The food you want to eat
Creamy, Crunch, Sweet, a little Tart, slightly Tangy and insanely delicious.
Oh and did I mention these only take 10 minutes to make.
Oh, and that they’re fully customizable to your likes and dislikes.
Also, Lotus Cookies.
‘nuf said.
✌🏻💜&🥕,
Danielle
For the printable Cannoli Cream Trifles with Lotus Crumbs and Blueberries click here
Chocolate.
Did you hear me?
I said, CHOCOLATE.
CHOCOLATE!!!!!!
This dessert is all about the chocolate. Its a super incredible chocolate ice cream base, laced with the most amazing, chewy, chocolatey, chocolate chocolate chip cookie dough, slated condensed milk caramel and fluff. Then, because no matter what yo mamma told you, too much of a good thing is really never enough, all that chocolate goodness gets sandwich between to perfect layers of buttery chocolate brownies.
I’m assuming that by now you have stopped reading because you just couldn’t take another second of the torture that is not eating this. So, you skipped all this reading and scrolled down to the recipe. If thats the case, good. If not I’m guessing that means you don’t like chocolate (because if you do, you would not need any more convincing). So to all the super boring cool vanilla lovers out there (ahem, eli), don’t worry I got you covered.
The whole concept of this ice cream, mixing in sweetened condensed milk into whipped heavy cream, is so versatile and easy to use that it can be altered to fit all your dessert needs. It is NOT exclusive to chocolate ice cream. In fact, I have included so many variations to the base and topping of this ice cream in the recipe! Everything from a strawberry cookie dough to peaches n cream, to a pretzel and caramel are all represented.
O.k. lets dress the elephant in the room now. This recipe requires a few steps.
Like I said, a few steps. But, I am not sorry. Why? Make the dessert and you will find out.
Also, if you don’t need cholov Yisroel milk then it is very very easy to find kosher sweetened condensed milk and you can easily skip the first step. And truthfully, as fun as ice scream sandwiches are, I stand by this ice cream so proudly, that I would say, even if you serve the ice cream by itself, with na simple bowl and spoon, it will still be the best dessert you have ever made.
So, how ever you do it, in what ever form, or flavor I strongly urge you to include this in any dairy menus you have planned. And, if you choose to skip any real food in favor of just having a bowl of this ice cream as your meal, that too, will be completely understood (and maybe even admired!).
For the printable Homemade Sweetened Condensed Milk recipe click here
For the printable Salted Condensed Milk Caramel click here
For the printable Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough recipe click here
For the printable Sheet Pan Brownies recipe (600acres.com) click here
For the printable No-churn Chocolate Lovers Ice cream Sandwiches recipe click here
Sweetened Condensed milk is everything. Its literally liquid crack. One taste and you are hooked for life. It’s milky, it’s thick and creamy, it’s sweet and it’s the perfect addition to a myriad of desserts.
The only drawback is that there is currently nobody making a cholov Yisroel version of it. So, in an attempt to make sure that my recipes are accessible to as many people as possible I set out to create my own sweetened condensed milk.
I made a huge batch because truthfully, this stuff is good in everything. If you are already making it, you might as well have enough left over to make truffles, salted dulce de leche, or even just add to your coffee for the best latte you will ever have in your life! I’m gonna include links to some of my recipes that use it to give you a few ideas!
Watch the video and see how easy it is to do!
For the printable Homemade Sweetened Condensed Milk recipe click here
For the printable Salted Coffee Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream click here
For the printable No-churn Chocolate Lovers Ice Cream click here
For the printable Salted Condensed Milk Caramel click here
I’m not a huge dessert person. I know that sounds crazy but it’s just how it is. I would choose a slice of pizza or a bowl of hot and sour soup over cake or cookies any day!
But, I am also sane. So, if there is dessert in front of me, I will eat it. Because. Wasting food is bad. Also, food.
If I’m going to eat the dessert I want it to either be something satisfying but light or something super duper decadent that I can indulge on. I don’t want to eat whole meal and then end it with a heavy, coma inducing piece of cake. I prefer my desserts fruity or citrusy with just the right amount of sweetness to them. Even better is when they pair perfectly with a cup of coffee or tea.
Thats what this cake is all about. It’s made with simple pantry ingredients, cooked in a basic loaf pan and perfectly balanced in flavor. It will probably underrated when you serve it. But you will graciously cut and plate it for all your guests, who will take one bite and understand why you made this most perfect cake.
I don’t recommend making this dairy free. This cake needs the butter. Together with the lemon zest it creates a dense cake that does not weigh you down. Plus, I think it’s understood that all desserts are better with butter.
This cake also freezes beautifully. So get a head start on your cooking a pop this in the freezer to make your Shavuous prep a little bit easier.
For the printable Dairy Lemon Pound Cake recipe click here
*recipe adapted from Ina Garden
CHEESE.
Specifically, Ricotta Cheese.
Do I really need to say anything more?
It’s the stuff dreams are made of. Whether its melted and stringy over a simple slice of pizza, or golden brown and bubbly over a decadent eggplant parmesan, or merely slipped between two slices of bread, there is no food more versatile and comforting than cheese.
Maybe its versatility comes from the fact that the varieties of cheeses are countless or maybe its because it’s so delicious and satisfying that as a race humans have found ways to incorporate it into everything we eat.
Whatever the reason, cheese dug its claws into my soul from the time was a small child. I love every form of it. Hard, soft, salty, tangy, stinky, funky, blue or yellow. It’s all delicious.
However, for all my cheese love, I never understood the absolute beauty and sophistication of it until I embarked on my own cheese making path.
I have a few different cheeses I am working on making right now, but ricotta is by far the simplest. It is the little black dress of cheeses. It’s incredibly simple but perfectly balanced in flavor. It has all the cheesy creaminess we need, but remains light and airy. It can be dolloped on top of pasta to add creaminess, or over roasted veggies for that extra burst of flavor. You can slather it onto crusty bread to serve as an appetizer, or whip it in to cream for the most delicious of desserts.
However you do it, just be prepared to devour the entire first batch you make standing over the kitchen counter, because I promise, this will not make it into the fridge!
Make sure to check back here every few days before Shavuos for a bunch of new recipes using your homemade ricotta.
Until then, happy cooking!
Peas out,
Danielle
For the printable Ricotta Cheese recipe click here
How do you make shakshuka for a crowd with getting stuck slaving over the stove?
You make it on a sheet pan.
It’s the perfect dish.
You can keep it dairy free by leaving out the cheese, can go meaty and add some shredded beef or chicken to the tomato sauce mixture, or Mexican by adding some adobo to the sauce!
Seriously the possibilities are endless!
I kept this recipe super duper basic so that everyone can customize it to their parties! I served mine with my lemon gremolata, techina and a quick guacamole. I’ll include the recipes for the techina and gremolata in the post so you can access them easily!
Serve shakshuka as an appetizer for your Shavuous meal by making the sauce in advance and just reheating it and adding the eggs a few minutes before your meal.
Its the perfect way to host a brunch. Make a huge sheet pan, serve some crusty bed on the sides and finish off the menu with some mimosas. BOOM. Best brunch hostess ever!
However you do it, just make it. Your family will thank you!
✌🏻💜&🥕,
Danielle
For the printable shakshuka recipe click here
For the printable lemon gremolata recipe click here
For the printable techina recipe click here
It is not easy to find foods that every single one of my kids, my husband and I can all equally enjoy. When Abby started making her pesto, it very, very quickly became a family neighborhood favorite.
No Baby girl kiddish, or pot luck meal is complete with a few huge bowls of her incredible pesto pasta. Come Purim time and everyone counts on her pesto pasta shalach manor to include in their seudah or to feed it to their families to help balance out the candy overload.
I think the secret to this recipe is that it is simple in its ingredients. There are no nuts or cheese, which means nothing to distract from the pure basil flavor. It also helps to keep the consistency super duper smooth, which we all know is a huge plus in the world of feeding picky eaters children.
This recipe is massive. It will yield a little over a quart. If you don’t want so much you can easily halve it, but then just know, that I may think you’re nuts. Why on earth would you want to make something as freezer friendly as pesto more than once in a while? There is no reason for that!!! Make this huge batch and freeze the rest in small containers.
Pesto is so versatile, you can use it on your pasta, spread it on a sandwich, marinate your chicken in it, or use it as a salad dressing. The possibilities are endless which means having a freezer stocked with pesto will only make your life easier.
Enjoy!!!!
💜,
Danielle
For the printable Pesto Pasta recipe click here
Meat. Gooood.
Bread. Gooood.
Pickled Vegetabes. Good.
Creamy Soy Sauce. Good.
Put it all together to make the best sandwich ever. Verrrrrrrry good.
It actually doesn’t seem fair to call this a sandwich. These days, the word sandwich evokes a picture of two pieces of some sort of floppy bread, smeared with PB&J, or cream cheese stuffed into a condensation filled plastic bag, pulled out from the bottom of a knapsack, 20 degrees hotter than it was when I put it in there in the morning.
That is not what’s happening here.
The banh mi is a sandwich at it’s best. It’s basically the little black dress of sandwiches. It consists of 4 very simple components that can be switched up or accessorized in a ton of different ways. No matter what you do to it though, the basic premise is a good French baguette, quickly cooked protein, flavor bomb pickled veg, umami packed mayonnaise and fresh herbs keep this sandwich down to earth, easy to make, portable, and simple but sophisticated.
The banh mi is what happened as a result of Vietnam being a French occupied colony from the middle of the 19th century until Vietnam’s independence in 1954. Like any good group of people, the Vietnamese took the incredible baguette that the French brought with them, made it their own and stuffed it with a combinations of France’s best delicacies and their own deeply cultural pickled veggies. The Banh Mi, which really just translates to mean “bread of wheat”, became a staple across Vietnam because it could be filled with anything and carried around easily.
The first banh mi sandwiches were spread with a thin layer of French liver pate, then filled with a thin layer of thinly sliced meat, topped with pickled vegetables (usually carrots and radishes) and fresh Vietnamese coriander leaves. It was the perfect east meets west combo.
Over time, the Bahn mi has transformed to mean any kind of sandwich as long as it’s in a Vietnamese style French baguette, filled with some sort of protien and loaded with pickled veggies and coriander. They sell them on the streets of Vietnam filled with thinly sliced beef, scrambled eggs, crushed pork meatballs, roasted pork belly, tofu for the vegans out there, grilled chicken and even sardines.
For pretty obvious reasons, I chose to go the route of thinly sliced meat. In my house nobody is vegan, eggs are for breakfast, we keep kosher and if I served my husband and sons a sardine sandwich they would trade me in.
Liver pate was optional so for those that unwisely chose to skip it I created a soy sauce-mayonnaise to add in some of that creamy umaminess they were missing.
Traditionally Vietanam style French baguettes actually have a bit of a thinner crust than regular French baguettes but I couldn’t find that so I just went with I had access to. You can, of course make your own baguette, but then this would not be an easy to make sandwich anymore.
Pickled veggies are a staple in my fridge. They come in many forms, flavored differently and grace basically every dish I serve. If you aren’t obsessed with pickled veggies, you will be after you make this sandwich so double or triple the recipe so that you too will have a well stocked pickled veggie fridge. I also added thinly sliced spicy peppers for some heat and although you can leave it out, I urge you strongly to try the banh mi with it.
However you do it, whether with meat, chicken, tofu, eggs, sardines or really any other protein you can think of just make sure to cross this dish off your list of “I want to make that one day but not today” dishes because you will absolutely fall in love with it at the first bite. And all over again with every other subsequent bite you take.
For the printable Banh Mi Sandwich Recipe click here
WHEN I DIP, YOU DIP , WE DIP….
Whether it’s a shabbos or yuntif seudah, a Sunday morning brunch or a regular weeknight dinner, every meal is easily enhanced by serving a ton of dips along side whatever you have prepared. PERIOD.
So, here it is, my ultimate list of amazing dip recipes.
BRING ON THE MATZAH!
I hope you all have a peaceful weekend.
✌🏻💜&🥕,
Danielle
For the printable homemade Mayonnaise recipe click here
For the printable Tomato Dip recipe click here
For the printable Herb and Chile Garlic confit recipe click here
For the printable Olive Tapenade recipe click here
For the printable Lemon and Jalapeño Gremolota recipe click here
For the printable Roasted Red Pepper Dip click here
For the printable Almond Tehini recipe click here
THAILAND. sigh. BRING ME BACK!!!!!
It is just the most amazing mix of beauty and culture. From the elephant studded jungles to the tropical, crystal blue ocean lined beaches, every inch of this country is absolutely remarkable. It’s the people, the history, the location, the agriculture, the culture, the smells and the food – oh my, the food- that all together contribute to the colorful backdrop of what makes Thailand so truly special.
The old ladies that sit on the side of a seemingly deserted road selling bananas, the proprietors of each stall at the random street long market places that pop-up any where from the middle of a train track to the inside of a series of gondola like canoes in a through fare of canals, to the barefooted buddhists monks, and even the punky, techno music obsessed teenagers, it is the people who make up and truly influence this great country. Each one with their own familial variations, traditions, and of course, recipes. There are a few staple base recipes, but from their each region, town and family ventures off to create their own version of these very Thai dishes.
Sometimes, the recipes vary between fish bases and meat bases depending on whether you lived in the hills and were surrounded by cattle or if you lived on the sea shore surrounded by the most amazing fish and shell fish. Which, aside from the fact that Thai people just so happen to be culturally the most accomodating, genuinely nice people, is why I think it was not difficult for them to help me come up with a way to kosherfy some of their most traditional recipes.
Each region we went to we got to take a private cooking class in. At the start of each class the chef, assuming that I just wanted to learn how to make some super fancy, Michelin star worthy dish came armed with a slew of extremely updated, over the top, beautifully plated dishes. As soon as I told them I did not want to learn how to make hotel food and was really there to cook something that their own grandmothers made for them the whole experience changed. Each chef, both women by the way (girl power), instantly relaxed, plastered a huge smile on their face and taught me to make the food that they truly like to eat.
It’s not fancy food and not difficult to make. It is however, complex in flavors and mind blowing-ly delicious. In the west we are used to very different types of herbs and spices. So, Thai food seems complicated as these ingredients are not as easily available as say, a carrot. However, once you have all the ingredients in your house, nothing actually takes more than a few minutes of active prep time to put together.
Over the course of the classes we made Tom yum soup, which is technically a spicy prawn soup, that we kosherfied by swapping salmon for the prawns. We made a fried flounder with a spicy thai mango salad, sticky rice (my fave!!!), Tom Kah Gai soup, which is basically Thailands version of a Jewish chicken soup, and a spicy, fresh hearts of palm (yup, thats right, NOT canned, meaning straight from the heart of a palm tree!) salad. Each recipe was bright, fresh, light enough to not weigh you down in the crazy heat but filling enough to leave you feeling totally satisfied!
I am so excited to be sharing these videos and giving you a small glimpse of all the amazing things I was privileged to learn and see there. I am going to release the videos one by one, each with a printable recipe so that you can recreate these recipes in your own kitchens.
Before I do though, I just want to share a few things I learned there.
Now that you have all the building blocks to take the recipe I give you and make them your own I’m going to help you out by linking the names of some of the produce to websites where you can easily buy them (hint: starts with “ama” and ends with “zon”).
GALANGAL:
click here for fresh galangal
click here for dried galangal
KAFFIR LIME LEAVES:
click here for fresh kaffir lime leaves
click here for dried kaffir lime leaves
LEMONGRASS:
click here for fresh lemongrass
click here for dried lemongrass
THAI BIRD CHILES:
click here for fresh Thai bird chiles
click here for dried Thai bird chiles
BUTTERFLY PEA FLOWERS:
click here for dried butterfly pea flowers
PANDAN LEAVES:
click here for fresh pandan leaves
click here for dried pandan leaves
NOTE: These are raw ingredients. The links are for produce that is NOT grown in Israel and there for not subject to the laws the apply to produce grown in Israel. Consult with your own rabbi on how to check these vegetables appropriately.
For the full printable Tom Yum Soup recipe click here.
