Knafeh Tart
I have been living in Jaffa for the last couple of weeks. To be honest, I don’t miss Jerusalem yet. In two-three weeks I’ll have to go back there anyway. Back to a renovated and improved pharmacy. In the meantime, I can enjoy the beauty of Jaffa at nights, during daylight and in rainy weather.
Pistachio Tartlet
One year ends, another begins. I used to get excited about it once. Now… a little bit less. Now I tell myself, hold on time, slow down… where are you off to? But time doesn’t listen and keeps going on its own hasty way, just like the white rabbit with his pocket watch. Oh well, I guess I’ll press on too. I’ll keep falling in this rabbit hole, or in my reality, this time hole, hoping that this year, just like Alice, I will also land safely.
Kinder Bueno Tart
Last weekend I celebrated my niece Yasmine’s 9th birthday with the family. She requested a Princess Jasmine cake, from Aladdin, just like I made her for her first birthday. Just like Yasmine, the cake has matured, and so have I.
Pistachio Cake with Lemon Cream
Mor’s pistachio cake strikes again, this time with a wonderful and tangy lemon cream. With all the love I’ve got for the nutty version, I just had to try it out with pistachios. I even added a lemon cream, the one I’ve already used in lemon berry tartlets. The inspiration for the square shaped cake is from Cyril Lignac’s book La Pâtisserie, where he uses a similar lemon cream, but surprisingly with less butter and sugar.
Peanut Butter Mousse Cubes (In Other Words: Snickers)
What do you do when all the pistachios are gone? You start seeing other nuts. The first to catch my eye was the hazelnut. A round nut with an elegant sharp tip. I made delicious financier cookies out of it. My second date was with the peanut. It turned out a little square. To spice things up, I added chocolate and got a wonderful peanut butter mousse cube.
Lime Meringue Cookies
Yup, limes! I know, you can only find limes here in Jerusalem around the last two weeks of August. But somehow I was lucky enough to get the last limes of the season. Come to think of it, this season is pretty nuts. It’s the end of September and yet the weather is warmer than August. So maybe I shouldn’t be astonished that limes are still here. I squeezed the limes to the last drop and made myself these wonderful lime meringue cookies.
Hazelnut Cake with Coffee Chantilly
Finally I have gotten my hands on a recipe from the Denon culinary school in Tel Aviv. And what a recipe it is! The original version is laden with pistachios and a touch of berries. Mor, my fellow green lover, graciously sent me her own twist on this recipe after I went crazy for her version on her Instagram. Now that it’s in front of me, I’m even more in love.
Island Cake
If there’s one good thing to come out of this horrible year, it’s these cakes. The loneliness (more like the isolation) and the inability to travel and relax this summer gave birth to a dream destination cake: a tropical island in the middle of an ocean. I too gave in to this year’s trend. I recommend setting aside three days to make this island cake. Don’t worry, it’s not intense, except for the second day. At least it’s something to do in our new lockdown here.
