The week should be winding down, which is good. My head is packed with to-do lists and tasks, and it’s always a good feeling when Friday evening hits and everything comes to a halt. No calls, no texts, no notifications. Just me and the fam!

When life gets crazy, cups of tea are important. Sometimes, I need a little more than just tea to calm down, and that’s where a good cookie companion comes into play. These Eastern European cookies are very similar to biscotti, but they’re built on a smaller scale and have a little more softness to them. The traditional version just contains nuts, but I added chocolate chips and a nice sprinkling of cinnamon sugar on top. You can’t go wrong with that!

As I write this, I’m halfway listening to my daughter’s tutoring session. She’s entering first grade, and I’m that crazy mom who wants to make sure that her math and reading are up to par before the school year starts. In case nobody told you, first grade is where things get serious. No more free play or downtime, except for recess. They drive those kids hard. And there’s not really a transition from the free and easy days of yore, so it can be quite a shock for the kids.

Not to mention the parents. I really dislike coming home from a day of teaching to, well, do it some more. I love teaching other people’s kids, but my own? Not so much. There’s too much emotion involved, and it mixes business with personal. Trying to be patient while teaching your own kid to master basic math can send anyone to the loony bin.

So, for the sake of sanity, I hired a tutor. It’ll be easier on my daughter and easier on me, and she’ll be ready for all that homework. It seems like a good solution, even though when I was in first grade, I didn’t know what a tutor was. Times change and all that.

Since working is the opposite of winding down and Friday evenings only come once a week, I’m very into enforced chillaxing. That’s where a tea and cookie break comes into play!

My favorite part of this recipe is that, aside from mixing up in one bowl, it’s also butter-free. In other words, it’s kind of on the healthier side. No objections from this quarter!

I hope you have a relaxing weekend free of all hard work. We all need some chillaxing!

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!