Jewish festival Hanukkah is time for friends, family, and food. Yes, I am coming to the most important bit which is the Hanukkah desserts! You can yourself prepare a lot of simple easy homemade Hanukkah desserts this year. No wonder why we also call it as food holidays. Don’t worry, sit back and we will help you with it via this article. And yes, trust me when I say easy, it will indeed be simple enough to indulge yourself in desserts this year.
Come, let’s see how can we make some good traditional Hanukkah desserts.
1. Cranberry sauce jelly doughnuts also called as sufganiyot
The name itself tells you how delicious this is going to be. Filled with cranberry sauce, this doughnut is a perfect Hanukkah dessert.
Ingredients required :
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1 pack of active dry yeast
- 4 tablespoons of white sugar granulated preferably
- 1 cup of all purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon
- 2 large egg yolks
- 2 tablespoon unsalted butter (melted)
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
- oil for frying
- 1 cup white granulated sugar
- 1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup homemade cranberry sauce you can use my homemade cranberry recipe from here or jelly of your choice
Directions:
- Warm the milk in a small saucepan (lukewarm). Pour this little milk in a bowl to mix and add the yeast and 1 tbs of sugar and stir.
- Make sure the sugar dissolves and let it sit for a while say 5 minutes or until you see some bubbles forming at the surface of the liquid.
- Add the flour, salt, egg yolk, butter, remaining sugar and vanilla extract to this liquid. Knead this mixture until it mixes well and the dough has pulled away from the sides of the bowl. It should feel elastic.
- Spray cooking oil into the inside of the bowl and also on the top of the dough. Wrap this bowl with the plastic food wrap for an hour and half until the dough has doubled.
- After you see the dough doubled, invert the bowl onto a clean plate.
- Roll the dough into about 1/2 inch thickness and cut rounds from the dough such that the rounds are the shape of the rim of a water glass.
- Start placing these rounds on a baking sheet and tightly cover with food wrap again until it puffs up or doubles it’s size. Should take about 40-45 minutes.
- Take a pan, pour some oil and let it heat up until 350˚F, fry the dough 2-3 at a time in the pan. One they turn out golden brown on both sides, remove it and keep it on a dry plate.
- Once done, coat it with sugar and now we have to make way for the cranberry sauce. You can use a chopstick or similar item available in your kitchen to poke a hole from the side and reach until just the center and wiggle it a bit to make some space.
- Repeat with all the doughnuts. Stick the tip of the pastry bag with plain tip filled with cranberry sauce into the donut and fill it with cranberry sauce. Serve the same day.
You are done with the Sufganiyots for Hanukkah
2. Marshmallow Dreidels Recipe
Do you like cute marshmallow treats? Sure, then this is a very apt thing for this day. As promised, it is among the very simple and easy Hanukkah desserts to make.
Ingredients required :
- 1 1/4 cup of chocolate chips. It could be dark or milk chocolate, or if you prefer the color blue then 1 1/4 cups blue-toned candy melts
- 10 jumbo marshmallows
- 10 thin pretzel sticks (thin ones and not too long to make the stick of the marshmallow. I think this comes in mini snack pack)
- 10 chocolate kisses
- 1 tube white writing icing
Directions:
- Since you have to bake it, start with placing a baking sheet which is greased well.
- Take a bowl and melt the chocolate chips to form a paste. You can as well do this using double boiler (R) or microwave. Stir frequently to prevent the scorching
- Remove and keep aside.
- Dig a hole in each marshmallow with the pretzel stick and let it go almost more than half inside the marshmallow.
- Dip the bottom
- In a double boiler or microwave-safe bowl, melt the chocolate chips or candy melts over low heat, stirring frequently to prevent scorching. Remove from heat.
- Dip the bottom of a chocolate kiss into the melted chocolate and stick it to the other end of the marshmallow.
- Place this on the baking sheet and refrigerate for 15-20 minutes to ensure all the items have firmly stuck and adhered.
- Remove it, and using the pretzel stick as a handle, dip the other end into meted chocolate so that it is coated up the top of marshmallow. Just the pretzel is left as a stick.
- Place this on the baking sheet line wise.
- Repeat with the remaining marshmallows.
- Using the icing, decorate on top and you can always make some Hebrew letters to the dreidels.
- Do let the dreidels set for about 30 minutes before serving.
The treat pops are ready for you to sit back on a Hanukkah evening and enjoy!
3. Apple-Studded Fritters
Apple Fritters sounds like a cross between apple pie and Hanukkah treat. Although this looks like doughnuts after being prepared, but it is apples inside – isn’t this cool? And yes, again it is a very very simple procedure to make this amazing fritters.
Ingredients required:
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon course salt
- 1/4 cup tablespoons granulated sugar
- 1/2 baking powder
- 2 cup milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 4 apples
- 4 tbs vegetable oil
- 1 tbs Cinnamon powder
Directions:
- Take a bowl and add 2 cups of milk, add 2 large eggs. To that add 4 tbs of vegetable oil and whisk it together such that you make it a batter. Set that aside
- Take another bowl and pour 2 cups of all purpose flour, add 1/2 tbs of fine salt. Add 2 tbs of sugar and 2 tbs of baking powder. Whisk this dry ingredients together
- Now this dry ingredients goes into the wet ingredient’s bowl or the other way round as comfortable.
- Take the apples and cut them into half inches slices after peeling the skin. You can as well take green apples, it only makes the dish better.
- Heat 2 cups of oil and heat it in a pan.
- Dip the apple slices into the batter and nicely coat the apple with the batter.
- Now transfer this into hot oil, it needs to fry until nice golden layer shows up from both the sides. Takes about 4-5 minutes.
- Remove from oil and place it on a paper towel to drain extra oil. Repeat with all the slices.
- Take a small bowl with 1/2 cup coarse granulated sugar and 1tbs of cinnamon powder – mix it.
- While the fritters are still warm, dip them on this sugar and cinnamon powder.
This is the fastest treat ever, try these and you will know that this is little golden discs of deliciousness.
4. Apricot Gelt
If you did realize what are apricots good for, trust me, you would not miss out a day without this dry fruit. It has got amazing health benefits. Read about it here (R). Let’s try and understand how can we make some good Hanukkah treat of it. This is the simplest of all the other recipes here! You don’t trust me? Go ahead and take a look.
Ingredients required :
- 1 pound dried apricot
- 1 pound dark chocolate
- 1 foil for candy wrappers
Directions:
- Flatten the apricots using a hammer or mallet to flatten the apricots to reduce their thickness. Keep it aside.
- Now, to melt the dark chocolate, microwave chocolate in a glass bowl in 15-second intervals, Keep stirring and scraping down sides in between to melt the chocolate completely.
- Now, dip each of the apricot in chocolate, coating evenly.
- Transfer apricots to a baking sheets.
- Refrigerate it until firm, shouldn’t take you more than 25 minutes.
- Wrap in foil wrappers and decorate if needed before serving.
Isn’t this the simplest of all the other traditional Hanukkah deserts? And a very quick one too! Remember, gelt can be refrigerated in an airtight container up to 3 days for use.
Please share ahead and write to us. We love to hear from you and helps us to improve as well. Happy dessert”ing”!
If you are looking for thanksgiving recipes since it is near as well, don’t forget to check out this.
