Chocolate Revel Bars

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I have been on a mission to get all of our recipes onto this blog that we use to prepare our family holiday gift packages each year. We usually divide up the labor, so it is taking me a while to gather everything together into one place. If the blog seems very heavy on sweet things, it is because I continue to try to fill in the blanks.


These bar cookies are easy, sturdy and satisfying and they usually serve as a bed on the trays for the more delicate cookies, which go on top. I, myself, am too much of a perfectionist to actually go around and stack the cookies on plates. I would be fooling around with them and adjusting their positions until the cows came home. I have become the ribbon person who ties and curls the ribbons on the finished gift package.

Chocolate Revel Bars

• 3 cups quick-cooking rolled oats
• 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. kosher salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 2 cups packed brown sugar
• 2 large or extra-large eggs
• 4 tsp. pure vanilla extract
• 1 14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk
• 1-1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Combine oats, flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In an electric mixer, beat 1 cup butter for 30 seconds.

Add brown sugar and beat until fluffy.

Add eggs and 2 tsp. vanilla and beat well.

Stir dry ingredients gradually into beaten mixture, stirring until well combined.

In saucepan, heat together condensed milk, chocolate chips and 2 Tbsp. butter over low heat, stirring constantly until smooth.

Remove from heat and stir in remaining 2 tsp. vanilla.

Pat 2/3 of the oat mixture into the bottom of an ungreased 15 x 10 x 1-inch baking pan.

Spread chocolate mixture over oat mixture. Dot with remaining oat mixture.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack and cut into bars.

Makes 40 or more.

May be frozen in an airtight container layered between sheets of waxed paper.

Cranberry Upside Down Cake

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Next to the cranberry chutney that I make for Thanksgiving, this is my second favorite use for fresh cranberries. I usually have a partial bag of fresh cranberries hanging out in my freezer most of the year, but I recently defrosted them when some work needed to be done to repair my freezer. Saul was delighted to have this nontraditional cake as his 65th birthday cake during our Tu B’Shevat seder this year. It is super easy to prepare, is very colorful, has a wonderful tart/sweet, buttery flavor, and a nice crunch from the walnuts.


The recipe, originally titled Nantucket Cranberry Pie, appeared in Gourmet Magazine, November 1993, and appeared at the end of an article by Laurie Colwin, my favorite food writer, ever! I couldn’t wait to read her columns every month. The recipe is followed by this sad notation from the magazine: “This column is one of a series of articles that Laurie Colwin wrote before her untimely death in October, 1992. They have run throughout the year and will end next month.” 

Cranberry Upside Down Cake

• 2 cups chopped fresh cranberries
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 large or extra-large eggs
• 3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) melted unsalted butter, cooled slightly
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. almond extract

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Toss together the cranberries, walnuts, and 1/2 cup of sugar and spread evenly over the bottom of a buttered 10-inch pie plate.

Beat together the eggs, butter, 1 cup sugar, flour, salt and almond extract. When smooth, pour and spread it evenly over the cranberry/walnut mixture.

Bake in the middle of the oven for about 40 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Flip onto a decorative plate and enjoy.

Slishkas (Potato Dumplings)

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The recipe for these appears in my cookbook, Bubbie’s Kitchen, and when I was teaching, I made them often, as the students loved making and eating them. I devised the original recipe using instant potato flakes because the results were consistent and we did not have the time during our class period of 45 minutes to start from actual potatoes. My son, Ari, loved them and mentioned them recently. I had not made them in at least 15 years. Then, I had a surplus of mashed potatoes which I made to rescue the leftovers from a 20 lb. bag of russet potatoes that I purchased on a whim at Costco. (Who hasn’t purchased an oversupply of something at Costco?) I decided to try making the recipe with real mashed potatoes and the result was potato dumplings as light as a feather and better than any gnocchi I had ever eaten at an Italian restaurant.


Slishkas used to be a regular item on bar and bat mitzvah buffet meals back in the 1950s and early 1960s. They disappeared, practically without a trace, as party food became lighter and trendier, and old Eastern European Jewish cooks adopted more convenient dishes. We really enjoyed eating this batch, but it may be a long time before I ever make them again. It is a lot easier to just eat the mashed potatoes. Also, making the mashed potatoes into knishes allows for preserving them through freezing. Eventually, I might make slishkas with my granddaughters, as rolling the dough into long snaky cylinders is fun and beats doing the same thing to Play-Doh on a rainy afternoon.

An important technique in this recipe is to use mashed potatoes that have not been made too liquid by the addition of large amounts of milk or cream. Use floury potatoes, such as russets or Idahos. Let the potatoes dry out in a colander for a few minutes after they have been boiled in lightly salted water. Mash them while still very warm. I add onions that have been sauteéd in butter (along with the butter) while mashing, and season with more salt and freshly ground pepper.

Slishkas

Dough:

• 4 cups seasoned mashed potatoes, refrigerated for several hours or overnight
• 2 extra-large eggs
• 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
• 2 cups all purpose flour (preferably unbleached)

Coating:

• 3 Tbsp. butter
• 1-1/2 cups fine bread crumbs
• 1-1/2 cups finely ground potato chips

Mix mashed potatoes with lightly beaten eggs and salt until combined.

Add flour gradually while mixing at lowest speed or by hand.

Lightly knead the dough in the bowl for one to two minutes, or until it is springy. (At this point, if necessary, the dough can be covered well with plastic wrap and set aside for a short while, or it can be refrigerated overnight.)

Turn dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead lightly.  Keeping the dough, your hand, and the surface well-floured, roll pieces of the dough into ropes that are one-half to one-quarter inches thick.

Cut each rope with a floured knife into 1 to 1-1/2-inch-long pieces.

Gently drop the pieces of dough into a large pot of salted, rapidly-boiling water. You may want to work in small batches so that the pot does not become overcrowded, the water temperature drops, or the first ones in do not cook much longer than the last ones added.

After they rise to the top, boil them, uncovered, for 4 to 8 minutes, or until they are chewy and firm, but not doughy. (Overcooking can make them gummy.)

Immediately remove them with a slotted spoon and drain them well. (If you use a steamer insert in your pot, you can just lift it out and let the shlishkas drain in the insert.)

While the slishkas are cooking, prepare the crumb coating by melting the butter in a large skillet over medium heat and stirring in the crumbs until completely coated and hot.

Toss the well-drained slishkas in the buttered crumbs and serve.

These may be refrigerated for a few days and reheated by baking, uncovered in a 350°F. oven, or by microwaving until heated through. Do not freeze.

Chocolate Chip Cookies—The Classic Tollhouse

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This is the recipe that came from the bag of Nestle’s Toll House morsels back in the late 1950’s, which is how long my sister and I have been baking them. They are probably almost everyone’s favorite cookie, especially when warm from the oven. I have tried various permutations over a period of many years—with nuts, with raisins and chips, with oatmeal, with Craisins, with white chocolate, with mint chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, toffee bits, and chocolate chunks, to name a few—but for me, the classic is, without a doubt, superior to everything else I have tried.


I still whip up a batch, from time to time, when we are having a dairy meal because I would not dream of making them with anything but sweet butter. In fact, when Saul was stationed at the naval air station in Albany, Georgia, in the late sixties, I opened a tub of sweet butter and found it to be as white as snow. I was staying at the new apartment of friends Peter and Mary who had just married (Saul gave away the bride at the wedding in the synagogue in Albany because her family was in Corpus Cristi, Texas, and could not attend). I thought the Piggly Wiggly had mistakenly put vegetable shortening in the butter container because all the butter I had ever seen had been some shade of yellow. Mary couldn’t understand my consternation as she was used to seeing white butter in the South. It was the best, freshest butter I ever tasted and made the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever made. Currently, my favorite chocolate chips are the semi-sweet ones from Trader Joe’s. I have experimented with flour as well. King Arthur Flour, which makes wonderful cakes, makes horrible cookies. Since that fiasco, I only buy unbleached Ceresota or Hecker’s Flour for baking.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 12 oz. chocolate chips
• 2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup dark brown sugar (packed)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1-1/2 tsp. water
• 2 large or extra-large eggs

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Sift flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

With electric mixer, cream butter, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla and water.

Beat in the eggs, one at a time.

Add flour mixture and mix well.

Stir in the chips.

Drop by tablespoons full (I use a 1-1/2-inch diameter ice cream scoop) onto a greased cookie sheet.

Bake 10-12 minutes in conventional oven, or 7 to 9 minutes in a convection oven.

Makes approximately 100.