The other day, an old friend of mine asked for a chocolate cake recipe for her daughter’s birthday, which happens to fall this week. Since she also keeps Passover and works outside the home, I wanted to make her life as easy as possible.

The key to making this cake work lies with two factors: not overbaking it (it will dry out) and putting in lots of chocolate chips!

Confession time: I’m really looking forward to the end of this holiday so that I can focus on Mother’s Day and Cinco de Mayo recipes, not to mention the glory of the upcoming summer.

I used to hate the classic joke that goes something like this: what are the three best parts about being a teacher? June, July and August! Yeah, I hated that joke because I’ve always loved teaching and it was based on the assumption that we hate a majority of our year.

Loving summer is still a no-brainer, though. The days are lazy, the nights are long, and there’s frozen yogurt. And margaritas. I think we can all agree that those are wonderful things.

Before we get there, though, there’s chocolate cake. That’s also a wonderful thing.

This is a quick one-bowl recipe. You might have noticed that this week, I’m using a lot of potato starch. If you have no clue what that is, it’s a thickener (much like cornstarch) that subs in for flour. It’s very popular on Passover, but some recipes require it that don’t have anything to do with Passover. You can usually buy potato starch at kosher food stores, and it’s a great GF option. Or you can always sub in flour here if you’re not in the mood to be a GF person.

It’s the end of the week and there’s just a little more celebrating for us to do who observe the eight-day holiday to its fullest. I’ll see you all next week for some May recipe love!

Ideally, the voting process should be nothing but exciting, but it’s harder this year than usual. Looking toward November is a worrisome occupation, at least for me. I want to believe that everything will turn out okay, but I’m in a negative frame of mind these days.

Whenever I feel overwhelmed, I bake. There’s a mindful mindlessness about baking that lets my brain fall away a bit as I make ganache or press tart dough into a pan. The motions are repetitive, soothing, and exactly what I need sometimes. When the result is this mind-blowing linzer tart smothered in ganache and almonds, I can banish all the negativity and just think about the rich flavors exploding in my mouth.

It’s not like me to be incredibly negative, or at least, not in my head. But recently I’ve sustained a series of failures, and so I’ve had to work harder to focus on the good stuff. Whenever I’m in this frame of mind, it’s hard to see all the people who are seemingly more satisfied and successful displaying their good fortune right and left. The rational part of my brain is thrilled for them, but the emotional part is resentful. That’s human nature, after all.

So in times like these, I’m shifting the focus where it should be. On my family, of course, which affords me great joy. On the part of my job that takes place in the classroom, where I work with the best students a teacher could ask for. On the changing season, letting sunshine and fresh air into the house. On having an awareness of purpose. There’s so much to be thankful for.

When I get thankful, I think of pie. Really. It’s some kind of Thanksgiving trigger. But it’s April. What to do?

Well, make a tart. It’s gluten-free for my beloved Kenny and kosher for Passover for the rest of us. We don’t get normal food until Sunday! Yes, that counts liquor. Happy hour is going to have to wait a bit.

This is one of the best desserts I’ve made in the GF category. The crust (adapted from Paula Shoyer’s The New Passover Menu) is mainly almond meal with some walnut meal thrown in for good measure. Once the crust is baked, I spread raspberry jam over the top and filled it with ganache. I made this tart non-dairy by using fake coffee creamer and margarine, but the recipe will list heavy cream and butter because that’s more standard. They both work, though!

I’m looking out the window as I write this, where the leaves on the trees have become rich and green. There’s a lot that’s good to focus on. During a time that’s less than easy in some ways, I need to see all the beauty and savor it. And I also need to savor this tart, so get on that train with me!

Hi, everyone.  This is Anita, Mir’s Mom, and I’m writing my first-ever (and probably only-ever) guest blog for Just About Baked.  I actually don’t love baking, and I’m not much good at it.  I’d rather practice the piano. However, I just finished baking an amazing cake and thought that it was time for our family to share the recipe with the world.

When you grow up in a Jewish family, you know that at the end of the Passover Seder meal each year, you will receive a slice of sponge cake.  And you know that no matter who baked it that year, it’s gonna taste more or less like, well, a sponge.

But not this sponge cake.  This one tastes like a luscious slice of heaven with a bit of crunchy sugar on top.

When I met my wonderful husband (Mir’s Dad), I was invited for a meet-the-folks dinner.  The dessert was this sponge cake, which my future mother-in-law (Mir’s future grandmother) used to bake not only at Passover but all year round.  Yes, it’s that good.

It’s so good in fact, that my MIL used to bake a dozen at a time. She gave them out as gifts to family members, friends and neighbors.  She never measured ingredients, though, so the way I learned to bake it was by watching her carefully and copying every step.

No one can resist this cake. When Mir’s biggest  brother was three or four years old, he spied a sponge cake on the table, awaiting dinner.  And every time he passed it, he snatched a little bit from the bottom.  My MIL noticed the growing hole and observed with a smile, “What happened to the cake?  I think we have a mouse.”

This cake isn’t easy to make, and it also takes the better part of an hour.  But it’s worth the trouble. When you savor it, think of Mir’s grandmother—a tiny lady with curly white hair, who loved everyone she knew and baked them all cakes.

As I’ve mentioned, this is the most challenging food week of the year. I don’t like matza or anything that tastes like it, so my Passover philosophy is to avoid cooking or baking with it as much as possible. Instead, I use nut flours and potato starch, which taste much closer to the real deal.

Every year I buy a new recipe book, and this year I got Paula Shoyer’s The New Passover Menu. It’s an incredible cookbook, and it includes these cookie bars. My holiday is now officially better!

Lately, I’ve experienced a little crisis in confidence. Do you ever go through that? It’s much easier to believe in ourselves when others believe in us. Whenever someone overlooks me or underrates my abilities, I start to doubt myself. I’m guessing that I’m not alone in that.

There are areas in life in which I feel unquestionably competent: teaching, for instance, or baking. Parenting? Nope, that’s something I always feel insecure about, but that seems normal to me. I assume that feeling that way is totally fine, so I’m okay with that kind of insecurity.

But what happens when someone questions my abilities in an area that I dominate? That I am, unquestionably, excellent? Ideally I should stand tall and think, “What jerks.” But there’s also that little voice inside me, the one that says, “Maybe you’re not as good as you think you are.”

Those are dark thoughts, and I try to banish them. But when they pop up, it’s not pleasant. Can anyone relate?

While you’re busy thinking about that, focus on these bars. I’m totally confident that they rock. Hey, my confidence in baked goods shall never be shaken.

The nut flour really makes these rock. I’m a big fan of ground almond meal, and when mixed with a flour stand-in (potato starch in this case), the result is really quite reminiscent of a non-Passover dessert. I think Paula Shoyer must be simpatico with my own Passover baking rule of thumb: never, if it can possibly be helped, bake with matza meal or matza cake meal. Go with something more natural. Both the texture and the taste are better that way. I did adapt Shoyer’s recipe a tiny bit (the original includes more mix-ins), but I’m hoping she won’t mind!

We all have rough weeks, or months, when we’re feeling a little less confident than usual. At least, I think we do. Maybe that’s just part of life, but I hope we all come out of it okay. After all, not every day can be great. But it can include great cookie bars!

Have I mentioned that Passover is eight days long?

Yep. It started last Friday night and will end this Saturday night. I will be off all digital devices for the next couple of days in observance of the holiday, so I can’t wait to catch up with everyone Saturday night! I also can’t wait to eat sushi again on Saturday night. Back to normal food.

My son just told me that Passover is his favorite holiday, which made me happy. It means that all of my private angst about what to eat during this time hasn’t made its way over to him. I mean, sure, it’s hard to subsist on what could double as an extreme fad diet for eight days, but the kids really have fun with the holiday. And nothing is more rewarding than watching your children enjoy traditions.

Well, actually, frozen margaritas are pretty rewarding. So are trips to Tahiti. But yeah, sharing things with children is definitely cool, too.

Years ago, I went to a graduation party for one of my students, an exceptional young man who stood out as one of the kindest people I’ve ever taught. I asked his mother how she did it. How did she make him turn out so well? And her answer was as welcome as it was unexpected: she said that she and her husband had always shared their interests with their children.

At first, her answer confused me. Why would that make a difference? But a few years of thinking later, I get it. We share the things we love with our children in hope that they will form a bond with us and with generations both past and future. We teach them values, and we also teach them how to love the world around them. And the only way we can do that is by sharing our own loves. That’s why when I bake, I love having a child at my elbow, watching. And when I observe a holiday, I want them right there with me.

This final Passover recipe of the year on Just About Baked is simple, delicious, and classic. People make this as bark, or you can do what I’ve done and make the pieces much smaller using a crumbled version of matza known as farfel, resulting in handfuls of caramelly, buttery crunch. It’s as basic as recipes come, but sometimes, those are the best!

Thanks for putting up with me during this week of flour-free Passover baking. I’ll be back on Monday with my usual fare. In the meantime, enjoy your weekend, and spend it doing things you love. And, of course, sharing that love with other people.

There’s no exception to that rule on Passover. In fact, while some people call it the holiday of matza, I call it the holiday of crumbs. If you’re wondering why, think about what matza does. It crumbles everywhere. On floors. In hair. Between tiles. Atop light fixtures.

And there I am, broom and dustpan at the ready, to clean it all up. Which is actually a huge step for me, because I am not good at keeping the house clean, much as I try.

I have this theory that we’re all really good at organizing specific elements of life and total crap at getting others together. I’m sure you’re thinking, well, duh. But the people I know who have really clean and organized houses might not be able to get their work desks clean. And the people who get up at the crack of dawn every day to work out (ahem) might never clear out their cars. And the people who can plan out meals for the whole week and do the shopping in one go might not ever be able to work in the time to exercise.

In other words, we’re human. And we tend to focus on what we’re bad at instead of patting ourselves on the back for our natural skills. I mean, I have crazy strong willpower. I have to, for heaven’s sake. I’m a dessert blogger. But I can’t stop getting on my own case about the fact that my house always looks like a hurricane has gone through it.

So if I’m gonna give myself some props right now, let’s get to this crumb cake. It’s a Passover recipe, and it’s seriously the best one in my arsenal. This comes from Susie Fishbein’s Passover by Design cookbook. If you’re not familiar with her work, she has changed the face of kosher cooking in America. Her books are seriously amazing, and I can’t recommend them enough.

Every year when I bake this cake, it gets destroyed. Almost immediately. I make this for our family holiday meal, and I watch it disappear before my eyes. I have some very picky eaters at these get-togethers, and some people really hate Passover food. Regardless, they all love this cake.

It’s also blindingly easy to make. If you’re in a city where the lady finger cookies on top aren’t available, substitute any bland, vanilla-type cookie. The idea is to make a crumb topping without having to go through the usual process.

When you’re done, you have a cinnamon-studded cake that can give any non-Passover cake a run for its money. Truth be told, if I were being super hard on myself, I wouldn’t even post this recipe, since I didn’t make it up. But really, let’s be honest. My house is a mess. Sometimes I need a little help. None of that matters when you consider that I can bake up a crumb cake that anyone will eat on Passover. Now that’s something worth celebrating!

For instance, almost every culture I know has a potato, meat or cheese-filled pastry of some kind. We call them different names, but they’re all delicious. And while Italians call a particular kind of cookie “biscotti,” people of Jewish descent call a very similar cookie “mandel bread.”

Mandel bread, like biscotti, is sliced from a large log of cookie dough and then baked again to become toasted. However, its texture isn’t quite as crunchy. There’s a little more softness to a piece of mandel bread.

This is my mother-in-law’s recipe, one of my favorites from her collection. On Passover, options are limited. We can’t bake with flour or anything that has a bean, corn or rice base. Flour substitutes usually come in the form either of potato starch (yep, that exists) or ground up matza, a.k.a. matza meal. I use the cake meal in this recipe because it’s finer, like flour, and the potato starch.

Here’s the thing. I really hate the taste of matza. I know people love it, but that’s because they don’t have to eat it. I’ve spent years developing dessert recipes or finding other people’s recipes that specifically don’t have that aftertaste. And when I tried these at my mother-in-law’s house early in my marriage, I knew that this recipe was a winner.

It’s also incredibly easy. All the ingredients get mixed together in one bowl, there’s an hour of chilling time, and then you’re ready to roll. You don’t even have to use butter, much less melt it or cream it. The recipe requires oil instead.

Now, don’t be stingy with your chocolate chips. The only adjustment I’ve made to the original recipe is adding more, and my rationale couldn’t be purer. The chocolate hides the fact that you’re not dealing with flour. That’s it. And who ever objected to more chocolate chips?

Heck, you can even throw nuts in there. Do what you want. Just realize that good Passover desserts are few and far between. I’m going to be posting two more this week, so I hope they come in handy! If you’re on the matza train this week, have a great holiday. And for everyone else? Enjoy your flour!

See, I miss the forbidden foods. Like pizza. And sushi. Oh my lord, a week without sushi is a very dark time in my life. You can imagine how well I got through three pregnancies without raw fish. It was a horrible time. So I guess I shouldn’t complain about one week. Especially when I can have brownies!

And blondies!

That’s right, y’all. Even on Passover, miracles do happen. I honestly would eat these two baked goods any day of the year. Both contain copious amounts of chocolate chips, so need I go further?

I will stop here because I have not one, but TWO whole recipes to share. So I leave you with this pic! But for all you gluten-free people out there, please note that these recipes fit your bill!

Blondie Indredients:

• 4 eggs
• 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 3 teaspoons vanilla
• 3 teaspoons baking powder.
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup potato starch
• 1 cup finely ground almonds
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350. Spray a 9 x 13 pan with cooking spray.

Combine all the ingredients except the chocolate chips in a bowl, mixing well. Pour the batter into the pan. Sprinkle the chocolate chips on top.

Put the pan in the oven and bake for 50 minutes, until golden and set.

Brownie Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1 cup oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup potato starch
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9 x 13 pan with cooking spray.

Beat eggs and sugar until combined. Add the oil and salt and mix again. Add in the cocoa powder gradually, stirring as you go. Pour in the potato starch and mix until all ingredients are combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Pour into the pan and bake for 35 minutes. Do not over bake, or your brownies will be hard!

So as part of my Passover quest to bake desserts that taste as though they contain flour, I make these toffee bars annually as a tribute to my mother and as an excuse to eat one of my favorite cookies. They’re classic and the base is mainly ground almonds. Yay protein!

The key to making good dessert on Passover is avoiding matza meal as much as you can. This recipe uses some, but not an enormous amount. The almonds fill in that gap beautifully.

See? Lots of almond goodness. And there is a nice but not too thick cookie layer that gets balanced out really well with all that chocolate. The more chocolate the better, especially on Passover!

One of my favorite toffee bar elements is the little edge of the crust that crisps up so nicely. I’ve been known to break off the edges and leave the rest of the cookie there, pretending that it was always a bit smaller. Shh. Don’t tell anyone!

You can always toast the almonds that go on top if you like, but that’s an extra step I don’t feel like taking. It might make the cookies ever so slightly better, but you have to weigh that incremental improvement against time and effort. I don’t think it’s worth it.

What is worth it, though, is making these bars. They will disappear and the people will thank you!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter, softened to room temperature
• 1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup ground almonds
• 1 cup matza meal
• 1 package semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup sliced almonds (I used blanched)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolk, vanilla, almond extract, and salt. Beat again. Slowly, add the ground almonds and matza meal until the ingredients are mixed and the dough is stiff.

Press the dough evenly into the cookie sheet. Bake for 20 minutes until the edges are golden and the middle is puffed up a bit.

Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the crust and wait for five minutes. Then, using a knife or offset spatula, spread the chocolate over the crust. Sprinkle on the almonds.

Let the cookies cool and then place the pan in the refrigerator to harden the chocolate completely, about 20-30 minutes. Using a sharp knife, cut the cookies into even squares. Store in an airtight container for up to one week.

A few years back, Martha Stewart put out a few gorgeous dessert cookbooks. One was just for cupcakes, another for pie, and then she also did a whole book devoted to cookies. I bought the whole series, of course. I mean, her stuff is amazing and makes me feel like a grubby little kid who can’t figure out how to make something as fabulous. But when I do make a Martha recipe successfully, I feel proud and happy with life. Go figure.

These chocolate chip cookies are amazing. They taste like chocolate chip cookies, which is a real accomplishment on a flour-free holiday like Passover. I love that Martha included these in her book, and this is my third year baking them to rave reviews.

Now, I know it’s not okay to mess with Martha, so I only made one teensy change. I added white chocolate chips along with the regular ones. My rationale for that addition is…well, do I really need one? I mean, it’s white chocolate. The more, the merrier!

These are thick, beautiful cookies. They have volume. The farfel, which is just pieces of matza broken up, isn’t even detectable in the final result. It’s this magic disappearing trick. The result is a cookie that’s crisp at the edges but very soft in the middle. Perfection.

Want to know what’s even better? These cookies don’t need a mixer. Nope nope nope. You can mix these up in a bowl. I always double the recipe because they disappear so fast. I wind up making at least two batches over Passover. But I don’t mind, because they’re that delicious and doable! That’s how I feel about another beloved recipe, my mother-in-law’s mandel bread. It’s great, like Jewish biscotti for Passover. Mmmm.

But that’s a recipe for another day. And as for the chocolate chip cookies, thanks for creating a recipe that I can feel good about making, Martha! And please forgive me for using the white chocolate. I couldn’t help myself!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup matza meal
• 1 cup matza farfel
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup white chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup walnuts, toasted (optional)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Stir together the matza meal, farfel, sugar, brown sugar and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, oil and vanilla. Stir the egg mixture into the dry ingredients. Then, stir in the chocolate chips and nuts.

Roll the dough into large balls and drop two inches apart on the cookie sheets. Bake until golden for 16-18 minutes, turning the sheets halfway through baking for evenness.

Let the cookies cool on wire racks. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to one week.