meet in your kitchen| Shakespeare & Sons, Berlin and Laurel's Chocolate Rugelach
"They both slow you down. They’re both transportive. They both smell good. They can both be enjoyed at the same time" - Laurel's words, when I asked her what she likes about the connection of food and books.
I've enjoyed sweet treats made by Laurel's hands for many years, but it took a while for us to meet personally. Together with her business partner Roman, the young woman from Boston runs Berlin's popular Shakespeare & Sons and Fine Bagels - a heavenly place for English books, bagels, cookies, rugelach, and cakes - all in one store! Originally, they started their Berlin business in a cozy space in Prenzlauer Berg that was, conveniently, quite close to where I live. But two years ago they had to move and I lost my dear store. A recent coffee date at their gorgeous new store in Friedrichshain brought back memories and awoke the idea to meet the stranger behind all these amazing sweet goods. It was actually a chocolate rugelach - possibly the best rugelach I ever ate - that made me get in touch with Laurel that same day. Her rugelach is gooey, chocolatey, sweet and juicy, it's so good that you basically have to order one after the other. When we met later, Laurel told me that her dear friend Sanam used to say that every rugelach sticks to your hips for seven years. If something tastes so good, I don't care about my hips, it's worth every pound!
Laurel is a self-taught baker with a weak spot for anything baked and sweet, a trait of her food loving family. Especially the women are quite gifted and know how to impress the hungry crowds at their kitchen tables with homemade cookies, cakes, and breads. Luckily, for generations, this passion has been passed on to the young ones.
Although she calls herself a shy bird who prefers to stay behind the scenes, when I saw her roll out the puffy yeast dough, dishing out stories about Israeli and American rugelach, I didn't believe it at all. Laurel sounds like a pro who must have a cooking show one day. I enjoyed watching her spread the dark chocolate filling lusciously over the orange flavoured dough so much, that I almost forgot how hungry I was. Luckily, it only took 15 minutes and she pulled out the most fragrant warm rolls in front of my camera - and then they went straight into my mouth.
Shakespeare and Sons also have the English Eat In My Kitchen book on their shelves!
Laurel's Chocolate Rugelach
For the dough
7 cups / 910g bread flour
2/3 cup / 130g granulated sugar
4 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 teaspoons salt
1 cup / 225g butter
1 1/3 cups / 315ml milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 eggs
zest of 1 orange
For the filling
3 cups / 600g of sugar (this can be substituted for demerara or even muscavado for a stronger flavor)
2 1/4 cups / 270g unsweetened cocoa powder
3 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 3/4 cups / 415g butter
For the egg wash
2 eggs, lightly beaten
In a bowl, whisk together flour, sugar and yeast. When that is mixed in, add salt and whisk again. In a saucepan, melt butter on low heat and then remove from heat. Add milk and whisk. Add vanilla and eggs and whisk. Pour liquid mixture into the flour mixture. If using a mixer, mix until incorporated with the paddle attachment, then switch to a dough hook. Knead with the dough hook for 5 minutes. If mixing by hand, mix well with a wooden spoon and then turn out onto a floured surface and kneed well for about 7 minutes. It's a very stick dough however, so it's best to use a machine. Put the kneaded dough into a well-greased bowl, cover with a wet cloth or plastic wrap, and let rise for about an hour or until your fingerprint in the dough doesn't spring back.
Preheat the oven to 175°C / 350°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
While your dough is rising, make the filling. Mix sugar, cocoa, and cinnamon. Melt butter and pour on while hot. Mix well. Set aside to cool. You can cool it faster in a refrigerator, but be careful not to let it sit in the fridge for too long. It will turn into a solid block.
Turn out your dough onto a floured surface and cut it into 3-5 balls, depending on how large you want your rugelach. There's no need to punch down the risen dough, as the rolling will do that for you. Roll out one of your dough balls into a perfect circle about 1/2cm / 1/4" thick. Spread your filling evenly and thinly across the dough, being careful not to tear the gentle dough. Use a pizza cutter to trim the edges and to divide the dough circle into about 12 triangles, like pizza slices. Now starting from the outside of the circle, roll up your rugelach so they look like little croissants. Place on a baking sheet.
When you've done this for all of your dough, brush your rugelach with an egg wash and bake for about 15 minutes. When you take them out of the oven, drizzle with simple syrup. Oh damn, now you get to eat them.
This recipe also freezes beautifully. I usually bake up as many as I want and put the rest of the unbaked rugelach in the freezer to take out and bake as I need them. (Think about the possibilities here. Seriously. Lazy winter weekend mornings in bed and then...poof...15 minutes later you've got gooey hot rugelach in your kitchen? This is a maximum pleasure recipe so it's a wise move to keep them on hand). Just give them a few minutes to thaw before you throw them in the oven.
How does an ex-physicist decide to start a bagel shop? When did you come up with the idea? Did this idea grow over years or was it a spontaneous decision?
Ha, I don’t know if I’d call myself an ex-physicist. I’d say I got the physics degree and ran. The bagel shop happened out of pure, selfish necessity. I found myself living in the first-class bagel desert of Berlin and, frankly, I was hungry. I tried to assimilate, I swear. Ate broetchens, croissants, muesli...you name it. What can I say? They weren’t doing it for me like a bagel and cream cheese does. I’ve always been a home baker, wasn’t particularly focused on anything else at that point in my life, and it just struck me as something to do. So pretty spontaneous.
At your peak, you baked 350 bagels every day on your own before you put your team together. You offer 25 different bagels at your shop, sweet and savoury. What fascinates you about this popular bun with a hole in the middle?
The bagel is a creature of the diaspora. At this point, it’s as much American as it is Polish-Jewish. It’s spent the last hundred years moving out of the basement-level New York bakeries, getting softer and bigger, and landing on breakfast plates the world over. At the same time, bagels are no longer created with the same reference point or even a nod to their history, and I think it’s important to maintain standards. What I like about a proper bagel is the deliberate chewiness and the impractical hole. The hole serves only to gush cream cheese and soil your clothes. And yet it’s got to be there. More surface area for the flavorful skin. So it’s not an easy food. But it’s such a good food.
Both of us share a passion for rugelach, can you tell us a bit about the difference between American style rugelach and the traditional recipes rooted in Israel?
Ok, so the kind of rugelach I’m familiar with from back home (Boston) are more of a gently flaky cookie made with a cream cheese or sour cream dough and a filling of jam, chopped nuts, raisins, and cinnamon sugar. The dough is a royal pain to work with, but worth it. Meanwhile the rugelach you’d find in Israel are generally from a yeasted dough and reach the level of chocolate-y gooeyness that solicits involuntarily obscene vocals from those eating them. Or maybe that’s just me. This is disloyal to my upbringing, but I’m just going to say it: there is nothing better than an Israeli rugelach. The clouds of bees in the shuk in Jerusalem agree with me.
What makes the Ashkenazi baking tradition so special to you?
A hundred years ago, my great-great grandmother and her sister made their living baking breads and challahs in a village on the outskirts of Warsaw. All the women in my family are wonderful bakers and this is a way of maintaining and honoring a longstanding food tradition. The mandelbread recipe I use in the store goes back at least four generations. I’m not sure how the ancestors would feel about the double-whammy of reverse migration and return to the kind of baking that for them was a tough necessity and for me a cutesy, artisanal hobby-turned profession, but that’s 21st century privilege for you.
What's the hardest part of running your own bakery?
Not eating all the cookie dough.
Are there any Shakespeare and Sons plans for the future, apart from books and bagels?
Right now I’m working with several other people to organize a Jewish food week called Nosh Berlin. It’ll be from March 19-26 2017. There’s never been an event like it here and people are really coming together. To kick it off, we’re partnering with The Breakfast Market at Markthalle Neun to have a Jewish breakfast market with everything from bagels to blintzes to jachnun to Ethiopian dishes, and more. The idea is to get as much wonderful Jewish food together in one place as possible. We’re drawing from local chefs and home-cooks as well as folks from abroad. Then throughout the week there will be events all over the city, from popup dinners to cooking classes to film showings to readings. So everyone should set aside a lot of tummy real estate for that week.
You grew up in Boston, you've lived in Kathmandu and in Prague, and you've called Berlin your adopted home for more than 5 years. What do you like about the capital? What inspires you in this city?
What I like about this city is how easy it is to do your own thing here. It’s a place with very little open judgement about life choices and success seems to be measured differently than where I grew up. And that has provided me and a lot of other people with the room to make slightly unorthodox dreams reality.
What do you like about the connection of food and books?
They both slow you down. They’re both transportive. They both smell good. They can both be enjoyed at the same time.
Can you tell us a little about the history of the house and store where you opened the new Fine Bagels/Shakespeares and Sons shop?
So the building in Friedrichshain where we’re currently located was built in 1962 as a bookstore and apartment building. Since it was in East Germany, it was a state-run bookstore until the fall of the wall, at which point it was privatized. To this day, old Berliners are always popping in to wax nostalgic about their memories of the bookstore from back in the day. If you walk into the store, you’ll noticed a raised portion to your left. It sits on top of a Cold War bunker that was built-in. Meanwhile, all of the built-in bookcases are original. They were covered in terrible particle board from the early ‘90s and when we tore it down, there was the beautiful original wood shelving. It’s a big space so we’re able to accommodate the bakery kitchen, the cafe, and the bookstore. It was a stroke of luck to get it.
You say that many women in your family are passionate home bakers, what did you learn from them? And what about the men in your family?
We’ve got some sort of cruel genetic predisposition to a sweet tooth running down both the paternal and maternal branches of my family. So there was always someone baking sweets. Cookies, cakes, quick-breads. My mother in particular is a home-made obsessive and passed that on. Particularly chocolate chip cookies, kugel, and zucchini bread. One grandmother was always making the most divine Toll House Cookies you’ve ever tasted and the other one was all about blueberry pies and cheesecakes. Would you believe it if I told you my maternal grandmother was an early adopter of the Weight-Watchers program? Shocking.As for the men, well, at least a lot of them are good dish washers. That’s all I’ll say.
If you had to name one dish from where you grew up, back home in Boston, that you miss the most, what would that be?
Honestly, just an onion bagel and cream cheese from Rosenfeld’s in Newton Center. I’m absolutely devoted. They’re the best. And good seafood, of course.
Which are your favourite baking cookbooks and why?
My absolute favorite is Inside the Jewish Bakery. There are no pretty pictures, but it’s the most accurate and comprehensive survey of Jewish-American bakery recipes I’ve ever seen. It’s full of history and storytelling and extraordinarily detailed instructions. And that’s what it should be. The authors, Norman Berg and Stanley Ginsberg, both made their careers in these very bakeries and know better than anyone what they’re talking about. It’s my ultimate reference point.
Where do you find inspiration for new recipes for the Fine Bagels' menu?
Mainly I try to wheedle old family recipes out of the elderly. Other than that, I go home and visit the old-school bakeries and delis around where I grew up. I’m not really trying to do anything so innovative. I’m more interested in preservation.
Who is your biggest inspiration in the kitchen?
Meike, this is entrapment! If I told you it was someone outside of my family, what would the family say? If I told you it was someone within my family, they’d think I was playing favorites. I’ll whisper it in your ear, but you can’t tell the internet. It’s my own neck I’ve gotta think about.
What was the first dish you cooked on your own, what is your first cooking memory?
Chocolate chip cookies with my mother. You hang around hoping to lick out the bowl long enough you inadvertently learn to bake.
What are your favourite places to buy and enjoy food in Berlin?
The fairly new Bread Station on the Maybach Ufer does the best sourdough loaves I’ve ever had. They’ll schmear up a hot broetchen with salted butter and comte for you and it’s heaven. Merle’s Roti and Rum near Yorkstrasse is divine...piles of hot roti, spicy curries, and homemade ginger beer. Heno Heno in Charlottenberg is worth the trip across town. Homey don buri, sour plum onigiri, and herring nigiri appetizers. Lon Men’s Noodle House on Kantstrasse and Agni on Prenzlauer Allee are two other favorites.
If you could choose one person to cook a meal for you, who and what would it be?
Joan Nathan. She’s the queen.
You're going to have ten friends over for a spontaneous dinner, what will be on the table?
A proper Nepali dal bhat tarkari. It’s the most wonderful food in the world. I bothered a lot of people into teaching me to cook while I lived over there and it’s still my favorite thing to make. A shout out of gratitude here to Saraswati Pangeni, Sudeep Timalsina, and Nirajan Tuladhar.
What was your childhood's culinary favourite and what is it now?
Childhood favorite? French toast. Grown up favorite? French toast.
Do you prefer to cook on your own or together with others?
I’m a kitchen misanthrope. Mainly because I’m clumsy. My ideal cooking scenario is having a friend hang out a safe 4 feet away from the cooking. They will gossip to me and drink wine while I make everything. Some days, like yesterday, this is not far off from the reality of my professional kitchen. Can’t say if that’s a good thing or not.
Which meals do you prefer, improvised or planned?
Planned. I live in permanent fear of not making enough food for my guests. This has never happened, but I gotta stay vigilant.
Which meal would you never cook again?
Latkes for 100 people. I smelled like a fry trap that fell into an onion field and my skin broke out in zits like a pubescent boy. Brutal.
Thank you Laurel!
Banana and Chocolate Spread Rugelach
I've never baked croissants in my kitchen, I'm a bit scared of puff pastry at least when I'm the one who has to prepare it. Unfortunately, I love to eat them, sometimes I literally crave their buttery flakiness that leaves your fingers sticky and fills your mouth with the wonderful taste that only the excessive use of butter can create. Luckily, there is an easier and quicker alternative to the French treat coming from the Jewish cuisine. In case of urgent need of croissants, just bake rugelach!
The delicate pastry is in no way behind croissants, neither in richness nor in tender lightness. It's the addition of cream cheese that creates this easy miracle, easy as it's far from being as time consuming as the French breakfast classic. When the ingredients are mixed and the dough has cooled in the freezer for half an hour, the rolling and filling can begin!
My last rugelach recipe was one of the first posts I shared on eat in my kitchen, I baked them for a festive Hannukah party at a friend's house. I used bittersweet chocolate and cinnamon, a combination that can never go wrong. For my new recipe I had a bit of a childish combination in mind, chocolate breakfast spread and puréed bananas, the perfect kiddy treat! I'm quite sure that a few of our friend's young children would have loved to join in my messy kitchen activity. My first batch of rugelach turned out to be a bit difficult as I tried to cut the single pieces after I spread the banana and chocolate on top of the pastry, messy! I can't recommend this, it's almost impossible! Instead, start with the banana layer, cut the triangles and then put on the chocolate spread, that's much easier.
So, what can I say about the taste? My partner was quite skeptical when I told him about this combination but then, as soon as he smelled the sweetest aroma coming out of the kitchen, he couldn't stop himself anymore. Both of us actually, as we ate them like peanuts. It's one of those sweets that hits the right spot with the first bite and calls for more and more!
Banana and Chocolate Spread Rugelach
For 24 rugelach you need
plain flour 150g / 5 ounces
icing sugar, 2 heaping tablespoons plus more for the topping
a pinch of salt
butter, cold, 125g / 4.5 ounces
cream cheese 125g / 4.5 ounces
ripe bananas 2 (around 200g / 7 ounces)
chocolate spread (like nutella) 6 tablespoons
Combine the flour, icing sugar and salt. Cut the butter with a knife into the flour mixture until there are just little pieces left. Continue with your fingers and work the butter quickly into the flour. Add the cream cheese and continue mixing with a fork or the hooks of the mixer until the mixture is combined. Form 2 discs, wrap them in cling film and put them in the freezer for about 30 minutes, the dough should be hard but still rollable.
Set the oven to 185°C / 365°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Purée the bananas in a food processor until smooth.
When the dough is firm, keep one disc in the fridge and roll out the other disc between cling film dusted with flour. You should end up with a circle of about 30cm / 12″. Flip the dough onto a new piece of floured cling film, this will make it easier to roll the rugelach. Spread half of the banana purée on the dough and cut it like a cake into 12 triangles. Divide half of the chocolate spread roughly into 12 portions and sprinkle on each triangle. Gently roll up the rugelach from the wider side to the tip. Bake in the oven for about 19-20 minutes or until golden brown. Continue with the remaining disc.
Let the rugelach cool on a wire rack and dust with icing sugar.
Chocolate Cinnamon Rugelach, Happy Hanukkah!
We are invited to celebrate Hanukkah together with our friends and godchild and I will contribute rugelach which is a wonderful flaky, croissant like pastry. They are made traditionally for the important Jewish feast Hanukkah, the "Feast of Light and Dedication".
When I tried them the first time I fell in love with their flakiness, they are buttery but still light. They taste divine, absolutely addictive, and due to their tiny size you end up eating lots of them. I enhanced the chocolate filling with cinnamon (which I love all year round), so it fits perfectly to the season. The pastry is a bit like short crust with added cream cheese which makes them so fluffy but still buttery. Look at the photo and you will want to try one!
Rugelach with Chocolate and Cinnamon
For 24 of these bite-sized sweets you will need
plain flour 150g / 5 ounces
icing sugar, 2 heaped tablespoons
butter, cold, 125g / 4.5 ounces
cream cheese, at room temperature, 120g / 4.5 ounces
a pinch of salt
bittersweet chocolate 80g / 3 ounces
sugar 40g / 1.5 ounces
cinnamon 1 heaping teaspoon
You will need a baking tray, lined with baking parchment. Keep in mind that the dough has to sit in the freezer for 30 minutes or in the fridge for at least 1 1/2 hours.
Mix the dry ingredients (flour, icing sugar, salt). Cut the butter with a knife into the flour mixture until there are just little pieces of butter left. Mix with the dough hooks for a few seconds. Add the cream cheese and work it into the mixture with a fork or the mixer to get a crumbly texture.
Form 2 discs and put them in the freezer for 30 minutes. The dough should be very cold but not too hard, still rollable.
Preheat the oven to 185°C / 365°F. Put baking parchment on your baking sheet. Chop the chocolate finely and mix with cinnamon and sugar.
Roll out one disc. I do this between floured cling film as it become too sticky otherwise. When the diameter is roughly 30cm / 12" you should have reached the right thickness of a couple millimeters. Cut the disc like a cake into 12 triangles. Take one slice after the other in your hand (the dough might still stick a bit to the foil but don't worry, it is elastic) and sprinkle with your chocolate mixture. Don't forget to set aside half the chocolate mixture for the second pastry disc. Now roll the little rugelach in the palm of your hand tightly into a croissant shape and put them on your baking sheet. Follow with the second disc or leave it in the freezer if you want to stop after the first batch of 12. I recommend doing them all at once as you will regret it if you don't. When you have rolled up all 24 (they should all fit on one tray) bake them in the oven for 13 minutes or until puffy and golden brown. It's best to check them after 10 minutes to be sure that they don't get too dark.
Let them cool on a wire rack for a few minutes and enjoy with your tea or coffee. They are also great for a late breakfast or brunch or even for a party as they are perfect fingerfood.
