Last week we started a series on fried foods that are good to serve for Hanukkah, which will begin this year at sundown on the 21st. Last week’s traditional Jewish recipes were for rosette cookies. This week I’d like to talk about how you can use the batter for rosettes to make other fried desserts for Hanukkah or for a special treat.
If you make your rosette batter a little thicker than the recipe calls for, by adding a little extra flour, then you can use it to coat a wide variety of dessert foods and then fry them. One of my favorite deserts to batter and deep fry is the Oreo® cookie. Any sandwhich cookie will actually work well, however, I love chocolate.
Candy bars also can be dipped in the batter and deep fried. I’ve heard that Snickers® bars are tasty deep fried, as are Three Muskateers. To make the frying process less messy you need to freeze the candy bars before you try to batter and fry them. This serves two purposes. First the frozen candy bar will absorb less of the oil and secondly it will prevent the candy bar from melting all over the place.
The final item that you can dip in batter and deep fry is cake. Pound cake in particular works well for deep frying. To prep the cake you will want to slice it in thick slices at least a half inch thick. Again freeze the cake for at least a half hour before you try to dip it in batter and deep fry it.
I was recently in Israel and had a chocolate ball that was called a poonch (not sure on spelling.) It was dense and moist with chunks of coconut misxed in and rolled in coconut. Can you help me find a recipe?