If you’ve been to Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans, you’ve had the best beignets (French-style doughnuts) around.  They’re really not very hard to make at home; check out my book, on page 197, and the chocolate-filled variation on page 199.  We make them at my house for Hannukah (tonight was the last night), and they are sublime (the same deep-fried treat is called soufganiyot in Hebrew).  The only special equipment you’ll need is a candy thermometer.

Start with a pound of dough, choosing challah (page 180), or brioche (page 189), which will make 5 or 6 beignets.  Roll out the dough into a 1/4-inch rectangle, then cut into 2-inch squares using a pizza wheel or a sharp knife.  Place a half-ounce of bittersweet chocolate into the center of each square.  Gather the edges of the dough around the filling, pinching at the center to form a seal; you may need to use a bit of water to help the edges stick together.  Read More

OK, I know, these aren’t really cupcakes because they aren’t cake!  They’re yeasted, so they’re actually super-mini chocolate breads based on Zoe’s chocolate bread in our book (page 211).  I wanted you to get a sense of how versatile this method really is— need a quick kid treat?  If you’ve got chocolate dough in the freezer you are set.

I didn’t frost them because they were perfect without it– maybe a little cherry jam if you really want something with them.  Just mix up a full or half-batch of the chocolate dough, and then break off little pieces and load them into muffin tins, or mini-muffin tins (the picture above has both).  Be careful not to overbake these little guys; the regular size are done in no more than 20 minutes at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C), and the minis are done in 15 minutes. 

This is all a welcome distraction from writing (I ate about four of these this AM!)… our new book’s manuscript is due 1/3/09, with likely release 12/09.  Wish us luck, and follow our new book’s progress on Twitter!

It’s Jewish New Year (tonight) and the traditional loaf, a round, turban-shaped one (round=continuity of life) took a back seat in this photo– so I decided to do a challah extravaganza and go through both shapes, which are easy once you see how they’re done.  Here’s the turban from a little closer:

They’re both made from the same dough but the New Year’s  turban always has raisins or other sweet fruit (to symbolize a sweet new year)– we’ll roll them into the dough so you don’t have to mix up a special one.  Read More

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Main kid-goal these days is to find new and interesting ways to entice kids out of bed in the morning. What seems to motivate them to leave their cozy beds is the promise of something tasty to eat. One morning: Cinnamon-Raisin toast. It did the trick, albeit slowly… Read More

I picked the world’s freshest watercress from a chilly Minnesota river last week, and baked it into fantastic savory flatbread, all out in the wild (everything tastes better outdoors).  This camping-trip method blends two favorite techniques from our book:  rolling in something that wasn’t originally mixed in the dough, like our raisin challah on page 183, and baking in a skillet on the stovetop (like our naan on page 173).  Read More