Passover Dessert, belated

Every year I go to the same house for Passover. Some years I mix it up and throw in a rogue Seder just for fun. One year I went to an all women Seder at a local synagogue. I think there were about 300 of us, the youngest at @2, the oldest near 100.

It is a fabulous sound to hear three hundred people sipping chicken soup and judging matzoh balls at the same time.

California Seders don't quite have the edge of the Seders of my upbringing. When you open up the door for Elijah while it's snowing you have a very different perspective about waiting for the angel. Especially when you are dressed up in uncomfortable clothes, and famished.

The endless Hebrew sing-song words travel over your head, the weight of their mystery and tradition getting caught in your hair and heart.

Soon even the matzoh is making your mouth water.

From an outsider's perspective passover might look like it's about food. There's a plate with an egg, parsley, and even a lamb bone on it that holds center stage. Everyone is sitting at the table aren't they?

But the meal is about a Story. It's about the re-telling, the asking of Important Questions, the sharing of Gratitude. It's about R e m e m b e r i n g.

We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it.

This year, the year I experienced the most profound loss I ever have, I understand tradition differently than I ever have before. Tradition keeps us centered, not merely in the now, but in the forever, in the past you share with every relative, every person, every word. Tradition is about seeing what cannot be explained, is about understanding the impossible.

In every culture, in every religion, there is the telling and re-telling of Our History.
In every culture, in every religion, there is the telling and re-telling of Our History

with food.

To remember a time when we escaped a terrible ruler and did not have time to leaven our bread, we eat matzoh and sweep all leaveners from our house.

We bake without leaveners.

Because the Passover meal is not about the food, every year I make dessert which people can always look forward to at the end. My chocolate Passover dessert is now a Tradition.

Shuna's Passover Chocolate Torte, 2006

70% dark Chocolate        8 oz
Milk Chocolate                    4 oz
Unsalted Butter                  14 oz
Large Eggs, room temp.       8 ea 
Sugar                                        12-14 oz
Toasted Hazelnuts                        6 oz

Kosher Salt                                        2 teaspoons

Preheat oven to 350F

Toast nuts until you can smell them in the oven. Before they have cooled down completely, bundle them up in a kitchen towel and try to rub off as much of the outer skins as you can.

In a medium sized glass or stainless steel bowl over a small pot of a simmering water melt chocolate and butter. Whisk to incorporate, take off heat immediately when melted. Whisk in salt.

While chocolate is melting, whisk eggs with sugar in the bowl of a Kitchen-Aid mixer until it has reached it's greatest volume. {If you watch the mixture increase in size there will be a point when it no longer rises.}

When hazelnuts have cooled down completely grind them in food processor until they are as fine as you can get them, but not paste.

Butter 2 cake pans, and line bottom with a parchment circle.

When all your components are ready your chocolate mixture should have cooled down a bit, but it should still be warm. Whisk in your ground nuts.

You will be adding your fluffy egg mixture in thirds. You will WHISK in the first third so that your mixture can more readily receive the rest. The second and third thirds of egg mixture will be folded into chocolate mixture, being careful to fold from the middle of the bowl out to the edges. {Chocolate is heavy and it likes to hide out...}

Make every stroke count.

I use a scale to make sure I have exactly the same amount of batter in each pan but you can also do it by eye. If your oven runs hot on the bottom place cake pans on cookie sheets/half sheet pans.

Set your first timer for 16 minutes. Rotate pans at this market and re-set timer for 12 minutes.

Torte is done when middle no longer juggles as much. Like a souffle the dessert will rise and then fall when cool. The top will be meringue-like in its crispness, and crack into shards.

This is not a cake or a formal torte: it will not unmold into a round. For the two Passover Seders I went to I used a serving spoon to plate it alongside vanilla ice cream and for a little grown-up fun I sprinkled cocoa nibs on top. I had not one disappointed person in the bunch-- ages ranged from 1-94!

Comments

[jonathan]

That was a very delicious dessert (no surprise) and a lovely essay on remembering. I just heard the same thing (more or less) from a patient this AM who is the son of a rabbi. He said, we tell the same story for 5700 years: they tried to kill us, they failed, let's eat.
The cake is soft and crusty, sweet and intriguing, very special.

[beastmomma]

make every stroke count. Very applicable to so many things.

[Chocoholic]

Great recipe! I am new to your blog and I like what I see. I look forward to your future work. Thanks.

[avocaboy]

Make every stroke count? Juggling...? I like your recipe writing. I can smell it. Delicious. I'm coming back to this one next time I want something chocolate and ambiguous - not a cake, not pudding, right?

And thanks for your comments about passover. You touched on much of what I love about the holiday. While the food is important, it ultimately serves as a supporting role to the story. Order, tradition - yes.

Great entry.

[chanit]

Thanks, I'm sure this cake is great :-)

[Dad and Ellen]

Remembering--yes, yes, yes! What you write about Passover, remembering, loss, ansd tradition rings true as a steady bell! Thank you!

[Julie]

Many good things to say about this post:

Love the phrase "rogue Seder."

Find what you've written about tradition and remembrance very touching.

Think the dessert sounds delicious.

But the thing I noticed most was the great voice you have in the writing of the recipe. The recipe is full of personality. It also makes me think you must be a good teacher.

[ccookiecrumb]

"judging matzoh balls"

Priceless.

[Cap]

If, like a tree, you are the new, green ring, than the old, dead ring you surround & grow upon all season long, will be what stiffens you against the angry winds. It will be what quickens you to swell with bud.

These accretion of rings "grow" from remembering into tradition.

Each of our lives are lent the strength of the Great Tree, even as each of our lives are given for the strength of the Great Tree.

May you remember & be wise. May you remember & grieve. May you remember & be green!

Remember the bristlecomb pine!

[melissa]

great post Shuna. I think the food at the seder moves us from just remembering to re-experiencing, as food often does. it has that way of bringing you back...
see you soon!
love,
m

[Amy]

Shuna, if I wanted to substitute ground nut meal for the hazelnuts would I still use 6 ounces?

[TBTAM]

Thanks for the recipe, it looks delicious! My husband's family serves a hazlenut strawberry shortcake every year that is always delicious. I think the hazlenut recipes are so much better than those made with motsa.

[shuna fish lydon]

Amy---
yes, any nuts will do! It's versatile! tell me about yours if you make it! and look-- no sifting!

[Nancy]

I've always had a Passover Seder
at my house, in 2007 I will be in charge of feeding aprox 400 people!
Help! Any sugestions?? I want to do the Matza Ball Soup my way. I'm
really going to need help. I can't
make the Matza Balls ahead of time, can I? I'm starting to worry now....
Lots of garden salad-simple. Beef
and chicken. I liked your cake receipe. Any ideas would help. Nancy

[shuna fish lydon]

Nancy,

Thanks for asking for my advice, but I've not made Passover for that many people. I would contact a Synogogue kitchen, or a Kosher caterer for that advice.

Best of luck!

[joshua bernheimer]

hay i love wut u said it has influanced me to look at my religeon differently

[Darryl]

Shuna, the recipe looks wonderful. Since we keep kosher, and will be having a meat meal for our seder, our dessert must have no dairy in it. Do you think that the butter in this recipe could be replaced by margarine (I know, nothing is as good as real butter)and the milk chocolate by a less rich chocolate?

[shuna fish lydon]

Hello Darryl,

Yes, make all these changes and it should be absolutely fine. I would look for the richest margarine you can fine-- one preferably without transfats-- there are some "tubs" on the market these days which taste and bake better than what our choices used to be.

Glad you might be trying this-- every year it's what I make whether I want to or not and it's always a hit. Always a pleasure to see people enjoying it so.

Happy (almost) Pesach!

[shannon]

"make every stroke count"--that's sort of like "It works if you work it," right?
I'll keep coming back.