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!
No matter how many Passover desserts I set out at the end of the Seder meal, the Marbled Matzoh Crunch is always the first to disappear. Which isn’t surprising when you consider that it’s basically caramel and chocolate coated matzoh. I mean, what’s not to like.
Last year, because of the Pandemic, I had to mail my Passover desserts to all the family members we usually gather with. I sent Raspberry Coconut Macaroons, Triple Coconut Macaroons, Robin’s Egg Macarons and Marbled Matzoh Crunch. Looks like we’re doing a Zoom Seder again this year, but I just couldn’t muster the enthsiasm to bake hundreds of treats for mailing this year. I think we all have Covid fatigue. I’m praying that next year we will all be able to be together again.
Watch the magic in action.
Feel free to customize the matzoh crunch to suit your family. All dark chocolate and a shower of coarsely chopped salted roasted almond is delicious. Dried cherries and chopped pistachios on white chocolate is also a delicious combo. Make it your own.
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.
On the next full moon, Monday April 10, Jewish families, all over the world will gather to hold a Passover Seder. Passover commemorates the emancipation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt over 3000 years ago, and the formation of the Jewish nation.
The word “seder” means “order” in Hebrew. It refers to the 15 parts of the Seder ritual which are followed in a very specific sequence. In the retelling of the story, the goal is to relive the Exodus, both symbolically and vicariously, with tastes, sounds, sensations and smells. We do this to link our past to our future, to teach the next generation. This is no mean feat and can make for a long night!
Every family has their own unique customs and traditions. My youngest sister (I have 4) likes to decorate the table with items that symbolize the 10 plagues. Plastic jumping frogs, wild animals, cattle, and stale mini marshmallows (plague of hail). One year my mom covered the table in blue, green and purple jelly bellies to represent the River Nile. We have had Cadbury Cream Easter Eggs (much tastier than the roasted egg on the seder plate and the hard boiled egg dipped in saltwater we eat to represent the tears shed by the Israelites in slavery). I fully expect Dark Chocolate Moses this year.
That same sister is fond of making guest appearances at the Seder, dressed in various costumes. Some family members find this humorous. Others do not.This year, I’m planning to get the party started by bringing little bags of Passover Party Mix to the table.
Salty, spicy, sweet and addictive. Not normally adjectives associated with a snack that contains matzoh and kosher for passover crispy o’s cereal! But, add mixed nuts, sugar, salt, cayenne, cumin, cinnamon, coriander and smoked paprika and magic happens.Watch the culinary alchemy occur.
Put them out on the table in little bowls, paper cones or little bags and let everyone munch. I doubt anyone will be offended.
Everyday at 5 pm, in the week leading up to Passover this year, the doorbell would ring. When I opened the door, there would be a flat square box of matzoh left on the front porch. By the end of the week, I had a stack of about 6 boxes. Various Jewish organizations around our city were dropping them off at our house with wishes for a happy and healthy Passover.
These were not like the ordinary boxes of matzoh I bought at the supermarket. Regular matzoh are about 8 inches square and come 10 to a box. They are machine-made. Shmura matzoh are round in shape, about 12 inches in diameter. They are hand-made. We traditionally ate this matzoh on the first night of Passover, at the Seder. That was about all I knew about Shmura matzoh.
As I stared at this stack of matzoh boxes, I wondered what we were going to do with all of them. After all, I still had 8 boxes of the regular stuff in the storage room. Suddenly, divine inspiration struck. I didn’t want to let this special matzoh go to waste. I was going to give it the royal treatment. First, I would coat it in a warm butter and brown sugar caramel and then I would slather it in milk chocolate and finally, top the whole thing off with toasted chopped almonds. Who wouldn’t feel special and loved with this treatment. I think there may actually be a spa treatment similar to this somewhere in the world. If not, there definitely should be!
Last year I made Marble Matzoh Crunch with Bittersweet and White Chocolate. This is my adaptation of Montreal baker Marcy Goldman’s creation. Everyone I feed it to rolls their eyes in ecstasy. When I made it with the square matzoh, I broke it into small rectangular pieces. How beautiful it would be, I thought, to wrap up an entire 12 inch circle of this coated beauty!
I had 6 of these all wrapped and chilling in the fridge, ready to go to Toronto for our family Seders. My husband was packing up the car for our drive and he asked me where all the boxes of Shmura Matzoh were. I proudly showed him what I had created. He was horrified! Apparently my creations were sacrilegious. I managed to calm him down by telling him that several boxes survived unscathed and we could take those boxes to his sister’s house. I fed him small bites of the chocolate almond shmura matzoh crunch during out 4 hour drive and he had forgiven me by the time we arrived.
When we returned home I did some research and discovered that Shmura means “watched” in Hebrew, as in, to watch over something carefully. This matzoh is called shmura because it is made under strict rabbinical supervision, meaning that the rabbi is keeping an eye on the process, which must be completed according to a strict set of Jewish religious rules, and in 18 minutes.
thecitycook.com provided this explanation: “The Seder is the centerpiece of Passover. For some who observe and celebrate this holiday, it is particularly meaningful to replace factory-made matzoh, the unleavened bread so essential for the Seder meal, with shmura — or shmurah — matzoh. Shmura means watched from the harvest, which signifies that every step of the process of making this matzoh, from harvesting the grain to the final baking, has been supervised by a rabbi. It also means that when the bread is being made in its small batches, the flour and water are kept in separated cubicles as extra insurance that there is no premature contact between them until the last possible moment, thus preventing any leavening.”
I also discovered that a box of 3 Shmura matzoh, will set you back about $15.00 -$20.00. Shmura matzoh is expensive, because producing it is very labor intensive. Every piece is made by hand, not machine. The production of shmura matzoh is a labour of religious love. Think of it as Artisnal Matzoh.
Whether you decide to give regular or Shmura matzoh the royal treatment, you will not regret it!
To print the recipe for Shmura Matzoh Crunch, click here.
This week in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge I am scheduled to bake Stollen. However, it’s Passover this week and I’m not eating bread. So in honour of this holiday I offer my favourite Passover treat, “Marble Matzoh Crunch.” The original recipe comes from Montreal baker extraordinaire Marcy Goldman. Her cookbook “Better Baking.com“ is one of my go to standards.
For those unfamiliar with matzoh, it is a cracker-like unleavened bread made of white plain flour and water. The dough is pricked in several places and not allowed to rise before or during baking, thereby producing a hard, flat bread. Matzoh is the substitute for bread during Passover, when bread and other leavened products are not permitted. There are two major explanations for eating matzoh. One is historic and the other is symbolic.
Historically, Passover is a commemoration of the exodus of the Jewish people from a life of slavery in Egypt. The Israelites left Egypt in such a hurry, they could not wait for their bread dough to rise. The resulting product was matzoh. The other reason for eating matoh is symbolic. On the one hand, matzoh symbolizes redemption and freedom, but it is also known as poor man’s bread. So it serves as a reminder to be humble, and to not forget what life was like as slaves of the Egyptians. Also, leavening of the bread symbolizes corruption and pride as leaven “puffs up”. Eating the “bread of affliction” is both a lesson in humility and an act that enhances one’s appreciation of freedom.
All that history and symbolism for a little cracker! There are those that compare eating matzoh to cardboard. I wholeheartedly disagree. I love Matzoh. Perhaps it’s because the rest of the year, for health reasons, I spread butter and jam so thinly on my toast I can barely taste it. However at Passover I spread both butter and jam on with reckless abandon. Passover is my excuse to consume butter and jam and matzoh is the perfect vehicle for allowing me to do it.
Marcy Goldman’s Matzoh Crunch is guaranteed to convert any matzoh hater into a matzoh worshipper. You don’t even need to be Jewish to love this treat.
Ingredients:
6 slices matzoh
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter or kosher for Passover margarine
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 generous cups finely chopped bittersweet chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate chips (about 12 ounces)
1 1/2 cups white chocolate, finely chopped (about 8 ounces)
1 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350º F. Cover an 18 x 13 inch rimmed cookie sheet with foil and then cover the foil with a sheet of parchment paper. Do not leave this step out or you will be cursing me when it comes time to cleanup! Cover the parchment paper evenly with the matzoh. You will have to trim some of the matzoh with a sharp knife to make it fit into a flat even layer. You will have some matzoh scraps left over. Slather with butter and jam and eat.
2. In a large heavy bottomed saucepan, add brown sugar and butter or margarine. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until the mixture comes to a boil. This will take about 2-4 minutes. At one point it will look like the butter is separating from the sugar and it will appear to be an oily mess. Just keep stirring, it will come together again. Once mixture comes to a boil, keep stirring for about another 3 minutes. Carefully pour caramel onto matzoh. Using a metal spatula, spread it out into an even layer.
3. Place baking sheet into oven and bake for about 12 minutes until the caramel topping is golden brown and bubbling.
4. While caramel is baking chop white chocolate into small pieces. Place in glass measuring cup and microwave on medium power for 2 minutes. When you remove chocolate from microwave, it will look like the chocolate is not finished melting. Take a clean dry spoon and stir white chocolate. It will continue to melt as you stir. Pour melted white chocolate into a disposable plastic piping bag. The easiest way to do this, if you are alone, is to place the piping bag in a large glass or pitcher and fold down the top. Pour in white chocolate and let sit until you are ready to use it.
5. Remove caramel covered matzoh from oven after about 12 minutes when it is golden brown and bubbly. Place pan on a wire cooling rack on the counter. Immediately sprinkle caramel matzoh with chopped bittersweet chocolate or chocolate chips.
6. Wait for a few minutes until chocolate has a chance to soften. Then, using a metal spatula, spread chocolate into an even layer.
7. Now comes the fun part! Making a marble design with the white chocolate. Twist the top of the piping bag closed and using a sharp scissors, cut a small tip off the end of the bag. Starting in one corner of the pan, pipe white chocolate in a zig zag pattern. Then starting in the opposite corner, pipe a zig zag pattern in the opposite direction. Using the sharp tip of a wooden skewer, drag it through the wet white and dark chocolate making a nice design. You can either drag skewer in a circular pattern or go in straight lines. Below is a video of me demonstrating the process:
8. While chocolate is still wet, sprinkle with sea salt. Chill pan for several hours until chocolate is firm. Peel off foil and parchment paper and place marble matzoh crunch on a large cutting board. Using a very large sharp knife, cut matzoh into large squares. For an 18 x 13 inch pan, I usually get about 18 pieces. Store matzoh crunch in an airtight container in the fridge. It keeps well for about 5 days. (That is as long as no one else in the house knows it’s there!)
For an equally delicious variation, instead of marbling with white chocolate, sprinkle dark chocolate with toasted chopped unblanched almonds (about 1 1/2 cups). Or try milk chocolate and almonds, or dark chocolate and dried cherries, or white chocolate and chopped pistachios or macadamia nuts. The possibilities are endless. Have fun!
