Spongecake

The other dessert that everyone looked forward to every Passover was my mom's spongecake. (Again, it looked way better in person, my camera is fucked.) In fact, when my mom wouldn't attend a seder she'd send a cake with me, because everyone wanted the spongecake that badly. Following is the recipe as written by my mom (with some changes of my own):


Passover Spongecake

12 eggs
juice and grated rind of an orange
grated rind of half a lemon (I missed the "half" part and did a whole one, it tasted fine)
1 1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons oil (canola or some such)
pinch of salt
1 cup matzoh cake meal
1 tablespoon potato starch

First off, separate the whole dozen eggs' yolks and whites. Beat egg yolks, juice, rind, oil and 1 C sugar. Set aside. Wash beaters thoroughly. Then beat egg whites until stiff but not dry, with salt (to hold them together, also using a bit of the lemon's juice for this won't hurt) and mix in additional sugar. (Make sure you do this in a big bowl, a dozen egg whites will get HUGE, as we learned.)

(My mom adds that the lemon and orange should not be skinned with a zester, but that the coarse-hole side of a cheese grater is the best option. She even theorizes that the coarsely grated rind, and often use of a huge freakin' orange, are why her spongecake is so especially loved by our local community.)

Fold egg white into egg yolk mixture thoroughly. Use long, gentle motions with a rubber spatula, down one side of the bowl, across the bottom, up the other, getting the yolk mixture up from the bottom of the bowl and into the whites without breaking down the whites excessively. When you think you're done, check the bottom of the bowl because you'll probably find a pool of yolks there still.

Mix the cake meal and cornstarch together and fold into the egg mixture a quarter cup or so at a time. Use the same technique and once again, when you think you're done, you probably aren't.

Scrape into an ungreased angelfood cake pan.

(Eli note here: What's most important is that it's an angelfood pan with the spire in the center--because that way the cake can cling to the cylinder, since there's nothing to make it rise--and that it come apart into two pieces--my mom's actually isn't springform, but mine is.)
(Beautiful ain't it? Mine is actually wider and shorter than my mom's, which I thought would cause a problem. The cake came out looking different, but it was still delicious and cooked all the way through. Continuing on...)

Push a long knife or metal spatula straight down through the batter to the bottom of the pan and then holding it vertical, pull it all the way around the pan to collapse any air pockets. Bake for an hour at 325°.

Remove from oven and invert immediately, setting the tube over a ketchup bottle or some other bottle with a slender neck so that air can circulate all around the pan while it cools. Most pans have tiny legs but they are not enough. Let the cake cool completely before you remove it from the pan.

(So yeah, it'll just hover upside down for a few hours, always goofy lookin'.)

To remove it from its pan, simply run a long, thin knife (preferably serrated breadknife) around the edges until you can separate the two parts of the pan. The cake will stay with the cylinder. Then do the same thing again, running the knife around the cylinder and underneath the cake until it can come free.

IT

The Passover Torte, or "The Dessert", or "IT" was always a major part of the holiday for me growing up. A friend of the family (Carol Delton, respect) made it every year, and it was the sort of thing everyone always looked forward to. Three whopping layers of meringue, chocolate, whipped cream, and nuts that would inevitably fall apart when someone tried to cut slices from it, and always tasted incredible. For years I entertained the thought of giving it a shot, and so I finally did.

I failed.

The original recipe is as follows:

PASSOVER TORTE aka “THE DESSERT,” aka “IT,” as in “Are you making IT?” “I love IT!” “I look forward to IT every year!”
(recipe as transmitted by Freda Delton, z’l, 1932-1998; Carol Delton’s comments below; read the whole thing through and meditate on it before you attempt IT!)

1 ½ cups egg whites (approx 10 large eggs)
½ tsp salt
2 ½ cups sugar, divided (too much, reduce)
3 cups whipping cream
2 cups slivered almonds, toasted
8 squares, 1 oz each) semi-sweet chocolate (or 8 oz chips)

Beat egg whites with salt until they stand in peaks.
Add 1 ½ cups sugar gradually and continue beating until stiff.
Trace three 9 inch circles on brown paper (or parchment paper), placed on baking sheets.
Fill in the circles by spreading beaten egg whites.
Bake at 250 degrees for 2 ½ hours. Cool.

Melt 7 squares of chocolate and spread on cooled layers.
Let stand until chocolate is firm.Beat cream until thickened. Continue beating and add remaining sugar gradually.
Gently fold in almonds. Frost top of layers with cream.
Shave one square of chocolate and sprinkle over top. Place in freezer
Cuts best when frozen.

But I ran into a few snags, myself. As has already been shown by Simon and my little adventure a few posts prior, beating egg whites properly is really difficult. On Monday I went through a whole ten eggs (and good eggs too) that never even got to the stiff point they were supposed too, they simply jumped right ahead to goop. I was not happy. So with the NEXT ten eggs I was incredibly careful, and I found a tip online about putting in a few drops of lemon juice (or anything acidic) to help hold them together.

This worked quite well and I got some perfect egg whites out of it. Unfortunately, I wasn't used to quite so many as ten, and so when I was pouring them from the mixing bowl I discovered that there was a whole third of egg whites at the bottom that were still liquid. Oops. So I ended up with only two layers of meringue instead of three... not the end of the world at a small seder.


But, as you can see, the meringues didn't quite come out right either. Here the one on the right is at least kind of whole, but once I tried to separate it from its paper it came entirely into pieces. I would have freaked out, except that I was overjoyed that they even tasted and felt like meringue. It's all about the small victories. So, once I had a big plate of meringue pieces I figured... what the fuck, let's dump chocolate on them anyway. After all, Carol had given me the great advice that the secret to making it come out good is to not worry how it'll look.


By the way, I melted the chocolate chips in a wide bowl that sat nicely on top of a pot of boiling water, using the steam's heat. Every now and then I'd pour a little water into the bowl to keep the chocolate from clumping too much.

Anyway, at this point I put it into the freezer to solidify the chocolate, Peter whipped the hell out of some whipping cream, and I mixed in the sugar and almonds, and spread it all on top. Since what was supposed to be three layers was really only one this left us with an abundance of sweetened, almond-filled whipped cream... no one complained. The whole thing went in the freezer for the rest of the day, and when it came out, I'll be damned if it didn't taste great. It sure as hell didn't come out like it was supposed to, but it was all held together pretty well and it was enough for six people to all have at least two slices. Good times.

Borscht and Macaroon Recipes

With the two dishes I made for the passover, while I followed recipes, I also did a fair amount of improvising. I made a test batch of the macaroons the weekend before we got together, and they turned out a bit too sweet for my liking. They also didn't stay together as well as I would have liked. So, the night I made them for y'all, I altered the recipe just a bit. IT went something like this:



About 2 egg whites
1 entire bag of shredded coconut (roughly 2.5 cups)
4-5 tables spoons of flour
3-4 table spoons of sugar
A pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Mix the dry goods together thoroughly, sugar included. Whisk the eggs till they become light in color and texture. Mix both the wet and dry ingredients together. Form the macaroons and place them on a well greased baking sheet. Bake for 25-35 minutes, or until they become brown around the edges.

You can add more or less sugar to the recipe depending on how sweet you like your macaroons. I personally enjoyed them a little less sweet, with the whipped cream Eli made.



Borscht is an interesting dish, in that I am pretty sure you can make it however you want, so long as it's served cold and contains a shit-ton of beets. I made it the way my mom makes it, with whole slices of beets in the broth, but it is also common (maybe more common) to find the beets shredded. Anyway, here is how my borscht making went down:

6-8 medium sized beets
1 large onion
1/4 cup of lemon juice
3-4 table spoons of brown sugar (Used light, but dark would be tasty I'm sure)
4 cups of water

Cut the stems completely from the beets. If you like, you can include them in the soup later. I chose not to. Clean the beets well, scrubbing them with your hands. Place the beets in a large pot, and completely cover them in water. Boil them for about 15 minutes, or until they are close to being completely cooked (you should be able to poke one with a knife with little resistance). While the beets are cooking, prepare the remainder of the ingredients. Prepare the onion however you like. I elected to thinly julienne them, a task made more enjoyable by my new knife (thank you again Simon and Peter). You can also cut the stems and leaves of the beets now, should you want to include them int he soup. Once the beet are done boiling remove them from the pot,saving the water, and slide of their skins. This is fairly effortless at this point. Slice the beet however you would like. Again, I elected to slice them into roughly 1 centimeter thick discs and half discs, but whatever works. Add your 4 cups of water to the beet broth you have made. Also add your beets, onions, brown sugar, and lemon juice. Bring this mixture to a boil and immediately reduce to a low boil/simmer. Cook another 20 minutes, or until the onions and other vegetables, should you choose to add them, are cooked through. Add salt to taste.

Chill before serving, and garnish. There are many garnishes that are traditional when it comes to borscht. The most popular being hard boiled eggs and sour cream.

Word, now its everyone else's turn.

Red Velvet Cake is cool (because the NYTimes tells me so)

Either way, here is the cake (which will NOT be red, what the hell?)

RED VELVET CAKE

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
3½ cups cake flour
½ cup unsweetened cocoa
1½ teaspoons salt
2 cups canola oil (yeah, that's 2 CUPS)
2¼ cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) red food coloring
1½ teaspoons vanilla
1¼ cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons baking soda
2½ teaspoons white vinegar (weird but excellent)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place teaspoon of butter in each of 3 round 9-inch layer cake pans and place pans in oven for a few minutes until butter melts. Remove pans from oven, brush interior bottom and sides of each with butter and line bottoms with parchment.

2. Whisk cake flour, cocoa and salt in a bowl.

3. Place oil and sugar in bowl of an electric mixer and beat at medium speed until well-blended. Beat in eggs one at a time. With machine on low, very slowly add red food coloring. (Take care: it may splash.) Add vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk in two batches. Scrape down bowl and beat just long enough to combine.

4. Place baking soda in a small dish, stir in vinegar and add to batter with machine running. Beat for 10 seconds.

5. Divide batter among pans, place in oven and bake until a cake tester comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool in pans 20 minutes. Then remove from pans, flip layers over and peel off parchment. Cool completely before frosting.

Yield: 3 cake layers.