Spice cookies

Not another brownie recipe!

Oops, I did again... went 3 weeks with no recipes. Not even a valid excuse. Anyoo, as planned I tried a dessert recipe. These cookies, unlike most of the food in Jerusalem are pretty much Germanic, albeit not German Jewish. Apparently they're derived from the eats brought by Protestant Germans settling in the Holy Land in the 19th century. As you can see, they do have that "kuchen" appearance.

To make about 18 cookies:

125 grs raisins
a cup of brandy (I used rum instead)
240 grs flour
2 tbsps cocoa
60 grs dark chocolate, coarsely grated
1 tbsp baking soda
1 tbsp baking powder
1 egg
butter and oil
125 grs sugar
1 tbsp vanilla

Soak the raisins in rum. Mix together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and chocolate (I actually recommend using more than I did). In a different bowl, beat the butter, oil, sugar and vanilla, then add the egg, still beating. Add the dry ingredients, then the raisins and a bit of the rum. Mix everything and knead into little spheres. Leave in the fridge for about one hour, then place on a baking tray covered by a baking sheet and bake at 190 C for 15-20 minutes (make sure the cookies are separate enough or they'll stick to one another!)

These came out decently. They make a pleasant dessert, and while they look very much like brownies, the rum and raisins give them a new twist. There's also a glaze using lemon and orange zest that probably makes them more interesting, but zest is one of those things I don't do. But this might explain why they're called spice cookies but aren't well, spicy or spiced up.

Just, next time I might a) bake them slightly less than I did b) put more chocolate, they could do with more chocolateyness (but you can never overdo chocolateney ness, says I).

Behold the kranz!

You know the bit in Julie and Julia when Julie needs to debone the duck? The kranz was sort of the equivalent for me (albeit I'm not attempting to cook all of Jerusalem, that would be slightly insane). But the kranz comes with a warning that it's "neither easy nor quick to make", i.e. not generally what I go looking for in a recipe. So I decided it would be a nice challenge for those lazy, cooped-up days around Christmas. It turned out more of a challenge than I expected, and not for the reasons I thought. Suffice to say, it's supposed to sit overnight but it took three flippin' days to make. Something didn't quite go as it was supposed to, though I managed to fix it. Still, this is a labour of love.

I still haven't gotten round to explaining what  a kranz is: it means "crown" in German and is a uber-Askhenazi cake (one of the few in this more Mediterranean-centred book) with a chocolate filling that is made into two "braided" parts (hence the crown or garland). Here is my recipe, with my adaptations and the further adaptions I plan to make should I attempt to repeat the experiment.

Ingredients:
270 grs flour
50 grs caster sugar
half a cube of yeast (the original recipe calls for "fast-action dried yeast". Now, if someone happens not only to be really reading here but also to be British,can you explain what this is? Because I don't get the point of fast-action yeast in cake that's supposed to sit overnight)
60 mls of water (probably more water is needed)
1  egg (possibly will put 2 next time. That's when dividing by 2 becomes tricky, if you have 3 eggs in the original meant for a ginormous and ravenous Jewish family)
1/3 tsp salt
70 grs butter
sunflower oil
Ingredients for the filling
25 grs icing sugar
15 grs cocoa
70 grs dark chocolate, melted
60 grs butter
The original recipe calls for pecans. I don't really do pecans. 
Place the flour, sugar and yeast in a mixer and stir everything together (I'm going to do this by hand next time). Add the eggs and water and continue stirring until the dough comes together. Add the salt and start adding the butter, a few cubes at the time. Continue mixing for about 10 minutes until the dough is elastic and shiny. Place the dough in a large bowl, brush with sunflower oil, cover with cling film and leave in the fridge overnight.
This is where the drama began, because the dough didn't grow overnight and I didn't get to sleep in for no reason! So I left it to sit the whole day, out of the fridge this time, and ended up adding a bit of water. So, by the evening, it had finally grown and could move to second part of the recipe. I'll leave out of the fridge next time.
Melt all of the ingredients in a saucepan.  Spread the dough with a rolling pin and cut the edges so that it's more or less rectangular.  Now the scary part comes, which isn't really so scary. Spread the chocolate paste on the dough. This caused further drama, since the filling was liquid, I assume it's supposed to be a Nutella-like paste. Maybe more chocolate would do the trick? Anyway, if I say so myself, I brilliantly solved the problem by later putting the roll in the fridge. Brush with water the long end further for you, then start rolling the long section that's closer to you. You end up with a rolled-up sausage. Put in the fridge so the filling becomes solid. Then, more of the not so scary scary part: cut the roll lenghways and weaves together the two parts, ideally letting the sectioned part up so that the chocolate "drawing" shows. Put in a baking tin and leave in the fridge overnight. Bake for 40 minutes at 190 c.

Now, once the feat was accomplished, what did the kranz actually taste like? It tasted nice, but not as heavenly as to justify all this work. This is a recipe that definitely needs fiddling with and practice. But I definitively learned some things from it, namely how to create plaited cakes with filling.

Muhallabieh

Being busy has kept me away from cooking experiments, but I've not given up, the November hyatus is over! Muhallabieh, apparently an Arab classic, is a milk pudding. I haven't really altered the book's recipe, except for the garnishings:
50 grs cornflour
500 ml milk
200 ml water
80 grs sugar
Whisk the cornflour with 100 mls of the milk until they make a smooth paste. Pour the remaining milk, along with the water ans sugar, into a medium saucepan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves. When the milk mixture begins to release steam, whisk in the cornflour paste. Stir in until it becomes like a thick custard. Pour in individual cups, cover with cling film so that a skin doesn't form, and place in the fridge for three hours. Decorate with pistachioes (that mine were Iranian pistachioes amuses me immensely)

Pretty basic, isn't it? Problem was, the recipe includes a syrup to pour over the puddings, and the syrup includes bay leaves...And I wasn't able to find bay leaves anywhere, I'm not even sure what they are, to be honest. Hence, I gave up on the syrup, which wasn't a good idea, since without it the pudding is ok but, well, a bit mealy. Since I haven't eaten all of my puddings, I'm going to try adding some melted chocolate, which might not be the authentic Jerusalem way to do things, but which I feel might be an improvement.

Clementine and almond syrup cake

I'm aware this looks nowhere as nice as it does in Ottolenghi and Tamimi's book, and not only because I didn't make it in a round spring form... anyway, contrary to what this picture suggests, I didn't carbonize it either. One of the problems I keep having is that the book seems to be targeted at enormous Jewish or Arab extended families and I keep having to reduce and re proportion doses, which isn't always easy. So here's the recipe I followed (the original is meant for 8-10 people. I suggest playing a bit by ear):
90 g butter
40 g sugar
candied orange zest
candied lemon zest (I didn't have organic clementines and lemons)
juice of 2 clementines
One egg
40 gs ground almonds
70 gs sifted flour
a pinch of salt
Preheat the oven to 180C. Lightly grease a baking tin (it's supposed to be a spring-form) and line with baking parchment.
Place the butter, 50 g of sugar and both zests in a mixer bowl. Mix with a beater attachment. Do not work the mix too much. Incorporate half of the ground almonds.
I happened to have one egg at home, anyway you're supposed to add them gradually (I would have put 2 otherwise, the original calls for 5) while the machine is running.Add the remaining almonds, flour and salt and mix them until it's smooth. Put the batter in the tin and level it with a palette. Bake for about 50 minutes.
When the cake is almost done, prepare the syrup. Place the remaining sugar and the citrus juices in a small saucepan and bring it to boil. Pour the boiling syrup on the cake as soon as it's out of the oven. Leave the cake to cool down completely before you remove it from the tin.

This cake felt really sweet, which I'm not sure it was supposed to be, though probably yes, considering most Middle Eastern desserts. It also felt quite rich, not at all a "light texture" as the recipe indicated, which is probably due to using the candied zest (I'd love to try making this again with the proper zest, as soon as I have some organic one under my hands). But it does make for a great snack, and goes really well with coffee and tea, especially if, like me, you drink these with no sugar. Plus two of my friends tried it and said it was delicious, and they're nice people and not fussy eaters, but still. This wasn't the first experiment,  actually, since I don't bake very frequently, but I'll have to redo the first couple since I don't remember the modified recipes. Oh, and the book says that if you keep it in a closed container it will last and it's true-I made it 4 days ago and today it still felt fresh and fragrant.