Recipe Testing
The chocolate batter splattered our studio’s microwave, the stove, and the floor as Hannah Gross energetically tested chocolate recipes constrained by my primitive and limited cooking equipment.
Within two hours, this amazing sister of our wonderful daughter-in-law, masterminded the creation of three recipes, each quite delicious, all finished in time for a very respectable and genteel afternoon chocolate snack. Hannah kindly took time from her very full shifts as pastry cook for a fancy restaurant in New York City to adjust and improve on recipes for the forthcoming book, Jews on the Chocolate Trail.
In the process I learned the value of a bain marie, a hot water bath for melting chocolate, since microwaving is hard on the chocolate. I saw that rolling dough between sheets of parchment paper works much better than using a cutting board dressed with flour. Adding a bit of pepper or chile to enhance the chocolate flavor improved several items.
Hannah immediately knew that my need for a something evocative of Hispanic culture or a Day of the Dead chocolate traditions could be satisfied with bizcochitos, a very flavorful cocoa, anise, cinnamon version of a butter cookie dipped in chocolate. Our version dropped the lard. Her experience helped the truffle project intoxicate, literally and figuratively, everyone who tasted them.
She was enchanted by my recipe for bicerin, the multi-layered drink of Turin, Italy, and executed it much better than I would have been able to on my own. Actually, Hannah’s was tastier than the ones I had recently sampled, even though she had never even heard of it before.
Sure is great to have a chef in the family. What was that about lawyers and doctors?
Recent Posts
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How About Some Uterus Challah?
When Logan Zinman Gerber felt enraged about the loss of reproductive rights in the U.S., she baked challah. Not any challah. She shaped it into a uterus. It wasn’t long after the birth of her daughter that Gerber, a longtime challah baker and staff member of the Religious Action Center of the Reform movement, considered
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A Manhattan synagogue explores the rich, surprising history of Jews and chocolate
I’m grateful for this story written by Rachel Ringer, published at JTA/NY Jewish Week on December 20, 2023: (New York Jewish Week) — In 2006, Rabbi Deborah Prinz was on a trip to Europe with her husband, Rabbi Mark Hurvitz, when they wandered into a chocolate shop in Paris. While meandering about the store, Prinz picked
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Exhibit Opens! Sweet Treat! Chocolate & the Making of American Jews
Sweet Treat is a delicious gastronomic adventure into the history and resilience of American Jewish chocolate making. This exhibition invites you to follow the chocolate trail to America, a scrumptious journey through time and place. Chocolate gives us a lens to understand Jewish migration, as the chocolate trade parallels the migrations of the Jewish
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Baking Prayers into High Holiday Breads
Every summer during the years I was a congregational rabbi, I pulled out my annual High Holiday checklist to help me plan for the season’s intensity. Amid the sermon writing, cue meetings, neither Mark nor I, with our respective rabbinic duties, had time for home baked challah. So, most importantly for our children, my planning
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Some Previous Posts
(in alphabetical order)
- "Boston Chocolate Party" Q&As with Deborah Kalb
- 2022 Media for The "Boston Chocolate Party"
- About Rabbi Deborah Prinz
- Boston Chocolate Party
- Chocolate Chip Politics
- December Media Stories
- Digging into Biblical Breads
- For the Easiest Hanukah Doughnuts Ever
- Forthcoming! On the Bread Trail
- Funny Faced Purim Pastries
- Good Riddance Chameitz or, The Polemics of Passover's Leaven
- Injera*
- Israeli Chocolate Spread
- Jewish Heritage Month: Baseball & Chocolate!
- Matzah - But, the Dough Did Rise!
- Plan a Choco-Hanukkah Party: 250th Anniversary Tea Party
- Prayers Into Breads
- To Shape Dough: A Trio of Techniques
- Why Is Challah On My Matzah Box?