Posts Tagged ‘halva’

This Wednesday was supposed to be a very happy day - it was Avi’s father birthday, and we were all about preparing for it - thinking of what present would make him happiest, and looking forward to the birthday dinner at the great restaurant we were about to go to.

And then I opened the news page as I woke up in the morning, and my eyes instantly filled up with tears. The 2 soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, that have been kidnapped by Hizbullah 2 years ago, have been returned dead. Israel signed a prisoner exchange deal with the Hizbullah a few weeks ago, as part of which Eldad and Ehud were supposed to return home. Hizbullah refused to reveal their condition until the very second their caskets arrived to Israel. It was pretty clear from the strategy they’ve chosen to take that Ehud and Eldad have been dead for a long time now, but a whole nation still refused to believe it, and kept hoping that maybe, in a miraculous way, they’d come back alive. Including me. My heart goes out to their families, whose hope and hearts have been shattered that day.
As all of you regular readers already know, this is by no means a blog that shares political views in any manner, this incident simply hurt me so bad, that I had to share it with you.

After that, it became nearly impossible to feel festive for Avi’s father birthday, but since he loves sweets so much, I was determined to make him a birthday cake. I chose this chocolate and halva mousse cake recipe from Niki B’s food blog, one of my favorite Israeli food blogs. Every recipe of Niki’s that I’ve tried came out just wonderful, including this one. Fans of halva and chocolate will thank you for making this for them, and in fact, even the ones that are not suckers for halva will simply love this dessert, since the halva taste doesn’t take over. If you make just one dessert from this blog - let it be this one, since it’s one of the tastiest desserts I’ve made in a while. I may make this declaration again in the future, and that’s ok, cause it only means that the future one tops this one

Chocolate Halva Mousse Cake / Slightly adapted from Niki B’s recipe
For a 24 cm pan

Ingredients:
For the base:
150 gr Graham Crackers, ground
100 gr butter, melted
zest of half of a medium sized lemon

For the mousse:
2 tsp gelatin powder
4 Tbsp milk
1/2 cup milk
150 gr halva, crumbled
200 gr bittersweet chocolate
500 ml heavy cream

For the ganache:
150 ml heavy cream
150 gr bittersweet chocolate

Directions:
1. Prepare the base: mix the ingredients of the base to a uniform mixture. Spread the mixture out evenly on the bottom of the cake pan. Place the pan in the freezer until finishing making the cake.
2. Melt the gelatin: put the 4 Tbsp of milk in a bowl, scatter the gelatin over it, and let stand for 10 mins. Then heat in the microwave for 30 secs and stir.
3. Melt chocolate, halva and milk until a uniform mixture is formed.
4. Add the gelatin into the chocolate mixture and stir.
5. Whip the cream, and fold the chocolate mixture into it.
6. Pour the mousse onto the base we’ve prepared earlier, and freeze for an hour.
7. Prepare the ganache: heat the cream nearly to its boiling point, pour it onto the chocolate and wait for 2 mins. Then stir until the chocolate melts totally.
8. Pour the ganache onto the mousse, and freeze overnight. Afterwards keep the cake in the refrigerator.

עוגת מוס שוקולד חלבה - עיבוד קל למתכון של ניקי ב
עבור תבנית עגולה בקוטר 24 ס”מ

מצרכים:
לבסיס:
150 גרם ביסקויטים, טחונים
100 גרם חמאה, מומסת
גרידה מחצי לימון בגודל בינוני

למוס:
2 כפיות ג`לטין
4 כפות חלב
חצי כוס חלב
150 גרם חלבה מפוררת
200 גרם שוקולד מריר
500 מ”ל שמנת מתוקה

לגנאש:
150 מ”ל שמנת מתוקה
150 גרם שוקולד מריר

הכנה:
1. מערבבים את מצרכי הבסיס, מהדקים בתבנית ומכניסים למקפיא.
2. ממיסים ג`לטין - מניחים בקערה ג`לטין ו- 4 כפות חלב, משאירים ל- 10 דקות בצד, מכניסים למיקרו ל 30 שניות ומערבבים
3. ממיסים חלב, חלבה ושוקולד לתערובת חלקה.
4. מוסיפים את הג`לטין לתערובת השוקולד ומערבבים היטב.
5. מקציפים שמנת מתוקה, ומקפלים את תערובת השוקולד לקצפת.
6. יוצקים את המוס לתבנית מעל הבסיס, מקפיאים למשך שעה.
7. מכינים גנאש: מחממים שמנת מתוקה עד סף רתיחה. יוצקים את השמנת על קוביות השוקולד ומערבבים לתערובת חלקה.
8. יוצקים את הגנאש על על מוס השוקולד חלבה, ומקפיאים ללילה. לאחר מכן שומרים במקרר.

Peace in the Middle East… What a dream.. Unfortunately peace is quite far away from us right now, so until it’s reached, I’m going to settle for a piece (of cake, of course)  in the middle yeast

Wednesday evening (that’s when I finished baking the cakes in this post) I was the happiest in quite some time. In a minute I’ll tell you exactly what made me so joyful, but first I want to share with you a new theme on my blog that was born out of this happiness. Those of you who visit here often know that my grandmother was a great cook. Unfortunately all her recipes were lost when she passed away, and nowadays I try to recreate some of the great recipes she was using to make her fabulous dishes. So from time to time, whenever I try to make one of the dishes she once made, I’ll post about it using this sweet logo that Avi designed for me (many thanks, baby!)

and all these posts will be tagged under ”Grandma’s Kitchen” tag.

So about Wednesday evening - the cakes came out of the oven, I waited “patiently” for like 10 minutes (that’s the longest I could bare waiting), and then took a knife and sliced me a piece. I couldn’t believe my mouth! It tasted exactly (or if not, then very very close to that) like me Grandma’s heavenly “Cozonac” - a Romanian yeast cake they make on Holidays. The funny thing is that I didn’t even try to make one! I used an Israeli recipe for yeast cakes, that was recommended by a very talented foodie friend of mine - Sivan, whom I’ve “met” in the various Israeli food networks. I think the secret to the divine taste is simply (and please don’t laugh) the lemon zest. So simple and yet it gives the dough such a great aroma!

Every time I make a recipe that I don’t make that often, I try to experiment with it as much as I can. This time I tried a shape that I’ve never tried before, and various fillings. I tried to shape all of the 4 yeast cakes that the recipe yielded into a Krantz shape (this word origins from the German word for “crown”). You do it by simply rolling the dough to a log after filling it, cutting it vertically in the middle into two halves, leaving them attached in one end, in order to keep it all together. Then you take the two halves and wrap them around each other to form the shape of  a screw. After the shaping, the dough should look like this:

The fillings I used were Nutella spread, which is always my favorite filling for just about any pastry… I used also Halva spread on top of which I scattered chocolate chips - I really loved it, Avi took it to work and even people that don’t like Halva really loved it. It didn’t do the trick on Avi, though, who really dislikes Halva in desserts.

The third filling I used was the traditional filling for the Romanian Cozonac - walnuts, which was a really goood one.

The last filling was dulce de leche. The latter was too liquid for the Krantz shape, and so all the filling drained down to the bottom of the pan… The looks of it were quite unpleasant, but it tasted great!

Yeast cake / Adapted from my friend’s (Sivan) recipe
Makes 4 english cake molds (30 X 10 cm each)

For the dough:
1 kg all-purpose flour
50 gr fresh yeast (or 20 gr dry yeast)
150 gr sugar (if you don’t prepare the sugar syrup use 170 gr)
200 gr butter, softened but not melted
10 Tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp salt
4 eggs, room temperature
2 tsp vanilla extract
zest of one medium sized lemon
150 ml lukewarm water
150 ml lukewarm milk (30 secs in the microwave will do it)

For the glaze:
1 egg, beaten

For the sugar syrup:
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:
1. Put all the flour in the mixer bowl. Make a starter dough out of the yeast, 1 tsp of the sugar and 1/4 cup of the water. Leave to ferment for a few mins. Place the starter in the mixer’s bowl along with the flour and cover it with flour.
2. In a separate bowl mix sugar and eggs and add them to the flour. Add to the flour the rest of the ingredients, except for the water and milk. Start kneading the dough and add the water and milk through the kneading process. Continue kneading until a soft and non-sticky dough forms (I do it for 10 mins total). Cover the bowl and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size.
3. Divide the dough into 4 parts, roll out each one of them and fill with the chosen filling (Nutella, Halva spread, Dulce de leche, the suggested walnuts filling or any other filling you can come up with). Roll the dough to a log after filling it, cutting it vertically in the middle into two halves, leaving them attached in one end, in order to keep it all together. Take the two halves and wrap them around each other to form the shape of a screw (as demonstrated in the picture above). Let rise until doubled in size.
4. Brush with the beaten egg, and bake in an oven preheated to 356°F (180° Celsius) for 35 mins, until golden-brown.
5. In the mean time prepare the sugar syrup: cook the sugar and milk on a medium flame until boiling point is reached. Cook for 5 more mins and take off the flame. After taking the cakes out of the oven, cool them for 5 mins, and brush them with the sugar syrup.

For the walnuts filling (sufficient for 2 cakes):
300 gr walnuts, coarsely chopped
3 egg whites
200 ml (yes, ml) powdered sugar

Directions:
Beat the egg whites, gradually adding them the sugar, for 3-4 mins, until soft peaks form. Fold in the walnuts and spread the mixtures onto the cakes.

עוגת שמרים / עיבוד קל למתכון של סיוי מפורום מתכונים של תפוז
חומרים ל-4 עוגות בתבנית אינגליש קייק (בגודל 30X10 כל אחת)

לבצק:
קילו קמח
50 גר’ שמרים טריים (או 20 גרם שמרים יבשים)
150 גרם סוכר (אם לא מורחים בסוף סירופ סוכר צריך קצת יותר, הבצק עצמו לא היה מתוק מספיק, בפעם הבאה אנסה עם 170 גרם)
200 גרם חמאה או מרגרינה רכה - לא מומסת
10 כפות שמן
1/2 כפית מלח
4 ביצים בטמפרטורת החדר
2 כפיות תמצית וניל
גרידה מלימון בינוני אחד
150 מ”ל מים חמימים
150 מ”ל חלב חמים (30 שניות במיקרו יעשו את העבודה)

לציפוי:
1 ביצה, טרופה

לסירופ סוכר:
1/2 כוס סוכר
1/2 כוס חלב
1 כפית תמצית וניל

הכנה:
1. בקערת המיקסר שמים את כל הקמח, מכינים ראש עיסה מהשמרים כפית מהסוכר ורבע כוס מהמים מניחים לתסיסה של כמה דקות. עושים גומה בקמח ומוסיפים את ראש העיסה, מכסים בקמח.
2. מערבבים בקערה נפרדת סוכר וביצים, ומוסיפים לקמח ובנוסף גם את החמאה, המלח, השמן תמצית הוניל והגרידה. מתחילים ללוש תוך כדי הוספת המים והחלב לפי ספיגה עד ליצירת בצק רק ולא דביק, מכסים ומתפיחים עד שהבצק מכפיל את נפחו.
3.מחלקים ל-4 כדורים ומרדדים כל כדור - מורחים בנוטלה, שוקולד השחר, ממרח חלבה, ריבת חלב וכיד הדימיון, מגלגלים לרולדת וחורצים לכל האורך ומבריגים את שני החלקים שנוצרו למעין צורת בורג. מניחים בתבניות ומתפיחים עד כמעט הכפלת הנפח.
4. מורחים בביצה ואופים ב-180 מעלות כ-35 דקות או עד שמשחים.
5. בנתיים מכינים סירופ סוכר - מרתיחים על האש וכשהעוגות יוצאות מהתנורף מצננים למשך 5 דקות ולאחר מכן מורחים אותן בסירופ בנדיבות בעזרת מברשת.

למילוי אגוזים (מספיק ל - 2 רולדות):
300 גרם אגוזי מלך קצוצים גס
3 חלבונים
כוס של 200 מ”ל אבקת סוכר

הכנה:
מקציפים את חלבון הביצה לקצף יציב אך לא נוקשה, מוסיפים בהדרגה את אבקת הסוכר תוך כדי הקצפה. מקפלים פנימה את האגוזים ומורחים את התערובת מעל העוגות.