Not just for Chanukah: donuts, scones and a bit of apocrypha

The Festival of Lights—and incidentally the only one of our ancient festivals to commemorate an event that took place in Israel—is a time for celebration and this inevitably involves finding something to eat. For most Ashkenazim the word “Chanukah” brings to mind an immediate thought of donuts/doughnuts (sufganiyot) and latkes (levavot), though the Shulchan Aruch (670:2, per the Rema) recommends cheese—it being a milky product that Judith deployed for killing Holofernes by making him sleepy so that she could cut off his head [see note at end of this post for more information].

Our member Gita Freud has shared with us two recipes which, she points out, don’t have to be eaten only on Chanukah because they work just as well throughout the year. The first, for all the year with the exception of Pesach, is for scones:

Ingredients

1 lb (454 gm) flour (Gita prefers the pre-sifted)
4 tsp baking powder  
2 oz (57 gm) sugar
3 oz (85 gm) butter
2 eggs
Approximately half a cup milk
Approximately 2-3 oz (57-85 gm) raisins or sultanas—or even chocolate chips

Method

Pre-heat oven to 175 Celsius.
Mix the dry ingredients with the butter to a crumbly mixture.
Add the eggs and the milk.
Mix till all the ingredients come together into a smooth ball.
Roll out to about 1 cm (0.4 in.) thick.
Cut into small rounds.
Bake at 175 degrees for 12 minutes.

Serving recommendation

Cut in half and spread with strawberry jam and a dollop of whipped cream.

So much for scones—which are apparently the talk of the town after they made a dramatic impact earlier this month at the Women’s League Membership Tea. Now for the doughnuts or, as some folk prefer, donuts. 

First, a word about words and spellings. The first use of the English spelling 'doughnut' dates back to 1809 in relation to small nut-shaped balls of fried dough; the currently popular toroidal shape was not known till the 20th century. The spelling 'donut', now almost universal in the USA, was rarely used before 1950 but became prevalent following the establishment and rapid growth of the Dunkin' Donuts franchise. The Hebrew word sufganiyah is however of nobler pedigree: it can be traced back to Mishnaic times when the word sufganin was used to describe cakes made with a spongy dough (Challah 1:4. Curiously the word is only found in the plural, proof that you can't get away with eating just one of them). 

Here’s a recipe for doughnuts with אשל (which translates in my dictionary into “tamarisk” but turns out to be another term for leben, a food or drink made from fermented milk: see Wikipedia here). 

Ingredients

2 cups flour
2 eggs
2 containers of אשל
1 cup sugar
Drop of vanilla essence

Method

Mix all ingredients together.
Use an oily spoon to drop teaspoons into hot oil to fry.
Serve sprinkled with sugar.

Note: This comes from the Book of Judith, which is not part of Tanach but is included in the apocrypha, a collection of non-canonical writings that also features the Books of the Maccabees. The Book of Judith is the story of a Jewish widow who murders the Assyrian general Holofernes to save her town from invasion. When Holofernes sieges the city of Bethulia (sometimes identified with Shechem), Judith seduces the general and murders him in his sleep. The assassination, which gives the Israelites the advantage they need to defeat the Assyrian, inspired a famous painting by the Italian master Caravaggio which we show here.