Product Description

Food can be an expression of who we are, and few foods have the power to please and uplift us as desserts do. In The World of Jewish Desserts, Gil Marks explores delicacies from Jewish communities around the world with more than 400 recipes that cover the full range -- culinary, geographical, ethnic, and cultural -- of Jewish desserts. This essential volume showcases the full spectrum of influences, offering desserts from both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic traditions, and communities from Denmark to Tunisia, from Italy to Bombay.

A Jewish dessert can be anything from the petites madeleines invoked by Marcel Proust to the beloved jam turnovers of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Polish childhood. It can be German butter cake or a Middle Eastern syrup-soaked nut cake, the creamy rice pudding of India or an Eastern European cheese blintz.

Marks -- rabbi, chef, writer, historian -- has provided recipes for every type of sweet temptation: cakes and cookies, puddings and kugels, yeasted and unyeasted pastries, phyllo and strudel desserts, fruit desserts and confections. There's even a chapter on Passover desserts. While the sources of these delectable treats may seem exotic, the ingredients and techniques are not, and the easy-to-follow, step-by-step recipes have been tested and retested to make sure they will work in any home kitchen.

Headnotes and sidebars illuminate the connections among food, culture, and history, giving fresh insight into the richness of the Jewish experience. Including extensive and valuable information on ingredients and cooking techniques, this book is one that you will use again and again.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #769888 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

Amazon.com Review
Comprehensive and engrossing, The World of Jewish Desserts takes you on a trip through the world's Jewish communities, sampling their redolent traditional pastries, cakes, and sweets. Gil Marks, author and rabbi, blends baking and history as he explores the Jewish Diaspora and the resulting dissemination of culinary customs and influence around the world. Most of the recipes are culled from the two largest Jewish cultural groups, the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim.

In the section on yeast cakes and pastries, Marks begins with a recipe for Pandericas/Heifeteig (sweet yeast dough) which is the basis for many of the following recipes. Each recipe is prefaced by a historical and cultural interpretation and baking tips. Every few pages, Marks inserts a few paragraphs about the country a recipe comes from, a chronicle of the use of certain spices, or baking styles. For example, after a recipe for Kahkahaw Babka (Polish chocolate sweet bread), Marks gives a short history of Jews in Poland and the Baltic States which explains how these dishes developed and were sustained. He also gives a scientific explanation on the properties of basic ingredients and how they interact with one another.

With 12 chapters of desserts, including cookies and bars, phyllo and strudel, fried pastries, and Passover desserts, the book is almost mind-bogglingly inclusive. More than a cookbook, it is a culinary history and discourse on a people whose traditions and culture have affected--and been adapted by--many of the world's countries. "The act of serving and consuming food can be an expression of who we are, as well as a genuine spiritual experience," says Marks. "And few foods have the power to please and uplift as well as desserts do." --Dana Van Nest

From Publishers Weekly
Marks returns to the territory covered in The World of Jewish Cooking and The World of Jewish Entertaining with this third effort encompassing Jewish food from all corners of the globe. While those first two books distinguished themselves with the great diversity of recipes offered, it seems that Jews the world over tend to eat similar types of desserts. Items such as Hungarian "Farfel" Bars, which cleverly call for grating the dough into pellets, and Ashkenazic Honey-Spice Cookies outnumber more exotic desserts such as Calcutta Coconut Bread Pudding and Persian Rice Flour Cookies. Marks again delivers solid, flawless recipes along with great bits of information: among them, the Talmudic mentions of sweets and an overview of the different cheeses used in Jewish cooking. An entire chapter on fried pastries includes Greek Anise Fritters and Italian Anise Fritters, in addition to Algerian Raised Donuts and Dutch Yeast Fritters. German Apple Coffee Cake (made with a yeast dough) has much in common with Ashkenazic Fruit Coffee Cake (which Marks suggests making with apples, pears, plums or peaches). There are plenty of treats appropriate for the holidays, including numerous Hamantaschen variations and a chapter on desserts for Passover that ranges from a simple Passover Sponge Cake to a Sephardic Baked Matza Custard. All and all, his volume makes a zesty compendium of traditional foods. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Gil Marks is the author of The World of Jewish Cooking (which was a finalist for the James Beard Award) and The World of Jewish Entertaining, as well as a chef, rabbi, historian, and a leading expert in the field of Jewish cookery. The founding editor of Kosher Gourmet Magazine, he lectures frequently on Jewish cooking. He lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

if u think Jewish desserts stopped at honey cake, read this
Gil Marks, a rabbi, historian, linguistic detective and the author of three other books on kosher cooking and entertaining, provides a taste of not only the dishes, but the history of the Jewish communities that developed and transformed the dishes. And I don't mean an insert here and there, I am talking a page for each essay. For example, the story of German Jewish cooking, or Salonika Greek Jewry. I guarantee that you'll never look at a latka the same way after reading his latest book. The book opens with a treatise on cooking and baking. Did you ever wonder why fat is added to Jewish desserts (butters, oils, etc)? Is it any wonder that the person who introduced dry yeast (the kind that can be activated in your home by adding water) was a Hungarian Jew named Fleischmann? It's in the book. The chapters headings follow this format: Yeast Cakes and Pastries; Cakes; Cookies; Filled Cookies; Strudels and Phyllo; Fried Pastries; Pan Cakes; Baked Puddings and Kugels; Stovetop Puddings; Fruit based Desserts; Confections; and a whole chapter for Passover Pesach desserts/ For each recipe, Marks adds a tidbit of history or Semitic semantics. For example, for the Kuchen Buchen recipe, Marks discusses Yiddish rhyming, or for the recipe for Makosh Poppy Seed Rolls, he writes about how the German Mohn (poppy) filled cakes evolved into the Polish Makowiec rolls and German Makosh. Add some Hungarian cocoa, and you turn Makosh into Kakosh. Recipes are included for Debla; Lokmas; Loukoumades (in time for Hanukkah); Bombay Malpuah Banana Fritters; stuffed dates; blintzes; latkas of all sorts; marzipan, the Indian Jewish rice pudding called Kheer; Seffa; Brot Kugel; an Indian Carrot Halvah Pudding; an Alsatian Apple Charlotte (ApfelSchalet); a grandmother load that Seinfeld would know as a Babka; Schnecken; Haman-taschen; prune lekvar; Sephardic style Parmak, Moroccan Jewish Fakasch; Persian Klaitcha; Apfelkaka (don't you just love that name?); Iraqi Jewish Rayka Tamir; Lakach honey cake; Lepeny; strudels; Rugelach with a variety of fillings; Kadayif; Kindli; Kranszli; Farfel bars (not just for soup, you know); Biscotti (did you know that means twice baked?); Basboosah (a dessert, not a type of bus); Dobostorte 7 layer cake; and even a Gebleterter Kugel (a type of fluden).

An appealing, involving cookbook
The World of Jewish Desserts provides recipes with a fine background by gourmet cook Rabbi Marks, who gathers Jewish recipes from Jewish communities around the world. The international focus of the Jewish dessert recipes makes for an appealing, involving cookbook which provides a very surprising variety of Jewish dessert choices. No photos, but the amount of research and depth to this title makes them less necessary.

Recipes that Bubbe would be proud of...
Gil Marks, rabbi, chef, and author of The WORLD OF JEWISH COOKING: More Than 500 Traditional Recipes from Alsace to Yemen, The World of Jewish Entertaining: Menus and Recipes for the Sabbath, Holidays, and Other Family Celebrations and the Jewish vegetarian treasury Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World, has truly outdone himself with The World of Jewish Desserts.

A collection of over 400 desserts from every corner of the Diaspora from Alsace to Yemen, Marks has thought of everything the potential Jewish dessert baker needs to know. His brief introduction includes a primer on common ingredients (flour, leavenings, fats, sweeteners, eggs, nuts), measuring, high altitude baking, and more. The book is divided into yeast cakes and pastries, cakes, cookies and bars, pastries and filled cookies, phyllo and strudel, fried pastries, pancakes, baked puddings and kugels, stovetop puddings and creamy desserts, fruit desserts, confections, and Passover desserts.

Each recipe is clearly written and many include numerous delectable variations (also included are tips on how to make a dairy recipe pareve when possible). The book is sparsely illustrated with an ornate blue border and scattered blue pen-and-ink drawings of various recipes and ingredients. In Marks' usual style, each recipe includes its origin, original name, and what holidays it's traditionally served on.

Naturally, World of Jewish Desserts includes such well-known Jewish desserts as hamantaschen, rugelach, mandelbrot, blintzes, and cheesecake, but also includes a veritable treasure trove of Sephardic recipes including pumpkin (Italian pumpkin cake, Sephardic pancakes, candied pumpkin) that are perfect for fall, Indian recipes featuring coconut, mango, and tangerine that lend a refreshing tropical air to summer Sabbath dinners, numerous Middle Eastern recipes in rose and orange blossom syrups, and a valuable section on both traditional Hanukkah (fried pastries) and Passover (matza) desserts.

These are simple, delicious desserts that bring back happy memories of Bubbe's (or Babcia's) kitchen, with recipes from every corner of the globe that are sure to please, whether you're looking for the perfect sour cream coffeecake, chocolate babka, lekach, poppy seed roll, or something more exotic.