Easy “Cheesecake”

It’s Shavuot, and Shavuot means cheesecake. I always make my MIL’s cheesecake, but this year I decided to make, in addition, a quick cheesecake to take to the Tikkun (all-night Torah study, see link above). I saw a recipe that I liked, tweaked it, and voila! Easy and tasty.
However, I can’t bring myself to call it a cheesecake as it doesn’t look like a real cheesecake – you know, white and creamy with perhaps some crumbs or fruit on top. In this cake the cheese is mixed with all the ingredients and everything is baked together. Easy? Definitely.  Real Cheesecake? Not so sure. 😉

Based on “Ugat gevina bhusha” (literally “stirred together cheesecake”) from Chef Magazine.

Ingredients
1/2 cup vegetable oil
110 gr sugar
125 gr white cheese, ricotta, cottage cheese, whatever (I used ricotta)
2 eggs
125 gr (1/2 cup) milk
Rind from one lemon, grated
10 gr (1 packet) vanilla sugar
175 gr (1 1/4 cup) self raising flour
1/2 cup blanched sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. In a food processor, mix oil and sugar until light. Add cheese and process again. Add eggs one by one, mixing well between. Add half the milk, the lemon rind and vanilla sugar and process again. Add half the flour, mix, add the remaining milk and flour and mix again.

Pour into 18×18 cm pan,  sprinkle almonds on top and bake for 30 minutes or until toothpick comes out with a few crumbs. Let cool and eat!

I used a 22×22 cm pan, it came out excellent.

 

 

Couldn’t resist 🙂

Happy Shavuot!

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Passover Chocolate Chip Cookies (gluten, dairy, margarine free)

Next Passover installment: Passover chocolate chip cookies. These came out delectable enough that I’ll be making them during the year as well. They’re based on ground almonds and potato flour, and thus have a higher nutritional value than regular chocolate chip cookies.

2 eggs
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
2 packets vanilla sugar (total 20 gr)
400 gr finely ground almonds
1 cup potato flour
1/2 package chocolate chips (150 gr)

Beat eggs and sugar together. Add rest of ingredients and mix. Put in freezer for 20 minutes so the dough won’t be as sticky. Create small balls (about the size of a walnut in the shell). Preheat oven to 160 °C. Set dough balls on baking paper. Press down with a wet fork. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until edges are lightly browned. Middle will look uncooked, that’s OK! If you wait till they look cooked through the cookies will cool down hard. These cookies don’t spread in the oven, so no need for more than 1 cm spacing when flat.

You can also try skipping the freezer step and using two spoons to place the dough on the baking paper. However, because the cookies don’t spread much you will get interesting shaped cookies 🙂 If anyone tries it please let me know if it turned out OK.

 

Edit: I completely forgot to add oil when writing hte recipe, and I baked a second batch based on this recipe – without the oil. It turned out much better and less heavy, the almonds have enough natural oil of their own. So this is an oil-free recipe 🙂

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Passover Crepes (Gluten, dairy, margarine free)

After the Passover  Seder at my house, and guests for the holiday lunch, Awesome Ashild‘s excellent post on being stuck on the couch was very apt and very funny 😀 .  But you need to scrape yourself off the couch at some point and eat, right? (My apologies on linking AwesomeAshild on a high carb recipe 😦 but Passover cooking is difficult enough as it is)

Passover is practically considered the “celiac holiday”, as suddenly all of Israel is interested in gluten free foods as they are 100% kosher for Passover. The stores are full of alternate flours and gluten free foods, and the magazines are full of gluten free recipes. Like this excellent Passover crepes recipe, based on the “Hag Sameah” recipe booklet of “Hamodia” newspaper.

Passover crepes

5 eggs
1/2 cup oil (originally 1 cup, too oily)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 cups potato flour
3 cups water

Mix all ingredients together. Set aside for 20 minutes, and mix again.

Crepe Batter

Oil a good frying pan (I use Tefal) by dipping some kitchen paper in vegetable oil. I used a soup ladle to pour the batter into the frying pan. Immediately after pouring, tilt the pan so that the batter is evenly spread. When edges are brown, flip over and fry on the other side. Second side typically takes much less than the first side, so be warned!

Two frying pans for less standing time

I did it with the full cup of oil, so I needed to put kitchen paper (absorbent paper? whatever can absorb excess oil) between the crepes.

More oil on the paper, less oil for me!

The kids inhaled it, so definitely a success.

Yum!

This can be served with quark cheese mixed with vanilla sugar, or jam for a sweet version; or mushroom sauce, stir-fried vegetables or chicken/beef strips for a savory version. The taste is neutral, so it goes well either way.

Bon apetit, Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameah!

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Spelt pancakes

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Carrot Muffins

My youngest is crazy about the computer. He literally won’t leave it alone. We lock it with a password but he still tried to play with it (I give him another 6 months to figure out the password. And if he doesn’t, my eldest certainly will. And what will we do then? Ahhh, the problems of raising intelligent children 😛 you have to really run just to keep one step ahead…)

Unfortunately, if he tries to play with it too much he ends up shutting down the computer by mistake. And then we don’t turn it on until he’s asleep or even the next day, so he’ll learn. And that presented me with a problem: I wanted to make muffins. The computer was closed. My laptop was at work. My husband (who also has a laptop) wasn’t home. How do I get a muffin recipe?

And then I remembered my large collection of cookbooks. Since I discovered the joy of recipes via the internet, with reviews and stars and all, I don’t use my collection much. But surely I have there somewhere a recipe for muffins?

In the end I took a carrot cake recipe and tweaked it a bit for carrot chocolate-chip muffins. The results were so good that I’ve already made them again since, and my kids love them. There’s something to be said for cookbooks after all…

Ingredients (based on the Carrot Cake recipe from “Sweet Dreams” of Ronnie Venezia)

1 cup spelt flour (originally all purpose flour)
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt (I put a pinch)
2 eggs
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup oil
1 tbsp vanilla essence
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 1/2 cups shredded carrot (about 2-3 large carrots)
1/2 cup chocolate chips or chopped walnuts
water if necessary

Preheat oven to 180°C.  The original recipe begins by specifying “beat the eggs and oil until pale yellow and frothy…” but I basically ignored that and used the basic muffin method: mix all wet ingredients together; mix the dry ones in a separate bowl; mix the two bowls until just combined. If too dry than add some water. Spoon into muffin tins or cupcakes. Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean. Bon Apetit!

Carrot Muffins. There were 14 here a minute ago...?

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Chocolate chip oatmeal cookies

My little one (3 years old) visited a friend and ate there some chocolate chip cookies. He said “I want to make with you chocolate chip cookies just like at my friend’s!”. “I said, “Sure”, but thought  – no way. I don’t make just chocolate chip cookies. Let’s try and put some oatmeal in them! (Yep, that’s how I think all the time. My husband is slowly wearing down under the pressure 🙂 I actually got him to eat a few).

They turned out great!

Ingredients (based loosely on this recipe)

2 cups  oatmeal
1 cup spelt flour
3/4 cups white flour (I ran out whole wheat flour)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
pinch salt
1 egg
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup milk
Chocolate chips, about 1/2 cup or to taste
Water if it’s too dry

Mix all dry ingredients together. In a seperate bowl, mix wet ingredients. Combine the two until everything is moistened (add water if necessary). Put by tablespoonfuls on a baking sheet. Flatten with a wet fork (it does not spread). bake at 190°C for 15 minutes until the edges are brown and looks cooked at the center (though it will still be soft in the center). Keep in a box for at long as it lasts 🙂

oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

Bon Apetit!

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