It's a good think that I can fake things

I usually don't do much dessert baking. But commercial Passover baked goods, are for the most part, dismal. Besides, how could we do Passover with my mother without serving the flourless chocolate nut torte?? That cake came together fairly well.

flourless chocolate nut torte

One of the nice things about having Passover in my house is that I can choose the menu. The thick asparagus my father adored, is not on the menu. Neither is the boiled broccoli. My mother makes a wine-nut cake that always tasted a bit musty to me. So that to is not being served. No banana cake either, because I hate the taste of cooked bananas.

I decided to make an orange walnut cake from Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food. She is a really smart woman and a great cookbook writer. I made the cake which involved ground almond and chopped walnuts, the rind and juice of an orange, and lots of eggs. I don't know if my oven's temperature is miscalibrated, but after I took the cake out of the oven and turned it over...it all fell out on the counter.

I had too much invested in that cake to dump it. So I patted it all into an oiled rectangular baking pan, drrizzled melted chocolate over the whole thing and returned it to the oven for an other baking session. After it looked solid, I scored it into diamonds and today put those diamonds into the ultimate baker's cheat, little fluted paper cups. If you don't tell my guests that I wasn't starting out to bake cute little cookies, they won't know.

Chag Kasher V'Sameach to all who celebrate. And thanks for coming along on the journey for those of you who don't.

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Connecting with the past

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