Passover Sweets

 Passover starts this coming Saturday and with it special dishes and holiday restrictions. One of the highlights of the Seder table is dessert. It can be quite a challenge to home bakers because of the no flour or yeast rule. Yet there are some interesting sweets that are easy to whip up.

Luckily there are other flours other than wheat or chametz to use. Almond flour is perfectly acceptable as is matzoh meal. You can easily make a flourless chocolate cake using almond flour. It produces a dense , packed crumb, perfect for the other ingredients which are chocolate , butter,eggs yolks and sugar to shine. Orange zest and egg whites are added later, the whites to give the cake some lift. It's baked for thirty to forty minutes in a 350 degree Farenheit  oven. It can be served with candied orange zest or whipped cream if you'd like. Almond flour can also go into making blondies, a fun treat for the kids. This again is ground almonds (which you can make yourself using a food processor),l sugar, vegetable oil and eggs. Chocolate chips can be added for more flavor. The batter is poured into a parchment lined pan and baked at 350 degrees Farenheit for half an hour. Keep in mind you can also use the almond flour for cookies. These are almost like a macaroon  in that they use only egg whites and not the yolks along with a cup of sugar. Of course if you want totally vegan you can sub in the egg white with aqua faba, the brine from chickpeas. These make for excellent meringues and macaroons, the last more in the French style.

Matzoh meal can also be used to make an array of delicious Passover cakes. Remember that you may have to buy matzoh meal because the homemade kind is a lot crumbier and grainier than the finely processed store bought one.,Yet, you can use the first if you have a very strong, almost industrial strength food processor. There are a number of different sweets you can bake. Try an apple cake that's more like a fruit filled coffee cake with a walnut streusel topping. The topping has a refreshing blend of cinnamon, ginger,  mace and nutmeg. to keep the cake interesting. You could also make just a simple vanilla cake and top it with frosting made from heavy cream and confectioner's sugar. Matzoh meal can also be used to make cookie dough too. whip up a couple of batches of chocolate chip cookies using it for the week ahead. This is the basic chocolate chip cookie recipe  that has the usual brown sugar, butter, eggs, and chocolate chips for that classic flavor. Yet instead of wheat flour , there's matzoh meal and honey to sweeten it. You could also bake chocolate cookies too with it, using melted bittersweet chocolate and chocolate chips along with egg whites for  a more meringue like texture.

The seder meal and the week following can end with delicious cakes and cookies. Use either almond flour or matzoh meal for the recipes. They'll give you an array of tasty  sweets , perfect for the holiday and beyond.