Spelt Hamantashen

If even your sheitel macher noticed you haven't blogged lately, you know you're in trouble.

It's been a whirlwind few weeks, starting with me jetting off to sun myself on the gorgeous shores of the Carribean Sea, and ending with landing back in NY to a snowstorm, with running the Miami Marathon in between.

But I'm back. For how long, I don't know, as they're predicting a spelt flour shortage lasting indefinitely, probably until mid-summer.

Here you have spelt hamantashen, the ultimate Purim treat, which I enjoy year round. You can get creative with the fillings; I used strawberry jam in half, and much to the delight of my kids, chocolate spread in the other half. No pictures because although they came out tasting good, every single one popped open for some reason.


Spelt Hamantashen

3 eggs
1 cup sugar OR xylitol OR 1/2 cup honey
3/4 cup oil
1/3 cup apple juice
5-5 1/2 cups white spelt flour
3 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp almond extract
3 tsp baking powder

Beat the eggs and sugar until creamy. Add the oil and beat.  Add the juice and extracts, then the baking powder. Gradually add the flour until you get a good, soft dough consistency. Being that you're working with spelt flour, you may need to add a little more than the recipe calls for, and be careful not to overmix.

Roll out the dough, and cut into circle shapes using the rim of a drinking glass. Fill with your favorite filling, and fold into the traditional triangle hamantash shape. I found great instructions for folding properly on the The Shiksa in the Kitchen blog.

Bake them at 350 for approximately 10 minutes, until golden.

These freeze VERY well.

Spelt Chocolate Chip Cookies

The weather here has been snowy and freezing, and what does one do on a snow day with the kids if not bake??

Well, it didn't go quite like that. See, the last batch of cookies I made, I'm (almost!!) embarrassed to say that I finished nearly the entire thing all by my lonesome. So perhaps baking isn't the greatest idea after all. But by the time I finished thinking about it, a batch of cookies and a cake magically found themselves cooling on my counter.

Here is my absolutely favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. Make doubles, and triples wouldn't hurt either.
Alas, this is made with regular sugar. My experiment using xylitol was absolutely disastrous - I ended up with one huge glob of horrible-tasting cookie batter on my cookie sheet.






Spelt Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/4 cups white spelt flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

2 sticks good quality margarine 

¾ cup sugar

¾ cup brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla sugar

1 tsp water

2 eggs

8 oz. chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375.

Mix flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, cream margarine, sugars, and water. Add eggs and beat. Combine batter with dry mixture. Do not overmix!!! Add chocolate chips and stir.

Drop batter by rounded teaspoonful onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Spelt Matzoh Balls

Oh, to have matzoh balls in my soup again!! As delicious as plain chicken soup is, an extra oomph of matzoh balls is always welcome. These are light and super fluffy. We just couldn't get enough of them. Too bad I froze half of the balls, otherwise we'd have probably finished them all!


Matzoh Balls

4 eggs

4 T oil

4 T ice cold water

1 cup spelt matzoh meal

1 tsp salt

Black pepper

Pinch of ground white pepper

Combine all ingredients and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Bring a salted pot of water to boil. Form matzoh balls with wet hands and drop them gently (and carefully!!) into the boiling water. Cook uncovered for 30 minutes. Turn off flame and leave pot covered for another 10 minutes.

You can also cook them directly in your pot of chicken soup if you have one cooking anyway. Bring the soup to a boil, and follow the directions above.

Spelt Challah

Here it is, folks. The long-awaited spelt challah recipe. I must apologize to all my friends who were begging me to post this earlier, but I have a very good reason for waiting. Well, very good in my eyes. They just wanted the recipe! I wanted to wait until I made a fresh batch of these so the recipe can have an accompanying photo of its deliciousness.



Spelt Challah

5 lb white spelt flour

3 cups white kamut
2 Tablespoons dough conditioner, optional

2/3 cup oil

4 oz dry yeast

1 cup sugar OR xylitol, OR 1/2 cup honey

3 tsp salt

5 ½ cups warm water

3 eggs

Dissolve the yeast in warm water with a bit of the sugar or honey and let it sit for about 10 minutes until it bubbles. If you are using xylitol it will not help the yeast bubble at all, so either use sugar or honey, or skip it altogether. Your yeast may take a bit longer to bubble.

Combine all remaining ingredients in the bowl of a mixer and knead until just combined. Knead an additional 2-3 minutes. Cover and let it rise in a warm place (the top of my refrigerator is my fave location) until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Punch the dough down, and divide into 5 balls. Braid and place in greased medium sized loaf pans such as this one. Okay, not quite that one, it's pricey, but that size. 

Now you have 2 options. You can either cover your loaves again and let them rise on the counter until doubled in size. Brush with egg wash and sprinkle sesame seeds. Personally I like to use challah topping. Preheat oven to 350, and bake for 1 hour.

The second option is to do the egg wash and topping first, and then place the loaves in an oven preheated to 200F. Let them rise in the oven for 20 minutes. Then raise the temperature to 350, and bake for 1 hour.

Spelt Cheese Noodle Kugel

This is an excellent kugel for the freezer. I like to whip up a big batch of these, and freeze them raw in 8 inch square pans. On a busy day, I just take it out, defrost, and bake. Voila! Fresh hot kugel. It can also be frozen when fully baked.

I find that cottage cheese and farmer cheese are interchangeable. The only difference I ever noticed in this recipe was that the cottage cheese made for a wetter batter and therefore looser kugel.

Cheese Noodle Kugel

4 eggs, slightly beaten

1 cup xylitol

1 T. xylitol vanilla sweetener

1 cup milk or soy milk

½ pint sour cream, optional

12 oz. medium spelt egg noodles, cooked and drained

1 lb. farmer cheese or cottage cheese

1 cup cornflake crumbs

Xylitol and cinnamon

Combine eggs, sugar, vanilla sweetener, milk, and sour cream. Add noodles and farmer cheese. Mix well. Pour into greased 9x13 pan. Sprinkle with cornflake and sugar and cinnamon.

Bake at 350 for 1 hour.

Spelt Blueberry Muffins

You can now have blueberry muffins that are (semi!!!) healthy AND tasty! 

I used my own xylitol brown sugar in the streusel, which wasn't the best idea since it's too wet to really make a streusel topping. If you can, I'd suggest using regular brown sugar just for the topping. It was still good, the whole topping just kind of melted into the muffin.

I only had frozen blueberries on hand, and they came out tasting wonderful. I'm sure fresh would have been better, but in the dead of the winter, I'm happy for any taste of spring I can get, even if it's in the form of frozen blueberries.


Spelt Blueberry Muffins 

1 ½ cups white spelt flour

2 T baking powder

½ tsp salt

¾ cup xylitol

1/2 cup oil

1 egg

1/3 cup milk or soy milk

1 cup fresh blueberries

Topping:

½ cup regular brown sugar

1/3 cup white spelt flour

¼ cup butter or margarine

1 ½ tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix dry ingredients together. Add sugar, oil, egg, and milk. Fold in blueberries.

Spoon batter into muffin cups.

Mix together topping ingredients and sprinkle on top.

Bake for 20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.