Another flavour of matzoh crunch coming at you today. We were gifted a box of round matzoh, and I wanted to create something special with them.
After the caramel coating, I topped these with a layer of bittersweet chocolate and a swirl of white chocolate.
I topped that with these gorgeous slivered green pistachios, crumbled freeze dried raspberries and tart dried cherries. A sprinkling of flaky sea salt balanced out all the flavours. This is a beautiful and sophisticated flavour profile sure to please.
This sweet & salty matzoh crunch is delicious and utterly addictive, as my husband and chief recipe taster discovered this week.
Montreal baker and cookbook author Marcy Goldman is the originator of Matzoh Crunch. The recipe is published in her first cookbook, “A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking”. Matzoh crunch is essentially a layer of matzoh covered in brown sugar-butter caramel and topped with a blanket of melted dark chocolate.
This is my adaptation of her recipe. I have elevated matzoh crunch to the next level, by sprinkling on salted toasted almonds, Passover pretzel thins and toasted coconut flakes. I used a total of 4 different kinds of chocolate for this over the top confection. A base of milk chocolate, and then decorative swirls of white, blonde and bittersweet chocolate. It’s fancy AF.
Watch the video to see how it all comes together.
As with anything you bake, if you start with top quality ingredients, you will yield a better outcome. Most recipes I have seen for matzoh crunch call for melted chocolate chips as the top layer. The problem is that chocolate chips are not formulated to melt smoothly. They contain less cocoa butter so that they hold their shape. This is great for chocolate chip cookies, but not so great when you want a velvety smooth coating. So start with a good quality chocolate that is meant for melting. I love Valrhona. I order it online from Vanilla Food Company.
Blonde chocolate, is a more recent addition to the chocolate family. It is essentially caramelized white chocolate. You could make your own, or buy Valrhona’s which is marketed under “Dulcey“. This is not a Valrhona sponsored post, I just really love their chocolate!
Montreal baker and cookbook author Marcy Goldman is the originator of Matzoh Crunch. The recipe is published in her first cookbook, “A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking”. Matzoh crunch is essentially a layer of matzoh covered in brown sugar-butter caramel and topped with a blanket of melted dark chocolate.
This is my adaptation of her recipe. I have elevated matzoh crunch to the next level, by piping a decorative topping of white, milk and blonde chocolate. It looks fancy but it’s quite simple to do.
As with anything you bake, if you start with top quality ingredients, you will yield a better outcome. Most recipes I have seen for matzoh crunch call for melted chocolate chips as the top layer. The problem is that chocolate chips are not formulated to melt smoothly. They contain less cocoa butter so that they hold their shape. This is great for chocolate chip cookies, but not so great when you want a velvety smooth coating. So start with a good quality chocolate that is meant for melting. I love Valrhona. I order it online from Vanilla Food Company.
Blonde chocolate, is a more recent addition to the chocolate family. It is essentially caramelized white chocolate. You could make your own, or buy Valrhona’s which is marketed under “Dulcey“. This is not a Valrhona sponsored post, I just really love their chocolate!
Marbled Matzoh Crunch is my spin on Marcy Goldman’s “Caramel Matzoh Buttercrunch”, from her classic book, A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking.
Making Matzoh Crunch, on the surface, looks like a fairly simple process.
But, there are a few details you need to pay careful attention to, so that it comes out perfectly.
Make sure you line the baking sheet with foil and then lay a sheet of parchment on top of that. If you use only parchment paper, you will be scrubbing baked on caramel off the pan. If you use only foil, you will have a very hard time peeling the hardened matzoh crunch off of the foil.
Do not use chocolate chips. Buy good quality bittersweet or semi sweet chocolate and chop it up, or buy couverture chocolate callets. Chocolate chips have less cocoa butter in them so they keep their shape during baking, making them more difficult to melt and they have less flavor than bars or callets.
Use real white chocolate. Many products out there that look like white chocolate, especially chips, contain very little, if any, cocoa butter.They will not melt into a smooth liquid, like real white chocolate.
When cutting your matzoh to fit into the baking sheet, cut along the dotted lines the matzoh has, not across them. It will cut into straight pieces.
When cooking the butter and brown sugar, you will get to a point where the butter will separate from the brown sugar and look like an oily mess. Keep stirring and it will come together and thicken and bubble. That’s when it’s ready to pour onto the matzoh.
Do not omit the step where you sprinkle the wet chocolate with the sea salt. Chocolate and caramel are sweet. You need the salt.
Once the chocolate is set, remove it from the fridge and let it sit for about 30 minutes before cutting it into pieces. If you cut it cold, right from the fridge, the chocolate layer will separate from the caramel covered matzoh. If you wait until the chocolate softens a bit, it will stay sogether with the caramel. A very sharp knife is essential. For an alternate version, use milk chocolate and chopped toasted almonds. Also very delicious.
I read in the Globe and Mail Food section this week that God gave us cardboard so that we could describe the taste of matzoh. Not this matzoh treat!!
I made this for my sister Bonnie. I slightly adapted the recipe from the April 2015 issue of Bon Appetit. This matzoh crunch is kicked up with a pinch of hot pepper. I wanted to make it with Aleppo pepper because she puts that sh#t on everything! Sadly, if you have been following the news, you will know that Aleppo pepper is almost impossible to get now. The civil war in Syria has virtually destroyed the Aleppo pepper production. (Although the scarcity of Aleppo pepper is the least of their problems.) The citizens of Syria are in my thoughts and prayers.
Aleppo is a dried crushed red pepper. It is slightly fruity, with a whiff of smoke and only moderately spicy. I actually found a forgotten tin of it at the back of my cupboard. Not sure how long it’s been there but it has lost most of it’s potency.
I decided to make a few batches of this treat using a variety of peppers and compare the results.
Maras pepper (sometimes spelled Marash), from Turkey, is a good substitute for Aleppo. It is slightly smokier and hotter. I made a third batch with supermarket red pepper flakes and one final batch with chipotle powder, because that’s my jam!Brown sugar, butter and your chill pepper of choice get whisked together over moderate heat until hot and bubbly. Pour over matzoh and spread into an even layer. Bake toffee covered matzoh for about 10 minutes. Top hot matzoh with bittersweet or semi sweet chocolate chips and let sit until they melt. Spread chocolate until smooth.Top with toasted chopped pistachios, dried cherries, toasted coconut flakes, coarse salt and cocoa nibs.Chill and cut into squares.Or cut into wedges. Any way you slice it, it’s delicious.The batches I made with the Aleppo and Maras were not very spicy. The heat was barely noticeable even though I doubled the amount of pepper recomended in the Bon Appetit recipe (I used 1 teaspoon instead of 1/2 teaspoon). The red pepper flakes batch had obvious but not burning heat. It was my favourite. The chipotle was too smoky for my liking. This matzoh crunch is a flavour bomb in your mouth. Sweet (chocolate), salty (coarse salt and pistachios), sour (cherries), bitter (cocoa nibs), spicy and crunchy.
We are living in a time of some amazing culinary experimentation. While culinary mashups are nothing new, witness the Turducken, which has it’s roots in ancient Roman times, some creations have gone a bit too far.
While I love nothing better than a bowl of Cheetos and a glass of wine for dinner, I am not keen to give Cheetos Macarons a try anytime soon. Nor will Goat Cheese and Peanut Buttercup Fries be passing these lips… not ever!
So, in the spirit of culinary creativity, I bring you The Ultimate S’more. Because it’s summer! Because it’s crazy delicious! Do I really need an excuse for taking my favourite Passover snack, Matzoh Crunch and turning it into that summertime staple, the s’more? Instead of using matzoh, I substituted Saltine crackers.I cooked butter and brown sugar until it resembled molten hot lava and poured it over a layer of saltines.I baked it until it was bubbling and then I covered it in bittersweet chocolate and marbled in some white chocolate, just because it’s so freaking beautiful.
Then I toasted some marshmallows and sandwiched them between the caramel chocolate coated crackers. If you are a purist, like my youngest son, you may prefer them raw!If you are watching your carbs, perhaps an open faced sandwich is the way to go.However you enjoy summer, including the Ultimate S’mores in your celebrations is bound to make it a lot sweeter.
