Passover is notoriously not the best holiday for desserts. No one particularly loves the taste of matzah cake meal. Trying to bake regular sweets, but adjust the recipes to comply with the laws of kosher for Passover (KFP), is a recipe for mediocrity. And honey cake, a traditional Passover dessert, is just not my favorite.
It used to be that if you were a March or April birthday, you always crossed your fingers that your birthday wouldn't fall during Passover that year. With powdered sugar not being allowed, and terrible tasting cake mixes, it was pretty hard to approximate a "real" birthday cake. The box mixes have improved dramatically since I was a little girl, and with new laws on kitniyot, many people are now comfortable using powdered sugar. (Powdered sugar contains cornstarch, and corn was traditionally prohibited by Ashkenazic Jews, though those laws have been relaxed by some of the senior rabbis in the last few years.)
The best desserts are those that don't try to convert a non-Pesadicah recipe into a KFP recipe... they are just naturally compliant. In recent years, some truly delicious Passover dessert options have emerged. Matzah toffee, or "matzah crack," is a common one - this is matzah covered with a hot toffee that is baked on, then topped with a layer of chocolate, and it's delicious. Flourless chocolate cakes are naturally KFP and taste amazing. The teff brownies I made two years ago were delicious and naturally KFP. Meringues and chocolate-covered strawberries (or chocolate-dipped dried fruit) are KFP. Macarons can be made KFP. Cookies made with almond flour are delicious. So many choices!
Last year, I made some seriously amazing new Passover desserts. I really wanted to push myself to try something new instead of the same standbys.
These are chocolate swirl meringues. You make regular vanilla meringue mixture, melt chocolate and drizzle it over the surface of the mixture in the bowl, and then gently scoop and plop spoonfuls onto the cookie sheet. The randomness of the chocolate drizzle makes these beautiful, irregular chocolate patterns, and the chocolate bakes on to the meringue. When you've used up all the chocolate, you drizzle another layer on and continue repeating until all the cookies are scooped.
Traditional macaroons are delicious when homemade - the store-bought ones in the can are less good - but many people are not coconut fans. This recipe has coconut (I used good, unsweetened coconut), condensed milk, egg white, and vanilla, and the macaroons are tender and sweet. I made some macarons - these were strawberry, flavored with freeze dried strawberries that I blended to a powder - but I never have great success with macarons. They taste fine, but I always overthink them, and they never look as perfect as I want them to.
This is a meringue layer cake from a recipe by Sweetapolita. Three giant tiers of meringue (which, by the way, takes a really long time to bake when it is that big/thick and comes out pillowy and marshmallowy), topped with mascarpone whipped cream and then with rich, dark ganache. It was really hard to cut, naturally gluten-free, and absolutely delicious. I think next time I might make the ganache a little less firm, which would just mean slightly increasing the amount of cream. I would also make the meringue layers a little thinner, though I liked the softness actually. I would not have wanted a crunchy meringue in this instance. The cake was at least 7" tall, but at least it was fun to look at and tasty!
I can't actually remember (or tell from this picture) whether I made a crustless cheesecake or a cheesecake with an almond/sugar/matzah cake meal crust. Either way, it was sort of plain looking, so I topped it with some strawberries that I tossed with a little bit of sugar, which looked super pretty when I first put it together (see below) but got a little weepy as time went on and the sugar leached juice out of the berries (whoops). The cheesecake itself is just cream cheese, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and lemon zest, so it's all totally compliant.
Finally, I made the Epicurious fallen flourless chocolate cake topped with mascarpone whipped cream. Yes, there were two desserts at the same seder with mascarpone and whipped cream as the main ingredients. However, this one was whipped cream enhanced with mascarpone, and the meringue layer cake above was mascarpone lightened with whipped cream. Sounds somewhat the same, but the proportions were different and the end results were pretty different as well. The cream cut the richness of the chocolate, and the cake itself is lighter and less dense than other flourless chocolate cakes. It is fun to have it puff up nice and tall right out of the oven and then fall about two inches. The fallen area makes the perfect space to blob on the mascarpone whipped cream.
I waited until right before dessert to add the mascarpone whipped cream for fear it would not hold up in the fridge well. However, I think it's stable enough that you could probably prep it an hour or two in advance (before you start the seder).
It used to be that if you were a March or April birthday, you always crossed your fingers that your birthday wouldn't fall during Passover that year. With powdered sugar not being allowed, and terrible tasting cake mixes, it was pretty hard to approximate a "real" birthday cake. The box mixes have improved dramatically since I was a little girl, and with new laws on kitniyot, many people are now comfortable using powdered sugar. (Powdered sugar contains cornstarch, and corn was traditionally prohibited by Ashkenazic Jews, though those laws have been relaxed by some of the senior rabbis in the last few years.)
The best desserts are those that don't try to convert a non-Pesadicah recipe into a KFP recipe... they are just naturally compliant. In recent years, some truly delicious Passover dessert options have emerged. Matzah toffee, or "matzah crack," is a common one - this is matzah covered with a hot toffee that is baked on, then topped with a layer of chocolate, and it's delicious. Flourless chocolate cakes are naturally KFP and taste amazing. The teff brownies I made two years ago were delicious and naturally KFP. Meringues and chocolate-covered strawberries (or chocolate-dipped dried fruit) are KFP. Macarons can be made KFP. Cookies made with almond flour are delicious. So many choices!
Last year, I made some seriously amazing new Passover desserts. I really wanted to push myself to try something new instead of the same standbys.
These are chocolate swirl meringues. You make regular vanilla meringue mixture, melt chocolate and drizzle it over the surface of the mixture in the bowl, and then gently scoop and plop spoonfuls onto the cookie sheet. The randomness of the chocolate drizzle makes these beautiful, irregular chocolate patterns, and the chocolate bakes on to the meringue. When you've used up all the chocolate, you drizzle another layer on and continue repeating until all the cookies are scooped.
Traditional macaroons are delicious when homemade - the store-bought ones in the can are less good - but many people are not coconut fans. This recipe has coconut (I used good, unsweetened coconut), condensed milk, egg white, and vanilla, and the macaroons are tender and sweet. I made some macarons - these were strawberry, flavored with freeze dried strawberries that I blended to a powder - but I never have great success with macarons. They taste fine, but I always overthink them, and they never look as perfect as I want them to.
This is a meringue layer cake from a recipe by Sweetapolita. Three giant tiers of meringue (which, by the way, takes a really long time to bake when it is that big/thick and comes out pillowy and marshmallowy), topped with mascarpone whipped cream and then with rich, dark ganache. It was really hard to cut, naturally gluten-free, and absolutely delicious. I think next time I might make the ganache a little less firm, which would just mean slightly increasing the amount of cream. I would also make the meringue layers a little thinner, though I liked the softness actually. I would not have wanted a crunchy meringue in this instance. The cake was at least 7" tall, but at least it was fun to look at and tasty!
I can't actually remember (or tell from this picture) whether I made a crustless cheesecake or a cheesecake with an almond/sugar/matzah cake meal crust. Either way, it was sort of plain looking, so I topped it with some strawberries that I tossed with a little bit of sugar, which looked super pretty when I first put it together (see below) but got a little weepy as time went on and the sugar leached juice out of the berries (whoops). The cheesecake itself is just cream cheese, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and lemon zest, so it's all totally compliant.
Finally, I made the Epicurious fallen flourless chocolate cake topped with mascarpone whipped cream. Yes, there were two desserts at the same seder with mascarpone and whipped cream as the main ingredients. However, this one was whipped cream enhanced with mascarpone, and the meringue layer cake above was mascarpone lightened with whipped cream. Sounds somewhat the same, but the proportions were different and the end results were pretty different as well. The cream cut the richness of the chocolate, and the cake itself is lighter and less dense than other flourless chocolate cakes. It is fun to have it puff up nice and tall right out of the oven and then fall about two inches. The fallen area makes the perfect space to blob on the mascarpone whipped cream.
I waited until right before dessert to add the mascarpone whipped cream for fear it would not hold up in the fridge well. However, I think it's stable enough that you could probably prep it an hour or two in advance (before you start the seder).
Comments