Allyson Tazbin:
Good evening. Thank you for joining us tonight. My name is Allyson Tazbin and I am the Israel Engagement coordinator here for Brandeis Hillel. Quick side note, you probably saw something about a game show as you were entering. No worries, you're still in the right place. This is Paula Shoyer's hamantaschen baking night. We are so excited to be posting Paula Shoyer, a graduate of Brandeis Class of '86. Paula Shoyer, also known as The Kosher Baker is the author of the Healthy Jewish Kitchen. The Holiday Kosher Baker, The Kosher Baker, The New Passover Menu, and The Instant Pot Kosher Cookbook.
Allyson Tazbin:
Paula has a French pastry degree from Paris and does cooking events all around the world, to the freelance writer, cookbook, editor, and brand ambassador for kosher food companies. Paula competed on Food Network's Sweet Genius, and has appeared on TV over 43 times, including in Israel.
Allyson Tazbin:
She will lead us tonight through a baking demo of chocolate chunk hamantaschen. Feel free to bake along or just watch to replicate the recipe at a later time. This meeting is being recorded, so you will be able to watch it at a later time. There will be an opportunity to ask Paula some questions while we bake. And if you have any questions, please feel free to post them in the chat. And I will say them aloud. Thank you.
Paula Shoyer:
Thank you, Allyson. I'm so amazed at how many people are here tonight, other Brandeis grads. So I'm very happy to be among my people. First, a moment of gratitude for health, for family, for safe homes, for food, for ingredients, and for communities large and small. If there's anything I've learned over the last year, it's that we have to be grateful for everything we can be grateful for. And tonight we're grateful for chocolate chunk hamantaschen. So this is what we are going to be making tonight.
Paula Shoyer:
And you should know, this is my third hamantaschen bake virtually over the last 24 hours. I think this is my 136 virtual cooking class since the pandemic started, which boggles the mind because who ever thought that this was even going to be a thing? I spend most of my time traveling around to synagogues, Jewish community centers, all around the world, small communities, large communities. And I thought my business was dead when this pandemic began. Not only have I been able to do so many of these classes, but I've been able to reach so many people.
Paula Shoyer:
I'll talk a little bit more about various classes that I've been doing during this time as I'm making the dough. But I'm going to go ahead and get right into the recipe. If people are baking with me, you should know that the dough rolls out best if you make the dough, and then you chill it for at least an hour or so. I have some of this dough already in my fridge. So I'm going to make dough and put it in the fridge and I can start rolling out some of the other one so that everybody can see what to do. So at a minimum, if you're going to roll them out tonight, at least 45 minutes. The reason you want the dough to be firm is so you don't have to use so much flour. If you have ever tasted your children's preschool or kindergarten challahs, they taste like cardboard because they throw so much flour into it.
Paula Shoyer:
And finally, before we get started, I just have to say the biggest thank you to Brandeis University. Because many years ago, I was trying to get a cookbook published about Jewish desserts in kosher baking, and every single publisher in the world said, no. I'll tell you more about how I got from Brandeis to this in a moment. And Brandeis University press agreed to publish this cookbook in 2010. And then because of this book, I got a different publisher and agent and everything came from that. So very grateful that my university was able to help me launch this career.
Paula Shoyer:
So I have two screens going, which will both be pinned. So you'll see when I'm talking, I will talk directly to you like this. But if I'm baking, then you can focus on the close-up screen. If you cannot see both, you can pin the close-up screen yourself. Okay. So Allyson, you can go ahead and pin my close-up screen, so people see both sides aside.
Allyson Tazbin:
They're both pinned.
Paula Shoyer:
They are? Okay. I'm just not seeing it. Okay. Fine. All right, let's get started. Now, you can easily make this recipe by hand with a whisk, a wooden spoon, super easy. I'm going to use my handy electric mixer just to make it a little bit easier. So what we're going to start with is we're going to start with eggs. Okay. This is really important. All baking recipes are calibrated for large eggs, not extra large, not jumbo, okay? So make sure when you're baking, you're using large eggs. There's enough variation between large eggs. So if you have extra large eggs, your dough is just going to be too soft.
Paula Shoyer:
Now, most people like to break their eggs by banging them on the side of their mixing bowl or another bowl. When you do that, there's always a risk that a small amount of shell will get in it. So the best way I have learned to break my eggs is I hit it on the counter. So I have like a little kind of broken area of depression. Stick my thumbs in very quickly. Open it up. The more times you bang your egg on the side, the more opportunities there are for lots of small shells to get into what you're baking. You can see here, like a little depression.
Paula Shoyer:
Now, I have taught cooking classes in person for many, many years. I've taught at Camp Ramah in Massachusetts for about 12 years. And there's always one camper who slams their egg on the table and smashes it into smithereens. You only make that mistake one time. All right. So here we have our three large eggs. All right. Next, I'm going to add a cup of granulated sugar. A half a cup of oil. You want to use a mild oil for this, not like an olive oil. But if that's all you had, you can use olive oil for it. But I'm using canola. So last, I'm going to add a teaspoon of the vanilla.
Paula Shoyer:
Now, one of the things I've done over the years is I've made so many different kinds of hamantaschen. And for years, people thought it was really fun to have different fillings for hamantaschen. Well, that is so last century. Today, to make hamantaschen fun, you can change the dough. So in my Holiday Kosher Baker cookbook, I have a whole chapter on hamantaschen, which includes macho green tea hamantaschen, which turns the hamantaschen green. And if you wanted to make hamantaschen pink for raspberry hamantaschen or any other color, this would be the time you would add your coloring.
Paula Shoyer:
And I'm just going to show you something that I did today, just for fun, because I had a class just before this one. I put turmeric in the batter just to see if it would come out yellow, doing something natural. So if you're adding any color or even a flavoring, I sometimes have done dark chocolate hamantaschen and I might add mint extract. So any extract, any flavoring you want to add to the dough, this is when you would add it.
Paula Shoyer:
Now, you can use the whisk attachment or the paddle attachment of your mixer, or really just mix it by hand. I remove this bowl over so you guys can see inside. Excellent. And you're just going to mix all these ingredients together. Now, whenever you're making anything at any mixer, I don't care how fancy it is, make sure you have a handy silicone spatula to scrape down the sides, because these blades, the whisk, they don't get to the bottom of the bowl. They don't get around the sides. You just have to have one of these handy. So we're just mixing this until it all comes together. Hamantaschen dough is super easy because it's a one bowl dough.
Paula Shoyer:
The Kosher Baker cookbook was organized into three sections, like one-step recipes, two-step recipes, and three-step recipes. Because I think the first thing you think about when you want to bake is how much time you have. Because if it's Friday at three o'clock and you want something to serve that night, you're not making a layer cake. You're going to make a one bowl orange tea cake, which is the cover of my book.
Paula Shoyer:
All right. The next thing we're going to do is we are going to add in three cups of flour. I already measured that out. This is all purpose flour. I'm just going to go ahead and pour this in here. And this is baking and it's science. So when you're measuring, really take the time to measure properly. Scoop, shake your measuring cup and level. And I'm just adding in a pinch of salt.
Paula Shoyer:
Now, there are people out there who are wondering, "Why isn't there any baking powder in this recipe?" A couple of reasons. I do put no more than one teaspoon of baking powder into some of my hamantaschen recipes, but it makes the hamantaschen a lot thicker. I don't like them to be too thick. If they're too thick, you have the risk that they're going to open up while baking. But I will show you my super tip for that. This one is like a chocolate chip cookie basically, and they're particularly good warm. So by not putting in baking powder, I keep it like a cookie consistency versus more of a cakey consistency.
Paula Shoyer:
So I'm going to close this up, and I'm going to mix this up. Now, this recipe is called chocolate chip hamantaschen. And like I said before, I'm not just about cool fillings. I'm about making the dough itself really cool. So if you can see in here, I have chopped chocolate, and I'm going to show you how we chop it. Now, when you're adding the chopped chocolate to the dough, it's really important that it be really small pieces. Because can you imagine rolling out a giant dough that has a giant piece of chocolate in it? So I'm just reaching down into my bowl to make sure I get up all of the ingredients.
Paula Shoyer:
You can mix hamantaschen dough with your hands. Your hands are probably your best kitchen tool. All right, there we go. All right. So now, I've got all of these ingredients together. I'm going to show you how I do the chocolate. Okay. For some reason, I'm seeing a launch meeting screen. Somebody sharing a screen share-
Allyson Tazbin:
Yeah, somebody tried to share a screen.
Paula Shoyer:
All right. So I just want to show you this quickly. Okay, great. I've got my mini cutting board here. So when you want to chop the chocolate, I want you to use a knife like this that's kind of has a flat blade. Now, this is a way I actually teach children how to cook, because your hands are nowhere near your fingers. So I'm literally just chopping down like this. The point of my knife is anchored on the cutting board. So all I'm doing is just cutting down this way. This is how I chop garlic. This is how I chop fresh herbs. So you're going to just keep moving it together and chopping. You want the pieces to be a quarter-inch or smaller. So you're just going to chop like this.
Allyson Tazbin:
Paula, we have two questions.
Paula Shoyer:
Yes.
Allyson Tazbin:
One is, do you sift the flour? And the second one is, can you use a sugar substitute?
Paula Shoyer:
Okay. So number one, nobody sifts flour anymore. There's no reason to sift. However, you're mixing them will get distributed fine. So I don't sift flour anymore. Sugar substitutes, I think I may have a sugar-free hamantaschen or I tend to do more low sugar versus sugar-free. And I don't believe that any of the sugar substitutes are cup for cup because I've tried that and it just doesn't work. So if I was going to use a sugar substitute in this recipe, this is a little trickier, but I don't think I could just change the sugar. I probably have to change some other ingredients as well.
Paula Shoyer:
Let me see. I may have a sugar-free one in here. I know I have a gluten-free one for sure in this book. And I still have a whole chapter on Purim recipes and I did a low sugar one. So this is my view of the world. Right. So in this book, I have a hamantaschen that has two tablespoons of sugar. The American Diabetes Association has recipes on their website with a quarter cup of sugar. Even a third day, they sometimes do.
Paula Shoyer:
So I have a recipe in the book that has two tablespoons of sugar in it. And for that recipe, you could probably do a sugar substitute. So you see I'm cutting these up into little pieces. Can you guys see how little they are? They're just little kind of quarter-inch pieces like that. All right, let's go ahead and add this into our dough. I've got some really big ones. I'm going to save those for my filling. Make sure you get all the powder off of your knife. You don't want to lose any chocolate. I use bittersweet chocolate for everything, because that's what I like.
Paula Shoyer:
I'm just going to mix this gently to just distribute the chocolate pea chunks all around the dough. And it does cover the dough a little bit, but it kind of looks like cookies and cream. Okay. A couple of things. Now, let's say you're making your hamantaschen dough and you have no time to chill it, you just don't. Okay. So I'm going to show you what my test is for, if you want to roll out the job right away.
Paula Shoyer:
And this is a test that I use for almost any dough. If I'm making a yeast dough, a babka dough. I take the dough into my hands. Okay. And when I touch the dough, when I squeeze it, if I have pieces of dough on my hand, it's probably needs a little bit of flour. If I touch the dough and you see when I touch it for the most part, my hand is greasy, but there's no pieces there. It's probably okay. But since a little bit of the dough it's a little bit sticky to me, I'm just going to sprinkle in a tablespoon flour or so. Now if I have time to make it in advance, even if it's a little sticky, I might still stick it in the fridge anyway, because it will firm up. So I'm just going to mix a little bit of this in just to make it a drop less sticky.
Allyson Tazbin:
Do you recommend a certain type of chocolate?
Paula Shoyer:
So I use bittersweet chocolate from the Barry Callebaut company. I buy it in like five kilo blocks this big and chop it up. I just love it. And I use so much chocolate, so it's a good way. But California Gourmet is a company that's a friend of mine. They are really allergen-friendly and their chocolate chips are really good. So they have chips, they have chunks, they have mini chips and they're really good quality chips. So I would highly recommend those. And they may be having a promotion because I help her publicize that every once in a while.
Paula Shoyer:
So if anybody follows me on Instagram, I sometimes put up in my stories when they're having a promotion of the chips, and then I just buy a ton of them myself. Because I don't know about you, but I go through a lot of chocolate chips. Okay. So here is my dough. I'm going to put it into a metal bowl and stick it in the fridge. Because the glass will not get cold. So just to show you what the dough looks like, I will hold it up really close in a moment. Give me one second to move these out of the way. Okay.
Paula Shoyer:
This is the world of Zoom classes where I'm tech support and I'm my own assistant. Okay. So I'm going to hold this up so you can see what the dough looks like. So you see that there's little specks of chocolate. There's some little bigger ones. Sometimes the powder kind of mushes into the dough, but don't worry about that. And you can just cover this with plastic and stick it in the fridge or however amount of time you can. I'm just going to cover it up with my bag. And I'm going to go ahead and put this in the refrigerator. And this will chill for a little while.
Paula Shoyer:
Give me a second. I'm just getting out some of my dough from yesterday, but I'm going to roll out some of that as well. I have a little bit from yesterday. So hold on. So yesterday I made this dough and I also made my matcha green tea dough, which is really good. Okay. I have a little bit of dough to start showing to you guys, but I think what I'll do is probably, let what's in the fridge chill a little bit and end up using that. So give me a second. And the other thing I'm also going to explain to everybody is ways to decorate your hamantaschen too, because it's not just about the dough or the filling anymore, because there's a lot of fun ways to decorate it. Okay. So just give me a second to clean up here.
Paula Shoyer:
Okay. So people want to know, how did I start off at Brandeis pre-med and ended up The Kosher Baker? So I will tell you about that. So I'm going to let the dough chill for about 10, 15 minutes or so, and then I'll roll it out. I'm just going to get out all of the things I need for rolling out my dough. So many, many, many years ago I was class of '86. My whole life all I wanted was to be a doctor. So I went to Brandeis pre-med not unlike lots of other people who start at Brandeis pre-med.
Paula Shoyer:
And one day, I had just a really bad day in the chemistry lab because as many people on this Zoom know, at Brandeis, a lot of people will show up pre-med, but they kind of weed out the people who aren't in serious. So one day in chem lab, first semester, freshman year, everything went wrong. I spilled nitric acid on my hands, they turned yellow. And then I got magnesium black spots. Then I spilled sulfuric acid on my Tretorn sneakers. See, people my age will remember Tretorn sneakers. And my foot was fine, but there was a hole in my shoe. And I decided that, that was a sign from God that I was destined for something else.
Paula Shoyer:
Now, I love to cook and bake my entire life. Everybody has a food story. And their own food story basically comes from all of their food experiences in their lives. So it could be your mother, or your grandmother's kitchen, or an aunt. Memories you have from celebrating different holidays with a Thanksgiving, or Passover, or Rosh Hashanah throughout your life. Memories from the first foods you served your children, or when you first got married, or when you hosted friends and living in the mod senior year.
Paula Shoyer:
For people in my mod, one of our roommates made homemade tortellini one year, and we still joke with him about that. It took him all day long, and then we kicked him out of the kitchen after that. So everybody here has those food memories. Plus if you've traveled at all, then you have memories of places you've been. Foods you've tasted. Foods you had for special occasions in your lives.
Paula Shoyer:
So for me, personally, my food story goes back to my grandmother's kitchen in Sea Gate, Brooklyn. And I would sit at the counter in her pink and yellow kitchen, 1970s, kid you not, and watch her measure cake ingredients with her hands. And I always loved to bake, but I never imagined that it was actually a career choice. I grew up in Long Island in the '70s, and I felt like my career options were doctor, lawyer, accountant, teacher, a social worker, something like that.
Paula Shoyer:
After pre-med did not work out, I did the next best thing. I decided to be a lawyer. So I graduated from Brandeis in '86 and I moved down to Washington, D.C. I went to American University Law School, and I practiced law for four years in Washington, D.C. I did environmental and insurance litigation, super sexy stuff.
Paula Shoyer:
Then my husband's work for the U.S. Government sent us to Geneva, Switzerland. And he was a legal advisor for the U.S. Mission to the World Trade Organization. And it was wonderful working there. I had a job for a former Brandeis president, Morris Abram hired me to work at UN Watch, which dealt with the treatment of Israel at the UN. After my daughter Emily was born, Morris was a little less tolerant of me taking off time to be with my daughter. So I left that job and decided I'm going to cooking school in Paris. I had a friend living there that I could stay with. I brought my baby daughter, Emily in tow, and I went to the Ritz-Escoffier, which was way more fun than law school, but I wasn't even planning a career. I just went for fun.
Paula Shoyer:
And my daughter ended up in the 95th percentile for weight at that age, because every morning I would wheel her around Paris, and we would taste all the pastries. And then every evening I would come home from cooking school with massive piles of cake boxes. So I came back to Geneva where I was living. People asked me to bake for them. They paid me. I ended up with a catering business. Came back to the U.S. Taught cooking classes in this kitchen, edited somebody else's cookbooks and decided, "I want to write my own cookbook." And then Brandeis came in and saved the day. And my first book came out.
Paula Shoyer:
So about 30 something years from when I used to sit in my grandmother's kitchen, I was doing cooking demos like this, but obviously in person. My name gets passed around and I get recommended to do events. So one day a woman emails me from Brooklyn asking me if I would do a cooking class in her rabbi's house. So I read the email, I smile, I call her up and I say to her, "Am I doing this cooking demo at 38 44 Lime Avenue in Brooklyn?" And she says to me, "How do you know the address of my rabbi's house?" And I tell her that, "That was my grandparent's former house."
Paula Shoyer:
So I did a cooking demo in the same kitchen where my grandmother baked and taught me how to bake. My mother, my daughter, my aunt, my father were all there. And I thought I would be overwhelmed because grandma was gone. She lived to age 98 on a steady diet of spongecake and Sanka. And when I stood up in that kitchen, which had been redecorated, I felt completely at peace, because I had The Kosher Baker in my hands, finally. And I knew that's what I was meant to be doing.
Paula Shoyer:
So yeah, you can go to Brandeis pre-med, switched to pre-law, and end up a pastry chef. And now, my fifth cookbook just came out. Literally, two days ago. I will show it to you. Instant Pot Kosher Cookbook. And I've been waiting and waiting for it. I love instant pot cooking. People are welcome to message me through my website, thekosherbaker.com. If they're interested in books or interested in learning more about instant pot cooking. And that's been a whole really fun experience.
Paula Shoyer:
Okay. Somebody's still waiting for the book. Yeah, Amazon should be shipping out the books. If you want them quickly, buy them from Barnes & Noble. They have lots of copies and people are already getting them, people who ordered them from Barnes & Noble got them before I did.
Paula Shoyer:
All right, I'm going to get into rolling out hamantaschen dough. So let me get my mixer out of the way. So I have more space to work at. And if anybody has any questions about the dough, let me know. So I'm just going to do some rolling of my dough from yesterday, and then I'll get out the other dough. Okay. A word about cookie sheets. Should be solid. You shouldn't be able to bend them that's number one. Number two, they should be light color. Darker color cookie sheets retain heat, and your cookies can burn. I'm using a silicone baking mat, but I could also line my paper with parchment.
Paula Shoyer:
So I've got a lot of fun tools out down here. Let me look at these. This is like a spatula. Here's a thinner one. I'm going to show you one other option because I want to show you of all my little tips and tricks of rolling out hamantaschen. Okay. The first thing is, I'm going to sprinkle flour on my parchment paper. Now, you're all thinking, "Okay. Yeah. I know how to do that." But you don't. Because most people put way too much flour on their parchment, and then everything tastes like cardboard. So whenever you're sprinkling flour, whether you're making hamantaschen, high dough, cookie dough.
Paula Shoyer:
I want you to take your fingers and just pinch like this, and then sprinkle it all around your parchment like it's raining. In French use cookies, so they used to say, [French], and just sprinkle it. And you want to be reasonably generous because we have to make sure we can get those circles off. So I'm going to start with a small amount of dough and then I'll go get some more of my other dough. So this is my other trick, I roll or pie dough, tart dough, cookie dough between two pieces of parchment. And I do that so that I don't have to sprinkle too much flour on it.
Allyson Tazbin:
We have a question. Is this the same recipe that is in your Holiday Kosher Baker cookbook?
Paula Shoyer:
Yes. Yes it is. I have a whole chapter called My Rainbow of Hamantaschen with all different color hamantaschen. The gluten free is there, the low sugar one is there as well. So yes, that is where it's from. My last book before the Instant Pot book is The Healthy Jewish Kitchen. And that book has a pumpkin hamantaschen in it. Because I really want it to be as natural as possible. Now, whenever you're rolling it out every once in a while, I want you to take some more flour and just sprinkle it on top like it's raining. Now, you don't need to make it too thin. And what's nice about rolling on the parchment is, you can keep turning it in different directions.
Paula Shoyer:
Now, whenever you're rolling at any dough like this, resist the urge to roll over the edge. Because you know what happens, if you keep rolling it all the way out, you end up with really thin pieces on the outside. And then the middle is really thick. Every once in a while, I'm just going to open this up, and you'll see this dough, the one that's chilled, I'm going to roll out from the other one in a minute too. And I'll give you two different options for filling these ones.
Paula Shoyer:
The other trick is, whenever I'm rolling out dough, at least once during the rolling, I put my hands under the parchment, and I flip the entire packet over and whipped up that bottom parchment, and sprinkle a little more flour on it. Because we don't want those circles to get stuck. I'm on Instagram at Kosher Baker. And if you take a look, I did these beautiful hamantaschen. I called them neapolitan hamantaschen, and I will show them to you in a moment. And the recipe actually is on my Instagram at Kosher Baker. It's a chocolate dough with dark cocoa in it. And then it has a chocolate filling like we're going to do here. And then I decorated them, which I'll show you in a moment.
Paula Shoyer:
Now, about three inches or a standard size. You can also make mini ones with a two inch, but those take all day. Now, you can also use a drinking glass. So this is important. When I put my circle down to cut, I'm going to wiggle it so that it really completely separates from the dough, so I don't have any kind of raggedy edges. And you can cut the circles really close to each other. You're going to reroll the scraps anyway. So every time you roll, just do your best to get as many as you can.
Paula Shoyer:
Now, this is my next important tip. I'm going to sprinkle a little flour on the edges of my parchment. I can use different tools for this. I want to lift up the circle, because I don't want to fill it if it's going to be stuck. And I'm going to move it onto another part of my parchment, where there's a little bit of flour. And I'm going to hold this up to show you. This is a little thin. Let's see. This one's a better one to show you. Okay, can you guys see this? This is how thin you want it. It's about a quarter of an inch. And I'm one of those crazy people, I keep a ruler in my kitchen so that I can measure things, because I'm really precise in my recipes.
Allyson Tazbin:
We have another question. A recipe in the first book uses a teaspoon of orange juice. Why not tonight's recipe?
Paula Shoyer:
Oh, because I didn't want to combine orange with the chocolate. I decided to put the vanilla in instead. The original hamantaschen recipe comes from my husband's grandmother. And she used to put orange juice in it.
Allyson Tazbin:
And another question, is there a more sustainable alternative to parchment paper?
Paula Shoyer:
Yes. It's called silicone baking mat. So you could roll the dove out on this as well. You could roll it out between two of these. And what's wonderful about silicon mats is that you can actually put them in the dishwasher. So I use them to bake my challahs on all the time. All right. Couple of different options. I'm going to get a measuring spoon just to show you guys about how much you're going to put in.
Paula Shoyer:
Okay. So couple of options for this recipe. Option number one is, you can take your blocks, your chocolate, and cut it into chunks that are about that big. It's a lot of work to cut the chunks, okay? So I'm going to give you a better option. And you can always piece together a couple of chunks that way, okay?
Paula Shoyer:
The other way to do it is scoop up a bunch, it's probably about eight or so chips, and just press them in the middle so they don't roll away. My turmeric ones, I filled with melted chocolate like raw tahini and powdered sugar. And I literally just made that recipe up today. So if you ask me for that recipe, I can't really tell you yet, because I literally made it up in my last class.
Paula Shoyer:
So my last class that I did is part of a series that I've done for teenagers, where they cook dinner for their families once a week. So they come to me after they finished school, it's all virtual, and we make a whole meal. Israeli dinner with pita and shawarma. And then we did chicken scallopini last week. We make soups, we make side dishes, and we started 4:30. They're done at 6:30 Eastern time. And they sit down with their families. And it's been really, really fun.
Paula Shoyer:
And I'm going to probably start up some more sessions next after Passover. So if anybody's got kids 12 to 17 who are interested and have some cooking skills, and they want a break from cooking dinner, let me know. Now, let's start shaping these. Okay. I'll do use this one, it's a little bit thicker for us. Okay. The first thing that I do, I'm taking my middle finger. I'm not going to fold the whole thing at one time. This is what I do. I use my middle finger and I press the top and make sure that sticks.
Paula Shoyer:
One tip, if your dough ends up being really dry, either somehow it got dry, or you just put way too much flour on it and it's not sticky, get a little bowl of water and just put a little bit water around the edges. Okay. So once I get that top piece pinched, I use my thumbs to lift up the bottom, and I want to make sure this bottom is completely straight. Okay. And only am I going to press the corners. And then I can reshape it however I like. Always make sure you can move those circles around, because if they're stuck, just scrape them off and they won't hold the shape. So here's what the chips. Now, if you're filling up hamantaschen with any kind of gooey filling or jam, try not to overfill it. So if you're using jam, it should be a little bit less than a teaspoon of the jam.
Allyson Tazbin:
And you use grape seed oil in this recipe.
Paula Shoyer:
Absolutely. Absolutely. My Holiday Kosher Baker book where this recipe is from, has 45 Passover recipes and 37 gluten-free. So if anybody is interested in buying any books from me, you can message me through thekosherbaker.com contact page. And I will ship out signed books to you. I give 10% of all my sales to feed the needy in different locations. And I'm actually going to the post office probably tomorrow. And I wait till I fill them all before I move them.
Paula Shoyer:
Whatever you're doing in the kitchen, any kind of cutting something, like today, I was making pecan sticky buns with my students, as well as the hamantaschen, and the kids were slicing the buns and putting them right into the muffin tins. My feeling is, do all of this and then move them, okay? And then you're going to put them on your cookie sheet.
Paula Shoyer:
Now, these don't have baking powder in them. So they're not going to really grow very much. So you can have a little bit, you don't have to have that much space between them. When you roll out the scraps, you're probably not going to need so much flour and you want to grow it out almost like a little bit thicker than the first batch. Because it's just going to get increasingly dryer if you keep adding... Oh, I can't get another one out of that. And this is a fun spatula that I can use to lift it as well. But you guys get the idea to make sure that your circle isn't sticking, and I want to show you guys something really fun. Okay. Anybody knows what these are? Let's see if anybody wants to guess. I'm going to show you what I did with them in a second. Anybody know?
Allyson Tazbin:
Chocolate candy disks.
Paula Shoyer:
Nope, next.
Allyson Tazbin:
Ruby chocolate.
Paula Shoyer:
Yep. They are ruby chocolate. Elise Winnock, very nice. So-
Allyson Tazbin:
No, it was Judith. I asked-
Paula Shoyer:
It was Judith, Oh, okay. You know, okay. Somebody else put it up here. So if you guys can see these, this is one of the fun things that I do when my hamantaschen is baked. I melted the ruby chocolate and dip the corner in. And I actually put dried raspberry powder on top. You can buy dry raspberries online. And then this one, I dipped it in chocolate, and I made a white glaze just with powdered sugar, and water, and the ruby. So don't think that you just have to do fun things on the inside of your hamantaschen, you can use that.
Paula Shoyer:
So maybe, I'll do one with ruby chocolate for fun, because why not? I did try making pink hamantaschen last week with pureed beets in the dough. But the pureed beets didn't come out as well as I wanted them to. Oh, this looks cute. I think this is a good idea. And I want to go get the dough out of the fridge, just so I show you how you manage with dough that's a little bit softer.
Allyson Tazbin:
We have a few questions.
Paula Shoyer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Allyson Tazbin:
My dough isn't anywhere near that dark, did you add dye to your dough?
Paula Shoyer:
I did not. It's all a matter of how much you mix in. So if you're chopping the chocolate and you end up with a lot of the powder of the chocolate, then it's going to get darker. This was yesterday's dough that probably might've been rolled out more. So here's the dough that we just made, okay? So I'll take some of this to roll out. I'm going to put the rest of it back in the fridge. So that we gave it about, I don't know, maybe 20 minutes or so. Let's see how it rolls out, see it, you can see the difference.
Allyson Tazbin:
Can you explain what ruby chocolate is?
Paula Shoyer:
Ah, so ruby chocolate was created by the Barry Callebaut company about two plus years ago. It's actually, part of the cocoa bean that they process in a way that they discovered had this reddish tint. They don't share their full recipe of it. They are kosher dairy, and you can buy them on Amazon in different places. And they do have some chemicals in them, but there wasn't anything super offensive to it. So it's not dyed with any kind of dye. It's really quite fascinating. I had it for the first time in London about two and a half years ago, or something like that. Or was in fall of 2018?
Paula Shoyer:
So since the dough is softer, I am going to add a little bit more flour here and there. And don't forget, whenever you're adding the flour, you definitely want to roll it out. Don't press too hard. And you'll see when you're rolling it like... Oh, next time I cut the chocolate for this dough, I need to cut the chocolate smaller, because it gets a little harder to roll if you have bigger chunks of chocolate.
Allyson Tazbin:
What is the size of the circle for the cookie cutter, and how high are the side walls that are folded in for the hamantaschen?
Paula Shoyer:
Interesting. Okay. I would say mine are about an inch. This is about a three inch circle and this is my two inch. But I haven't been using the two inch. The two inches is really cute, it's just, it takes too much time to do it. But you could use a drinking glass as well, and you can make them any size. Now, I bake these at 350 for about 14, 15 minutes. But the most important baking tip I'm going to share with you today... Let me just flip this over for a second. Is, everybody's oven is a little bit different. So if you a Viking oven that runs hotter than a GE.
Paula Shoyer:
So my recommendation is, the first time you make a recipe, my recipe, anyone's recipe, is you subtract baking time. People over-bake challah all the time. People over-bake cookies all the time. You can always add more time, but it's harder to take it away, especially on a hamantaschen. Over-baking hamantaschen, there's nothing to do. If you over-bake a chocolate chip cookie and you have some burnt edges, you can take a vegetable peeler and scrape off the burnt part. We're not going to-
Paula Shoyer:
Yes?
Allyson Tazbin:
Do you grease the cookie sheet or Silpat?
Paula Shoyer:
Okay. If I'm using a Silpat parchment, I do not grease it. If I don't have either, then I would probably spray it with some oil. All right. So we're back to cutting our circles again. And really cut them really close to each other, so it's less work this way. And I like to roll out my dough like this in batches and not let at all sit out, so that it doesn't get too soft. Now, let's say you're halfway through rolling your dough, and the dough is really sticking to the parchment no matter how much flour you put on. Just stop what you're doing. Take the parchment, the dough, and the parchment, that whole sandwich, slide it on a cookie sheet and stick it in the freezer for 10 minutes. And you can do that with anything. If you're doing a pie dough or a tart dough. Yeah.
Allyson Tazbin:
Going back to the ruby chocolate, does it have the same taste as regular chocolate?
Paula Shoyer:
It tastes florally to me. It doesn't taste like white chocolate. I don't know. It just has this floral taste to me, like I'm eating something from a flower. It's a very pleasant taste. It really is nice. I made chocolate babka with ruby chocolate about two months ago. I posted the pictures, but I didn't have a chance to retest the recipe. So I have to do that at some point. It was so pretty. And then I sprinkled dried raspberries on top, which was really, really nice. I'm a-
Allyson Tazbin:
How many times do you try a recipe before you put it in your cookbook?
Paula Shoyer:
Ah, okay. So every recipe in my book, I tested personally, at least four or five times. Sometimes it takes 10 tries to get the recipe right. But after I have tested it, as well as I can, I send it out to my recipe testers. So I have recipe testers all over the United States, in California, New Jersey, Florida. I've recipe testers in Israel, in London, different flour, different water, to make sure that the recipes work. For my Instant Pot book, I ended up using my entire synagogue community. And it was really funny. We have synagogue services on Saturday mornings. People would just be cornering me telling me what they made for dinner the night before. But they were such a rabid instant pot using group. I figured that was all my people.
Paula Shoyer:
But I'm always looking for other recipe testers. I haven't started another book yet. I was asked to write a kosher air fryer cookbook, but then I decided that I didn't really want to spend eight months of my life just using the air fryer. And although I'd like the air fryer, it doesn't make enough food for your normal size family. So I have four children between the ages of 21 and 26, and a batch of anything in the air fryer, French fries, Brussels sprouts schnitzel, feeds four to five people. So if I have to do it twice, I might as well just stick it all in the oven. So that's my view.
Paula Shoyer:
I know there are militant air fryer people out there. I understand where you're coming from, but I just feel like it's a novelty for a kosher home. It's not a workhorse. An instant pot, I make my chicken soup in it. I make so many wonderful stews and cholent, and wonderful recipes in it that are just classic Jewish recipes so much faster. Think about split pea soup, and lentil soup, and chicken soup. It just cooks so much faster.
Allyson Tazbin:
If you could repeat, how long to bake the hamantaschen in the oven?
Paula Shoyer:
Absolutely. So the recipe says 14 to 16 minutes. Everybody should time them for 13 or 14 minutes, and then take a look at them. Now, when you're making hamantaschen, I'm just going to show you one so you'll see what I mean. Here's just a classic vanilla hamantaschen, okay? There's no color on the top of it. None. This is my vanilla bean hamantaschen, but there's light color on the bottom, okay? So if you pick one up off the tray and look at it and you see color, just take it out. Even if when you touch it, it still feels a little soft. Like steak and even chicken, it continues to cook when it's out of the oven. So take it out before they're done unless you want them really, really crunchy. But I like my hamantaschen to have a little bit of softness to them.
Allyson Tazbin:
We have some participants who want to know, in the future, how to become a recipe tester if possible.
Paula Shoyer:
Ah, message me through the website. My email is pretty basic. It's pshoyer@hotmail. You can message me and you can get on my list. Right now we're working through a new book idea. We'll see where that goes. I was so sure when the pandemic started that the only thing for me to do was to write another book since I couldn't do any events. But little did I know that there was a world out there literally hungry for virtual classes. I do brunch classes, 60th birthday parties, bat mitzvahs. It's been quite extraordinary. So if anybody's interested in any kind of a program or a get together with your relative, I did a Moroccan themed Zoom dinner class for four sisters all over the United States, and they just wanted to be together and then sit down and eat together. So it was a lot of fun. It's been really fun.
Paula Shoyer:
And of course the dinner classes are great, because that's basically my dinner is what I cook in the classes. But this week it's all baking, it seems. So I'm kind of drowning in hamantaschen. I don't know. I think I'll have 12 dozen total by the end of this class, which is pretty crazy. But I ordered some lovely little boxes, so people who live near me in Maryland, but close, I'm not driving too far, we'll be getting some boxes of hamantaschen from me. And now I have so many different color ones, which is what I thought would be fun.
Paula Shoyer:
I'm usually traveling this time of year, because I do these Purim Passover events for synagogues and different groups. So by time I'm home for Purim, I'm usually too tired to make hamantaschen, or I've made hamantaschen for everybody else in the country, and just don't feel like doing it for myself. But I'm always super busy before Passover. And once Monday hits, you guys know it's going to be all about Passover.
Allyson Tazbin:
We have a question about, when do you use convection baking?
Paula Shoyer:
Ah, that's a good question. Okay. So me personally, I don't use it that much. Mostly because, I do it if I'm baking just for myself, but when I'm writing recipes, not everybody uses convection or understands convection. So for people who don't understand it, basically, the hot air is just swirled around a lot better. And in theory, more evenly than regular bake. I feel like it's a little bit of a myth because if I'm doing multiple sheets of cookies, even with convection, I still have to do that cookie dance when you turn the racks around and you have to put them on different racks. So if you're cooking under the convection feature, you need to reduce the oven temperature by 25 degrees, and reduce the cooking time. But if you're doing multiple racks, it's a good way to go.
Paula Shoyer:
All right. Okay. And then once I get these on the pan, I'm going to show you my other really important tip. Because the biggest complaint I get about hamantaschen is that people say that their hamantaschen open up in the oven, and then they get really unhappy about that. All right. I'm just going to get one more out of here, and the interest of not wasting. I also have a Facebook group called Kosher Baker where other people besides me share their baked goods. And it's been a really fun community for me to learn from, and for other people to share what they're doing. So around the holidays, it's particularly fun. All right. My last one, and then I'm going to show you my very important tip for shaping these, and then I'll get these in the oven. Okay. Let me just get this out of the way here and I'll show you what I'm going to do next.
Paula Shoyer:
The next step is actually really, really important. All right. Here we go. Here's all my hamantaschen on my sheet. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to pinch them again. Sometimes I need to put a little flour on my hands. But literally, I am pitching every single corner and I can reshape it. If I don't like the shape of the center piece, I can pinch it in a different direction. This one looks a little funny. So maybe I need to make a smaller hole. I'm re-pinching every single corner a second time. And this is my trick to make sure that they don't open while they are baking.
Allyson Tazbin:
We have a question. Do you put an egg wash on your dough if you do not use chocolate chips?
Paula Shoyer:
Oh, I never put an egg wash on my hamantaschen dough, but I think could be a nice idea. All right.
Allyson Tazbin:
Did you ever make a chocolate ganache filling that does not spill out?
Paula Shoyer:
I'm trying to think. I have done melted chocolate with other ingredients, like powdered sugar and peanut butter. I did tahini. Just tonight, I did these ones here. I'll show them to you. I'm going to get out my little fun hamantaschen here to show you, the world of hamantaschen in my house, which is kind of insane. So this one here, this one is colored with turmeric. This feeling was melted chocolate tahini and powdered sugar. So wait, what was the original question again? Just remind me.
Allyson Tazbin:
The question was, did you ever make a ganache filling that does not-
Paula Shoyer:
Right. So what I would recommend is if you're making a ganache filling to make sure that you have some powdered sugar in it so that it doesn't ooze out. But I also think that none of mine in my turmeric ones oozed out because I didn't put too much filling in it. I think that's the problem. I think when people put too much filling in them, they will ooze out. I know that a bunch of my students this afternoon, they will all insistent on putting Nutella in their hamantaschen. But Nutella has a nice thickness to it. My personal favorite hamantaschen filling in the universe is caramel.
Paula Shoyer:
So on my Instagram, I have madri gras hamantaschen which are purple, and yellow, and green strides. And when I was in New Orleans a couple of years ago for a cooking demonstration, they had these pretty lean candies all over New Orleans. So I decided to create a pecan caramel filling for the hamantaschen. And as long as you don't put in any more than a teaspoon of a filling, if you have a three inch cookie, then it shouldn't ooze out at all.
Paula Shoyer:
But I don't think you can just put melted chocolate in it. It would have to be something a bit thicker. But I use ganache for so many different kinds of desserts. You can decide how thick you want it to be. So if you can make your ganache so that it's more thicker and creamier as opposed to liquid, then that should hold up pretty well.
Allyson Tazbin:
And can you share your Instagram handle for how we can get in contact with you?
Paula Shoyer:
Yes. And there's so many ways to find me. Here, I'll put my little hamantaschen collection over here. Oh, I'm missing one. Okay. So my Instagram is at Kosher Baker, not the, just Kosher Baker. And you can find me on Facebook, The Kosher Baker Paula Shoyer, or The Kosher Baker Facebook page. This one oozed out a little bit just because I probably put too much apricot jam inside. Here, I'll get a prettier one for you. Okay. And then the solution for the ones that aren't as pretty is to basically, decorate the outside of them. All right. Here's a reasonably pretty one. Here you go. So these are my green ones with matcha green tea powder in the dough. So you can see that all of these are really very lightly... And this was one I just dipped in chocolate.
Paula Shoyer:
So this is basically, what's going on in my house this week. And now I get to add more of the chocolate ones to the mix. Now, these chocolate ones, I like to eat them warm. So I would recommend eating them when they come out of the oven. And if not, you can warm them up in the microwave. My sons, I have twin boys who are 21, who are in college right now. And I have a son who's 24 who lives in Colorado. They like everything warm. They warm up babka or they warm up rugelach. They really like it much better, and they want everything to be gooey. So you can just warm them up so that the inside is nice and gooey for you.
Allyson Tazbin:
Can you repeat the oven temperature you recommend?
Paula Shoyer:
Yes. For these cookies 350. I bake most of my cookies at 350. Black and white cookies, I do at 325. Black and white cookies, and babka have been my two most popular Zooms. Although hamantaschen is starting to compete. I've been making black and white cookies almost nonstop. I had two black and white cookie bakes this weekend, which was a lot of fun. And for me, I know that so many people are so Zoomed out at this point. But for me, right now, I'm going to go back to gathering... Every time I'm doing one of these classes, I'm looking at screens of people who are smiling at me. They're happy because we're talking about food.
Paula Shoyer:
And we all cook to survive, right? But we don't bake to survive. We bake to comfort. We bake to uplift. We bake to celebrate. We bake to share. So all of these hamantaschen, they're just going to go out the door. When I do four different soups in a week in the Zoom classes, I am packing up containers, and I'm giving them out to people that I know. And it's just a way you can use food to really connect with people right now. And just like when I was talking about how everybody has a food story, when you're planning meals for your table right now, you should think about... Just like in normal times, you would have old and young people at the table. You should have old and young recipes at your table.
Paula Shoyer:
And what I mean is, take a recipe from the past. Something that you have a special connection to, a memory that is particularly uplifting and comforting to you and serve in your home. Even if it's just you and you're by yourself, enjoy that. And think about that experience and that memory. And if you're with people at the table, then tell them why those recipes are important to you. Tell them the story behind them. At the same time, try a new recipe. Something from one of my books, something you find online, try something new and challenge yourself so that your table has this balance of old and young. Something from the past to honor. And then something that moves you forward into the future, and something that you add to your repertoire.
Paula Shoyer:
I grew up in Long Island, and my mother was a perfectly solid cook. But she literally had 14 recipes that she repeated over, and over, and over again. And that was great, but she never made anything new. And one of the fun things that I did with my four children when we were all stuck at home last year, was that we did these brunches every Sunday, and anybody who follows me might have seen the hashtag, brunch like a Shoyer.
Paula Shoyer:
And we would pick a place in the world every week. I mean, we did Swiss food, Eastern European, Israeli, Southern American, Cuban, Japanese breakfast, Greek, British high tea, French. And we would design a whole menu, and we would cook together. And we would have these experiences where we experienced food from places we've been to some places we've never been to. What I did fully appreciate from that exercise is that, we were talking about recipe testing before. The internet is a wild West when it comes to recipes.
Paula Shoyer:
Some of the recipes of other people that I made were terrible recipes. Step number three made absolutely no sense. So pick bloggers, and websites, and cookbook authors of people that you trust and keep going back to them for new ideas. Because sometimes I'll just pick some random recipe and I'm thinking the whole time, "I know 20 different ways to make this easier. Why am I using five different bowls when I could have used two? I hate washing five bowls."
Paula Shoyer:
I basically would write the companion to the Ottolenghi books because I hate washing dishes. So I tend to shortcut every one of their recipes, so I don't have to wash a lot. Because I am not a restaurant chef. I don't have a staff of people. You're looking at the staff. So I'm all about, trying to step into your shoes and think about how much work you really want to put in for one recipe. But when you're making my side dish for out of one of my books, it's only one part of your meal. So I'm not going to take up an hour of your time on a side dish. I'm just not going to do that. I'm about recipes that look complicated, but aren't complicated. And I'm happy to answer questions about any kind of baking, challah baking, food. Anything.
Allyson Tazbin:
We have a question going back to preparing the dough ahead of time. Can you make it a few days ahead of time, keep it in the fridge and then bake them maybe three days later?
Paula Shoyer:
Absolutely. So I would say the dough would last easily three to four days, and you're going to find it easier to roll out if it chills. And if you're ever rolling out any dough, and it's just getting too soft, just stick it in the fridge, stick it in the freezer. And you guys all know this, I know Celine knows this as well. French pastries have a lot of different components, right? But what French pastry taught me was that, you don't have to make them all at the same time. So let's say you want to make your hamantaschen dough on Monday and roll it out on Thursday. Fine. Maybe on Tuesday, you decide you're going to cook the caramel that you're going to put inside the hamantaschen. And that can sit in the fridge for another day or two.
Paula Shoyer:
It's just breaking up the work. French tarts are like, there's a dough and I might do the tart dough on a Monday and a pastry cream on Wednesday, and put it all together on Thursday. Each step only takes 10 minutes. We want our food and our meals to look like we were in the kitchen all day, but we don't want to be in the kitchen all day. And even though we all have way more time than we can fill these days, it doesn't mean we want to fuss anymore. We just don't want to fuss. We don't have the patience for it. So we don't want our basic recipes that we're feeding our family to be all that complicated.
Allyson Tazbin:
We have another question. When you drizzle chocolate on the hamantaschen, is it just about the chocolate or is it chocolate with a dash of oil?
Paula Shoyer:
Ah, that's a good question. Okay. So I'm going to actually show you right now. Okay. So since I did my black and white cookie classes this weekend, I have leftover chocolate. So I'm going to heat it up, but I will explain to you what it is. So I'm a big fan of mixing my melted chocolate with sugar syrup. It helps stabilize it. It makes it a little bit shinier, okay? But you don't necessarily have to do that. You could just melt the chocolate. I'm just going to see if this... Whoops. There we go. That's good. I'm going to mix this up and I'm going to show you some ways we can drizzle it. And you can do the same thing with powdered sugar and some hot water and lemon, and some lemon juice or vanilla to give it some flavor. But I really like using the sugar syrup for it.
Paula Shoyer:
So just to give you an idea, so here I have my bowl and this is the easiest thing you can do. You can literally take your hamantaschen... I want to make sure you can see this. Okay. And I can just dip in a corner like this. And in two seconds, I've now taken something so simple and I've made it fancier. Now, if you want it to, this I'll show you how I do this. This is kind of fun. Hold on.
Paula Shoyer:
So here I have a dried raspberry and you can buy these online. I crush it in my hands to a powder, and I can sprinkle that on top of my chocolate. So now, look at the colors I have here. Can you see that guys? I can hold it up here as well. I took just yellow hamantaschen and now I made it fancier. The other thing you can do is, I have something else ready here to show you is, let's say, you like nuts, right? This one has raspberry, and I can dip this in here. And the other thing I could do if I wanted to is I can take something and instead of just dipping it, I got to get it more liquidy, I think, because I could make lines on it.
Paula Shoyer:
Here we go. And this is just a really fun way to just take them up to another level. There we go. So another option is, I have a bunch of crushed pecans here, and I can take some of my nuts and I can sprinkle nuts on top. And then you just put it on some parchment paper so that it dries. Because it'll get it'll dry. Because all these chocolates did dry over time. And then you'll see, you'll have like a nice little decoration on them. Well, the yellow ones dipped in chocolate are particularly cute. Mine are coming out in two minutes. I'm going to go check them. Oh, it's one more minute. I'm going to go check them so I can show you. Oh, I think these are done.
Allyson Tazbin:
We have a question. Is sugar syrup the same as simple syrup for mixed drinks?
Paula Shoyer:
Exactly. And so once you make up a batch of sugar syrup to use for any recipe, then you can make cocktails out of it. Okay. So if you're looking at the tops of these, you're really not seeing maybe every once in a while there's a little bit of color on top. Can you guys see this? When I touch the top of this, it's still kind of soft. But when I turn one over, a little hot, I have color and that's all I need. And then I highly recommend, let me get a cooling rack, taking them off the pan. Don't let them sit for too long. Hold on. It's easier to slide off parchment than it is to side off a silicone mat. But you can just do a careful way. Oh, maybe not. It's a little hot. Okay. Give me a second and I will do this.
Allyson Tazbin:
As you are doing that, we have the infamous sourdough question from COVID. Question is, I perfected my sourdough-
Paula Shoyer:
Yay.
Allyson Tazbin:
But can'y get latching before baking to work? Have you tried various tools? Oh, they've tried various tools with no luck. Do you have any suggestions?
Paula Shoyer:
Okay. So the slashing, I know. I have been working on that as well, because if you're on Instagram, you get really jealous because everybody has these really cool designs. Okay. So the one thing I've learned is, and I get lazy about this, because what do I have to use if I'm, I use... Taking new razorblades. So I use just classic razorblades I buy from the store. The important thing is getting it on an angle. So dusting the top with flour, and just getting a nice coating on flour, and going fast on an angle and a little deeper than you think. And keep it simple. I find that my favorite way to slash is like an S, or I'll just do a big line and do a leafy kind of thing on it. Just keep it simple. I follow Josie Baker, who's last name is actually Baker. But I follow Josie Baker Bread's method, and I've been playing around too much with my dough. My last dough I put soaked fennel seeds in it, and it literally took over the flavor of my bread, but it's still really good. But I've been soaking flaxseeds, and sunflower seeds, and sesame seeds and putting that into the dough just to give it more nutrition, make it more interesting, just get tired of eating the same bread all the time.
Allyson Tazbin:
One more question. Can you explain in greater detail the combination of sugar syrup and chocolate?
Paula Shoyer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely. Okay. So when I'm making my black and white cookies, so I'm doing a lot of them. Well, for sugar syrup, I'll do. For that recipe it's two thirds of sugar to a half a cup of water. And all I do is bring it to a boil, stir it once it boils, I boil it for one minute and then I let it cool. And then I can keep it in a jar at room temperature, and use it for my ice coffee. Use it for anything. What I do is, I melt whatever amount of chocolate I want to melt. My method of melting is the microwave. I put my chocolate in a microwave safe bowl. I heat it for one minute and then I stir it. Even if it's not really melted, I still stir it.
Paula Shoyer:
I melt it for 45 seconds and I stir it again for about 10 seconds, then 30, stir and then 15 if necessary. So you do it very gradually. Then once I have my bowl with melted chocolate, usually I'll start off with at least two tablespoons of sugar syrup. It depends on the brand of chocolate because sometimes the chocolate really starts to get really thick, but you just have to keep adding more sugar syrup till you get the consistency that you want.
Paula Shoyer:
Another method is, if it gets really hard, you can always microwave it for four or five seconds and that should help your chocolate. If your chocolate glaze is too liquidy, stick it in the fridge for a little while, or let it sit out at room temperature for 20 minutes and it'll harden up again.
Paula Shoyer:
And then to do a white decoration for the hamantaschen, I would just powdered sugar, hot water, a little bit of lemon or vanilla, and then add maybe two or three teaspoons of sugar syrup to the white, and that you get a really nice shiny glaze that dries really nicely. I had white glaze, but then I got chocolate into it. So I don't have any more white glaze to decorate with.
Paula Shoyer:
And you should know that this idea of decorating the cookies when they're done, you could do this with any cookie. So let's say you made my chocolate chip mandelbread from The Kosher Baker. My first recipe in my first book, you could put out all the cookies and just drizzle, and glaze on top of them. You could also take a biscotti and dip one corner in pink chocolate, regular dark chocolate or a white glaze just to make them look a little fancier. I do have a recipe on my website called Chocolate Cabernet Mandelbread. I put Cabernet Sauvignon wine in the cookie, and I make a pink lays out of powdered sugar and wine. And I drizzled that on the cookies. They're definitely cookies for grownups, but they're really tasty.
Allyson Tazbin:
All right. I think we have time for maybe one or two more questions. One of them is, do you ever use Peter's Burgundy for your chocolate?
Paula Shoyer:
Is that a brand of chocolate?
Allyson Tazbin:
Shelly, is that a brand of chocolate? You can unmute yourself. Yes. It is a brand of chocolate.
Paula Shoyer:
I've never heard of it. So the chocolate I used to use for when I needed a block of chocolate to melt was a company called Alprose which is a Swiss chocolate that was kosher. I used to buy it in bulk, because it was so expensive in the stores until I started to buy the Barry Callebaut blocks of five kilos, which is 11 pounds of chocolate, and I just hack into it and... But the quality is just so good. And then I use California Gourmet chips, which you can just order directly from them. I encourage everybody who does a lot of baking to stock up on chocolate and chocolate chips between October and May. Because many chocolate companies won't ship to you after May, because they're so worried about your chocolate melting. So chocolate chips hold up for a long time. So it's a good thing to stock up on. Although soon I'll have to be thinking of the Passover baking as well.
Paula Shoyer:
I usually have on my website for every Jewish holiday a recipe index, which is a list of all my recipes for those holidays that are on my side, or on other people's websites, that could be in The Washington Post or different places with links, so you can get those recipes. So I have lots of hamantaschen recipes there, and I have an index list for Hanukkah. I'll do it for Shavuot with cheesecake. So you could always check back on the website. I'll also be posting Passover Zoom classes soon, which people can join. And it's going to be probably the Thursday before Passover. So you could literally bake with me on Thursday.
Paula Shoyer:
We'll probably do something like a fancier dessert and something really, you want to notch on the whole week, and also, items that can be frozen. So we'll all bake together before the holiday. So please join me for that. And if you have any kids, grandkids interested in any of my team classes, let me know. I think I may be doing virtual again this summer, but we'll see how that goes. And yeah, please just be in touch with me through social media, because I love to see what other people are baking, and I'm always open to learning new techniques myself.
Allyson Tazbin:
Thank you. Our final question of the night is, are all of your classes listed on your website?
Paula Shoyer:
Yeah, so all my appearances with different Jewish groups are on the website. I do schedule my own classes, so I'll probably put up the Passover classes tomorrow. Although I know that nobody's speaking Passover until Monday. It's the official beginning of Passover food season. So I will be posting that. That'll be on the classes page of the website. I feel very blessed. I feel like Brandeis' put me on the right path here by publishing my first book. And I just feel so grateful. 11 years later, five cookbooks down, and classes all over the world that I feel really, really blessed that I get to meet other bakers and spend time with people who love to do what I do. I like to cook too. But I always joke that I wrote this cookbook, The Healthy Jewish Kitchen, because this is how you're supposed to eat so that there's always room for dessert.
Allyson Tazbin:
Thank you for sharing that. All right, everyone. Well, first of all, thank you so much, Paula. This was fantastic. The comments just keep pouring in of, thank you. Thank you. This was so much fun and I hope everyone enjoyed their freshly baked hamantaschen. We have two fantastic events coming up that I'd like to mention. A conversation with Rabbi Albert. So we're on this Sunday, and a celebration of 73 years of Jewish life at Brandeis next Sunday. And you can find all that information to register in the chat. Thank you and happy Purim everyone.
Paula Shoyer:
Happy Purim. And message me if anybody needs books for Passover, take care.