Sunday, December 25, 2011

Sephardic/Middle-eastern Chanukah Fried Doughs From Pizmonim Project

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Here is a nice list I found. I looked up and links to each recipe and posted it under each one.


In Egypt it was called Zalabya or Loqmat El Qadi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loukoumades

In Iraq and Syria it was called Zingol.

In Turkey it was called Bilmuelos.


In Greece it was called Lokomades.


In Morocco it was a donut called Sfinz, topped with powdered sugar or glazed with honey.


In Tangier it was called bunuelos.

This was the only traditional Sephardic item shared by almost all communities for Hanoukah.

26) I mentioned the custom of eating a special type of Fried dough that was sweetened with syrup or Powdered sugar.

I have just found out that the Lebanese Jews do the same thing and they call them Awamat.




The Syrians and particularly those from Damascus have a special pastry called 'Atayif for Hanoukah. It is thin round dough which is stuffed with nuts and sugar and folded in half and deep fried. It is then drizzled with a sugary syrup while hot and served up fresh.


See also  this list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fried_dough_foods

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Heavenly Cake - Blue Velvet Cake (Chanukah Cake)

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I doubled the recipe, so if I wanted navy blue I should have used 2 bottles of coloring instead of 1.

Flour and stuff...

The Mrs. was with me for moral support.

Toaster shot.

Again, I doubled the recipe and it did not have enough batter for two pans.




Double the frosting recipe. It really does not make a lot. I used a mixer instead of a food processor.







Monday, December 12, 2011

Heavenly Cake - Spice Cake with Peanut-butter Cream

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This was a pretty good cake and the flavors played off of each other nicely. I think the peanut flavor could have been slightly toned down.

I thought this was a faily unique buttercream since it has powdered sugar and you use the food processor.


I made it a two layer cake. Again, doubling the recipe did seem not fill the two pans properly. It seems as if the recipe was made for 1 1/2 inch pans.





Monday, December 5, 2011

Heavenly Cake - Southern Coconut Cake

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This was a fantastic cake. Both the cake and the frosting were fantastic! Several people who do not usually like coconut said that they liked this cake.


The Italian meringue. I doubled this and cut the butter in half. Maybe next time i'll double the creme anglais as well.


My wife got me a real coconut. :) So I got to use 7.9 oz of fresh coconut milk. The freshly grated coconut has a wonderful soft texture but it is very hard to grate properly without wasting any of it.


Coconut creme anglais. Yum!

O.K. I did not cut it properly, but that is not why I am showing this picture. Since I baked this in the toaster I did not want to bake it in two pans. the batter was about 3.5 lb but 1.5 lb of it did not seem to fill half the 2 inch cake pan like the recipe says it should. I find this often happens with Rose's two cake pan recipes. I end of pouring it all in one pan but it is a bit too much for it. At any rate, usually I get a lot of tunneling because of this. However, this time the tunneling was minimal. I did use a cake strip, so perhaps that has something to do with it.

The cake was a bit warm still so the frosting in the middle melted a bit. It was a really yummy cake warm though.


11 cakes to go. Since my wife did the grooms cake maybe I can count that as the wedding cake. Na. Where is the fun in that? ;) Perhaps one of our single family members will get engaged for us...