly open in the center. Bake on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Cool on racks.
For Chocolate Dipping:
Melt chocolate and coconut oil in a double boiler or in the microwave. Stir until completely smooth and combined.
Place in a small but deep bowl for dipping. Dip the cookies halfway into the melted chocolate. Place on a parchment lined tray. Sprinkle with a bit of sea salt. Place in the refrigerator to harden the chocolate.
Today I bring you one of my most favorite recipes of all time. I don’t want to oversell anything buuuuuuuut, this is so good it’ll make you wanna slap your mama (that’s a real expression, by the way). I only made this casserole this past Sunday but I subsequently ate it the following 2 days, which brings us to today. Today is Wednesday and we are officially out of challah breakfast casserole leftovers. I’m really not sure how I’m supposed to go about my days without this beautiful new friend in my life. Seriously. Help!
Sunday has become THE day for cooking now that I’m back at work full-time. After 3 months of maternity leave and 2 months of being back at work I think we’re finally into some sort of schedule and rhythm at home. And since we have a baby and a toddler, my experience tells me that now that we’ve found a rhythm to our days, it’ll all blow up in our faces momentarily. That’s how these things work, right? I think the hardest lesson I learned as a new parent when I had my first was that every. single. moment. is a transition. Once I accepted that the only constant in my life as a parent of a small child is that there is no constant, I found a bit of peace. I think it was already having been through that that allowed me to wholly and easily fall in love with my second. But that’s what experience does, right? It teaches us that the things we freaked out about and that caused us ample amounts of stress and anxiety didn’t really need the ‘panic’ stage. And if we’re reflective and mindful enough of our processes, we can use those tough lessons to navigate the next potential panic in a more positive way.
As it’s late February on this high school campus I work at, my seniors are heavy in the waiting period for college acceptance. Their anxieties are so palpable and so valid and yet, no matter how much my co-counselor and I try to explain to them that this period of anxiety and “living in the gray” will eventually pass, they’re just not buying it. They are just SO in ‘it’ right now. So instead, we help them lean into the process and try our best to help guide them through it with empathy. Man, as much as it’s hard to be a parent of two small kids, I am SO glad to be out of high school. Yikes.
Lately, on the Jewhungry Instagram page . . . (TOP L – R: A GIANT bowl of vegetarian spaghetti carbonara, my sweet Eden on a hike. Bottom L – R: Me and a few AMAZING bloggers – Gaby Dalkin, Aida Mollenkamp, and Catherine McCord; my lunch in a jar!).
Preheat oven to 400˚F. Peel and cut the sweet potato into 1/4-inch cubes. Toss them with the onion, olive oil, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Spread in a single layer on a baking sheet or roasting pan, and roast until the sweet potatoes are tender, 18 to 20 minutes. Add chopped broccoli about 10 minutes into cooking so they get a bit of the roast.
Once done, place the broccoli, sweet potatoes and onions in a bowl. Next, add the cubed challah to the bowl, along with 4 ounces of cheese and chives. Toss the mixture until well combined.
Lightly grease a 9x9-inch (or 2 1/2 quart) baking dish. Scoop the bread mixture into the pan, evenly distributing the broccoli and sweet potatoes. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, heavy whipping cream, nutmeg, and remaining 1/4 teaspoon pepper, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Pour over the bread mixture, pressing down on the bread to submerge it completely in the egg mixture. Cover with foil and let sit for at least 20 minutes so that bread can have time to absorb the eggs, milk and cream.
Change oven temperature to 350˚F. Bake the covered casserole for 45 minutes. Remove the foil, sprinkle with remaining 2 ounces of cheese, and continue to bake uncovered for 20 to 30 minutes until the casserole has puffed and the cheese is browning. Top with an extra sprinkle of chives before serving.
Hey all! How are you? How was your holiday? Did you eat carbs and cheese and sugar with abandonment like I did? Are you now suffering through the withdrawal of aforementioned carbs and cheese and sugar like I am? I have officially gone back to work after a wonderful 3 months of maternity leave (read about this experience in a recent essay I wrote for the Huffington Post HERE) and now begins yet another transition — figuring out how to work full-time and take care of kids/household full-time. Fun times! This results in a lot of sleeping and down time. I’m finding myself with SO MUCH time on my hands. It’s amazing.
Ha!
Just kidding. It’s currently day four of being back at work as a high school counselor after three months of maternity leave and I am FEELING it. And by “it”, I mean just how much time there ‘isn’t’ in the day. Time and sleep (and coffee) are the hottest commodities in my world right now. I get home at around 4pm every day so the husband and I get roughly 3.5 hours to spend time with the kids, cook dinner, clean dinner and the apartment, bathe kids, read to kids and then put them to bed. The oldest goes to bed at 8pm (on a good day) so this leaves us about 22 minutes of ‘free time’ before I pass out on whatever flat surface is closest. One of the best parts of maternity leave was having time in the day to cook dinner and enjoy it with the family. Now? Not so much. That said, I do have a few tricks up my sleeve for the dinner time rush. One of which is what we’ve loving dubbed “Mediterranean Night”. This includes sides of hard-boiled eggs, an Israeli salad of cucumbers and tomatoes, some herby basmati rice, humus, tahini and the star? Veggie burekas. The BEST part of burekas, aside being doughy little pockets of heaven, is that I use them as a way to clean my fridge of the veggies and/or herbs that are nearing the end of their freshness. I’ve included my favorite veggie/cheese combination for this recipe but truly, the choice is yours! Simply chop, saute (if you so choose), pair with your favorite cheese (or don’t but why wouldn’t you?), fold them into some puffed pastry dough and within 15 minutes, you’ve got dinner.
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