Pastry Round-Up: Mochi Doughnuts, Chocolate Chip and Chickpea Flour Cookies, and Knafeh

During the course of my research, I come across interesting tidbits that don’t always fit into the course of my writing. This doesn’t make them any less worthy of sharing so I am posting these randomly interesting links into a section titled “Pastry Round-Up”. 

Mochi Doughnuts. Here is a recipe that deserves to go viral: a rice flour doughnut with the “chew” of its traditional counterpart and none of the rising time. Seriously, the dough can be mixed, rolled and cut in the time it takes for the oil to heat up. Because the dough is made with mochi, a sweet rice flour (also sold as glutinous rice) that is standard fare in any Asian supermarket, it is quite wet and liquid flavorings should be avoided. Spices, citrus oils, and nut pastes work well. And by the way, the correct spelling is: doughnut. “Donut” is a marketing variant that was designed to make the pastry easier to sell in foreign markets.

Chocolate Chip and Chickpea Flour Cookies. After twenty years in the food industry, traditional chocolate chip cookies bore me. Yeah, I know. Blasphemy! Naturally, this recipe caught my eye. (At the time, I was also making a whole wheat chocolate chip cookie to serve with a chocolate budino on my dessert menu which initially sparked my interest in experimenting with alternative baking grains.) As a plus, these cookies are gluten-free, although I’ve found “alternative grain” cookies to have a milder taste, and a soft, chewy texture with a 50/50 blend of wheat and non-wheat flour. I found this version more interesting and addictive to eat: nutty, complex and just sweet enough. Other flours you can experiment with include: faro, rye, einkorn, and kamut.

Knafeh. During my research for a Mediterranean-themed dessert tasting, I found this post for knafeh, a traditional Greek pastry made with kataifi (shredded filo), sweet cheese, and orange blossom syrup. In this post, Australian food blogger Yasmeen provides a delightful guide for making knafeh but what made this post poignant was its closing paragraphs:

And that, my friends, is not just a perfect knafeh, but my Seedo’s knafeh, the best one I have ever eaten and one that has kept him the reigning King of Sweets in our family for decades…. I feel that in learning how to make his famous dish, and spending that afternoon talking about his childhood, his father, his love for this food, our relationship has grown in a way I couldn’t have expected. I hope that when you make this – whether you’re trying it for the first time, or it’s an old favorite – that you feel it’s special, too.

The sentiment hit home for me because, appetites aside, it was my aunt who nurtured my passion for making cakes and pastries. Although we never baked much together, she always saved a piece of cake for me whenever I visited her at the convent. It sounds frivolous to think of cake as an important food tradition but the larger point is that when we stop nurturing and sharing our culinary heritage, we lose the flavors that have taken centuries to develop and the foods that link us to communities, places, and time. Read, enjoy, and I hope this post starts you on a journey towards nurturing your own food traditions.