Rebbitzin for a Weekend

[mofic]

I spent Friday through Sunday in Ottawa, Ontario. As recounted elsewhere, my partner is a final year rabbinical student. She has a once-a-month gig as the spiritual leader of the Reconstructionist Congregation there. She usually flies up on Friday and back Sunday night, but this time we went together.

Comments

[mofic]

I don't have a secret recipe and I'm happy to share. But I tend to cook by feel rather than recipe. The keys, I think, are:

- use butter. Many people make parve ones but they're much better with butter, preferably French butter.
- I put more vanilla and less sugar in mine than other recipes I've seen. The filling is sweet and I think if you put too much sugar in the batter you taste sugar, instead of the rich complexity of a good cookie dough made with French butter :-0.

This is what I put together for the Ottawa weekend, and I think it's pretty accurate:

1 pound butter
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1 T plus 1 tsp vanilla
4.5-5 cups flour

Cream butter with eggs, sugar and vanilla. Mix two cups flour with baking powder and salt. Combine and mix thoroughly, adding more flour until it's cookie dough consistency. Roll into logs and wrap in wax paper. Chill at least two hours. Roll thin and cut into circles with a wine glass. Fill with jam, chocolate chips or other fillings and fold into triangles. Bake in 350 degree oven on greased cookie sheets for about 10 minutes. Take out when they just start to brown, let stand for 2 minutes to coalesce, then remove with spatula to cool. Makes 5-6 dozen, depending on the size of the wine glass.

Notes: oven temperatures vary a lot. Do a small first pan, and if they spread too much (i.e. filling does not stay inside cookie) the oven is probably not hot enough. So either wait, if you didn't preheat long enough, or raise the temperature to 375 or so.

[davidfcooper]

What filling(s) do you use? My favorite is Israeli date paste (sold in Sephardi grocery stores on Kings Highway between MacDonald Ave and Ocean Pkwy). Shoshana also uses Israeli chocolate spread, poppy seed filling, and mixed dried fruit pulverized in the food processor. As vegetarians we don't care about milchig/parve, but Shoshana does try to reduce saturated fat by using transfat-free margarine and uses turbinado sugar and whole wheat pastry flour (lighter in texture than regular whole wheat flour).

Glad you had good weekend. You'll make a great rebbitzen (if your relationship continues to blossom and leads to a chuppah)!

[mofic]

I'm much less creative on fillings than you are! With the kids in Ottawa, we did a couple of kinds of homemade jams, a chocolate sauce and a praline. The kid in the host family is a great cook, as is his father, and they made the fillings ahead of time. At home I typically use store bought jam (but a good kind - this year it's Sarabeth's) and chocolate chips. This year I did three kinds - raspberry/strawberry, apricot/peach, and chocolate.

And I'm thoroughly sick of making them! I've had a bunch of other things I've had to do in the evenings, too, so it has made for late nights and chaos in the kitchen. I brought a bunch to work in the Bronx yesterday and will bring another bunch to work in Brooklyn today.