Final 12 months, I used to be invited to my first breaking of the quick for Yom Kippur and was requested to convey a dessert. As a result of I had by no means taken half in any Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur meals, I requested my host and good friend Sam what I ought to convey. “Something,” he stated, “there are not any guidelines!”
This gave me pause. There should be one thing that’s historically eaten to mark Yom Kippur, which takes place 10 days after Rosh Hashanah and is taken into account the holiest day of the 12 months in Judaism. The vacation requires fasting from sunset on the night earlier than Yom Kippur to sundown the following day.
I wished to convey one thing surprising moreover a honey cake, which is related extra with Rosh Hashanah than Yom Kippur. I requested different Jewish associates, they usually all got here again with the identical reply as Sam’s.
Undeterred, I set about researching, attempting my finest to seek out one thing that might work. As a result of I used to be cooking for a big crowd, I made a decision to make three desserts with tangential connections to the vacation, as decided by the Google search “Yom Kippur desserts.” I ended up making a flourless chocolate cake, a crumb cake and a zwetschgenkuchen, a German tart made with Italian prune plums from a recipe by the always-reliable Jewish cookbook creator Joan Nathan.
Two kokosh desserts about to enter the oven are distinguished by their crumb topping, which provides texture and sweetness that balances the cocoa filling.
(Katrina Frederick / For The Instances)
Nevertheless, the chocolate cake was too dense and the crumb cake too dry — that’s what I get for taking random recipes off the web, I suppose. Fortunately, Nathan’s plum tart was good, and everybody had seconds of that one after politely choking down slivers of the chocolate and crumb desserts. I gave myself a full 12 months to give you one thing higher, and extra unique, for this season’s Yom Kippur.
I reached out to my good friend, New Yorker employees author Helen Rosner, and she or he instructed I try the “seven-layer cake” made by Stern’s Bakery, a Brooklyn-based wholesale bakery that provides desserts and pastries to lots of the nation’s kosher grocery shops. The seven-layer cake is basically an oblong model of dobos torte, a traditional Hungarian dessert: seven skinny layers of cake alternating with chocolate frosting and lined in melted chocolate. And whereas I favored the seven-layer cake, its kosher designation meant its frosting needed to be shortening-based, so it had a slick high quality that made it style not not like a “Swiss roll” snack cake from Little Debbie. This was not a nasty factor, however with all of the layering and chocolate coating, I wished inspiration from a dessert that was easier and exacting to tug off for house bakers.
Whereas purchasing for the seven-layer cake, I got here throughout one other Stern’s product referred to as heimishe kokosh. It was lined in crumbs, spiraled with chocolate and seemed like a fatter and flatter model of a strudel, one in every of my favourite desserts. After I introduced them each house, my companion and I discovered ourselves returning to the kokosh again and again, for breakfast, a day snack and dessert. It was simply barely candy, chewy and gooey however not decadent, and had loads of crunch from the crumbs on high. This was the cake I wished for my “official” Yom Kippur dessert.
Chocolate filling: The kokosh right here is rolled with Dutch-process cocoa, sugar, vanilla and a contact of sea salt.
(Katrina Frederick / For The Instances)
Babka meets strudel
Typically referred to in Jewish bakeries as “chocolate-filled rolled strips,” kokosh — Hungarian for “cocoa” — is mainly a combination between babka, which is usually layered with chocolate, twisted and loaf-shaped, and strudel, which is a protracted loaf of skinny pastry wrapped round a cooked filling. It appears to be like extra like a strudel, however the dough is yeast-raised and quick, which suggests it has a excessive fat-to-flour ratio from the addition of butter. It’s rolled with a chocolate filling right into a spiral log that’s then baked golden brown. In Hungary, kalács are yeast-raised desserts; the identify comes from Slavic koláč, which comes from kolo, which means circle.
Different Jap European relations of kokosh might be discovered within the Polish makowiec, a cake made with yeasted quick dough spiral-rolled with poppyseeds and raisins that’s then baked in a log and iced. There may be additionally Czech koláče and Polish kolache — each typically known as “Bohemian buns” — which might be yeasted candy buns stuffed with poppyseed or fruit filling which might be then topped with a crumble topping. This is likely one of the few instances you see a crumb topping added to such yeasted, crammed desserts. The opposite occasion is with, particularly, the “heimishe” kokosh made by Stern’s. Why the identify?
Numerous Jap European desserts would appear to change into “espresso desserts” with the addition of high-sugar crumb toppings or a combination of sugar and nuts that creates a crunchy distinction to yeasted or egg-risen cake batters. This stands in opposition to the “effective” desserts that have been uniformly clean in texture and crammed or glazed for dessert preparations. In Germany, crumb espresso desserts, or streuselkuchen, have been and are nonetheless made by sprinkling a crumb topping over a fundamental yeast-raised candy dough.
Few Jap Europe “cake” relations of kokosh featured a crumb topping, which provides this kokosh additional crunch.
(Katrina Frederick / For The Instances)
“The phrase heimishe is mainly Yiddish for ‘do-it-yourself or kinda home-style,’” says Menashe Stern, a part of the Stern’s Bakery household. “It’s actually a reputation we give to our kokosh that has that additional gooey chocolate filling. Irrespective of what number of requests we get for gluten-free, sugar-free, all of the ‘frees,’ we all the time promote essentially the most of our actually decadent, hardcore chocolate baked items like kokosh and rugelach — nothing sells higher.”
So, evidently including a crumb topping — one thing that’s not a given in all kokosh — preslicing and an additional gooey filling give kokosh that homey really feel from the attitude of the bakers at Stern’s, which I discover pleasant.
In accordance with “The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia” by Stephanie Butnick, Liel Leibovitz and Mark Oppenheimer (Artisan, 2019), kokosh is just the Hungarian Jewish model of babka that’s typically baked flat and, typically, with out streusel — this has led to kokosh’s nickname by many Jews being “flat babka.” And in response to “Iconic New York Jewish Meals: A Historical past and Information With Recipes” by June Hersh (American Palate, 2023), the bread/cake hybrid we all know now as babka was first referred to as kokosh by Hungarian Jewish immigrants who baked it in New York Metropolis.
In some ways, I view kokosh as the house cook dinner’s model of babka, because the latter’s advanced braiding and twisting is finest left to the skilled bakeries. However at house, the place you don’t have to fret about precision, the kokosh’s charms shine. It’s a purposefully flat cake — because of not having to let the formed loaf rise a second time — that eats like a sweetened bread, which is the perfect breakfast. And the heimishe kokosh’s crumb topping provides loads of texture and sweetness to counteract the deliciously bitter cocoa filling.
In doing extra analysis, I discovered kokosh to be strikingly just like Hungarian baigli, which is a yeast-cake roll stuffed with poppy seed filling. Poppyseeds have been cheaper than chocolate again within the late 1800s and early 1900s, so one concept is {that a} cocoa model of baigli took place later and it was given the identify kokosh to tell apart it from the unique poppyseed baigli.
Whereas some recipes for kokosh — and there aren’t that many — name for rolling the dough up right into a log and baking it, I want the slouchy, flat form of Stern’s kokosh. My good friend Leah Koenig — creator of many Jewish cookbooks, together with this 12 months’s “Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen” (W.W. Norton) — has one of the best recipe I discovered for kokosh, rolling it right into a cylinder and brushing it with egg wash earlier than baking. Whereas her dough serves as inspiration for this recipe, I want to fold the dough into broad, flat sheets moderately than a good roll as a result of it offers a large canvas for the crumb topping. I exploit a extra beneficiant quantity of crumbs than even the Stern’s model shows as a result of extra crumbs are by no means a nasty factor in my guide. As soon as baked, you may lower the kokosh into lengthy finger-shaped planks which might be good for resting alongside your morning or afternoon cup of espresso.
Kokosh is decidedly much less wealthy than all the aforementioned candy, yeasted breads as a result of it’s typically kosher, so it doesn’t include butter or dairy, like milk or bitter cream, as many different of those yeasted roll desserts do. However that is exactly why I adore it for breakfast a lot — it seems like a deal with you may eat with espresso and never be left feeling like it should spoil the remainder of your day.
On this manner, it’s the perfect approach to break the Yom Kippur quick, providing you with only a style of sweetness.
