It’s Shavuot: Let them eat milchik

SNICKERS CHEESECAKE

The Woolies cream cheese in the silvery box works best. It looks like Philadelphia cheese. Be careful not to buy smooth cottage cheese. Snickers could be swopped out for Bar Ones.

Ingredients

Base

2 cups digestive biscuits crushed (about 1½ packets)

125ml melted butter

2 Tbsp sugar

2 Tbsp cocoa powder

Filling

4 tubs cream cheese (1kg)

1⅓ cups of castor sugar

4 eggs

1 cup cream

2 tsp vanilla essence

1 Tbsp lemon juice

3 Snickers bars chopped (150g) I do a bit more as I tend to eat some

Topping 1

1 cup sour cream

½ tsp vanilla essence

2 Tbsp castor sugar

3 Snickers bars chopped

Roughly chopped salted peanuts

Combine topping ingredients. Pour over the cake and garnish with chopped Snickers bars and the salted peanuts.

Topping 2 – salted caramel

100g unsalted butter

75g brown sugar

75g castor sugar

75g syrup

½ cup cream

1 tsp vanilla

Stir all ingredients together for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat, and add one teaspoon of coarse salt. Allow to cool, and pour over the cake. Garnish with chopped Snickers bars but no salted peanuts.

TRIPOLINE PASTA WITH WALNUTS AND PESTO

Fettucine works just as well but the Tripoline looks so pretty. If your food processor is parev, you can add the parmesan cheese separately instead of into the food processor. If the pesto mixture doesn’t come together in the food processor, add a touch more olive oil.

Ingredients

2 cups of basil destalked, washed, and dried

1 clove of garlic

50g walnuts

½ cup of olive oil

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 level tsp of salt

Grind of black pepper

1 punnet of baby tomatoes on the vine

1 cup of fresh peas

Pea shoots for garnish

Method

Preheat your oven to 180C. On a baking sheet, toast your walnuts for about 10 minutes until they are crunchy (start checking on them after eight minutes). In a small oven-proof dish, roast the destalked tomatoes, saving a bunch on the stalk for garnishing. They are done when they begin to pop open.

Place the peas in a small pot with cold water. Bring to the boil, and then drain so that they remain crunchy. Drain in a strainer and set aside.

Place the basil, garlic, olive oil, walnuts, parmesan, salt, and pepper in a food processor. Grind until a paste is formed.

Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Add the pasta, and cook until it’s tender but not mushy. Drain, reserving a small amount of the water to loosen the pesto paste. Toss the pesto and the pasta together. Add the reserved water gradually so that the pasta is well coated. (You may not need it.)

Gently stir in the roasted tomatoes and cooked peas. Garnish with the pea shoots and tomatoes on the vine.