Delightful Desserts — For Passover!

It's nearly that time of year again: Pesach (also known as Passover), when the Jewish people celebrate the Exodus from Egypt and the birth of the nation of Israel. In observance of this most important holiday, we refrain from eating many every-day foods, especially grains. This makes desserts kind of tough, but as I saw last night, definitely not impossible!

You would never guess that all of these cakes are kosher for Passover—but they are—and there were plenty more delicious desserts where these came from. And come they did in a most expert fashion!

Remember Lori Shepard from Simply Scrumptious catering? She is the wonderful chef who taught the cooking class I attended last month. I've since prepared many of the dishes she taught us to make and they have all been delicious. So I was very excited to hear that she would be teaching another class, a dessert making class, through the Jewish Women's Circle of Ann Arbor. I signed up immediately!

Lori at her station.

In addition to Lori, who was our guest host for the evening, the Jewish Women's Circle events are hosted by Esther Goldstein and Mimi Weisberg.

From left to right: Esther, Diane, and Mimi

This event took place at Esther's house and we walked into her dinning room to see this beautiful, very girly setup:

At each spot was a cookbook with recipes for all of the desserts we would taste throughout the evening. Lori generously shared some of her culinary secrets and our Passover tables will be the sweeter for it!

Before we started, Esther, who is the wife of the local Chabad Rabbi, spoke a bit about the meaning behind the food deprivations we observe on Passover. Both the Rabbi and Esther always have interesting things to say about the holidays, and about Judaism in general, usually points I hadn't considered before. (One example was at Hanukkah.)

Last night Esther told us that abstaining from eating so many different foods was akin to the nourishment we provide infants. When babies are born we feed them mother's milk, the purest form of food, because their young bodies cannot yet digest more complicated foods. Similarly, when the Israelites left Egypt and began the process of becoming the Jewish people, we were babies and G-d hand-feed us mana from the sky.

Not eating grains might seem like a gluten free dieter's dream, but actually Passover can be a bit difficult. Not only do we not eat wheat (except in the form of matzah), but rice, corn, beans, and all the other grains I bake with are off limits for a week. Some people cook with matzah meal, so things like matzah ball soup and gefilte fish can be dangerous for gluten free observers, especially during Passover. However, some traditions state that you should not cook with matzah at all (you only eat it in it's true form), so, if you know where to look, Passover can actually be a great time to stock up on gluten free products. (More on that later because a new company is making gluten free matzah this year and I got four boxes!)

I didn't mention this last time, but, even though she cooks with gluten-y things, Lori is actually gluten free and knows a lot about making substitutions in baking. So, I actually got to eat some of the goodies last night, like these brownies!

Brownies made from chocolate, sugar, eggs, butter, and almonds.

And these almond cookies:

These were sooooo good!

And these extra-chocolatey chocolate walnut cookies that Lori made as we watched:

The pre-made cakes were also cut and sampled. Unfortunately, they all contained matzah meal so I had so skip, but don't they look good?!

Sponge Cake 

Inside the sponge cake.

Chocolate Fudge Torte

The sponge cake was made beforehand but Esther and Lori regaled us with the funny story about how to make sure a sponge cake doesn't collapse. According to Lori, once the cake comes out of the oven, you immediately stick a wine bottle into the Bundt pan's hole and invert the whole thing. Like so:

Sorry, not the greatest picture...

If you are like everyone else in the room that evening, the first question you'd ask is "But won't the cake fall out?" Lori assured us all that it would not, but Esther said that both she and the Rabbi were very concerned and kept returning to check the cake. It never did fall! Like my dad says, "You learn something new every day."

The star of the evening was this Orange Nut cake:

I was helping in the kitchen when Mimi and Esther brought the cake in for cutting. Esther remarked that the cake looked like a birthday cake and that they should ask if someone had a birthday during Passover. As it turns out, I was born on the first night of Passover, an auspicious birthday according to Esther. And so, once the cake was cut Esther announced that it was my birthday and I was treated to a lovely rendition of "Happy Birthday" before the cake (that I could not eat) was passed around. It was pretty funny!

Doesn't this look delicious?

We passed the night eating a lot of sugar and listening to Lori explain some of the finer points of Passover baking. Here she is reading a recipe for the Passover graham crackers she used in the crust of the chocolate torte.

I think everyone enjoyed shmoozing and passing around the goodies—I know I did!

One and a half more weeks until Passover. Hope you got your matzah on!