Dessert upgrade

Honey cake, plum tart stick to tradition with a few tasty twists

A modern take on grandmother’s Rosh Hashana baking rituals

When Alex Levin became a pastry chef, he decided he wanted to keep his grandmother’s Rosh Hashana traditions — though with a few modifications.

“She didn’t know anything about fancy brioche or puff pastry,” he said. “But she always tweaked whatever she did the year before, adding something new and different.”

His grandmother, Martha Hadassah Nadich, wasn’t just any home baker. She was Craig Claiborne’s go-to expert on Jewish cooking in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Her husband, Judah Nadich, was the rabbi of the Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan, where Levin, 38, grew up in what he calls a “conservadox” family.

“My grandmother had a strong influence on me from childhood,” said Levin, who spent many after-school dates cooking with her. “I still use one of her aprons and some of her favorite pastry tools.”

After graduating from Yale, Levin went into finance but soon switched from peddling stocks to paddling pastry crust at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Then, after joining Michael White’s Altamarea Group — he is the executive pastry chef at Osteria Morini in Washington — he started reinventing the pastries of his childhood.

“My grandmother’s honey cake was a staple at every Rosh Hashana meal,” Levin said. “Her version was traditional and elegant.”

For the holiday, which starts on the evening of Oct. 2, he omits her cloves, allspice and raisins, and adds an apple cider compote to the batter, which moistens the cake and gives it a caramelized apple flavour. On a recent afternoon, he pulled out a cast-aluminum Bundt pan that his grandmother bought at Zabar’s, one he still uses for the cakes she taught him.

For the second day of Rosh Hashana, Nadich made double-crusted stone fruit and apple pies, her grandson recalled. He also makes fruit pies, but for his plum tart, he uses a sablé butter crust flavoured with vanilla bean; a filling made with almonds or pistachios, sugar, egg and a bit of flour; and a topping of sliced plums.

While preparing the dessert, he demonstrated a few tricks. “When you are creaming confectioners’ sugar with the butter,” he said, “the texture becomes so smooth that there is no coarseness in the crust as there sometimes is using regular sugar.”

Because he puts sugar in the crust and covers it with a sweetened textured almond filling, he does not douse the plums with sugar (though he does sprinkle turbinado sugar on top for added crunch).

“This almond cream has a delicious flavour all of its own, so it accents the plums,” he said. “Not only does it absorb the juice and all the loveliness of the fruit, but it adds flavour to it in the baking process.”

Levin prefers using butter in his desserts, but he believes coconut oil is good in a pie crust (in this case, he recommends solid coconut oil); grapeseed oil can be used to cook down fruit; and olive oil is a good substitute in a cake to make it pareve (neither meat nor milk).

What would his grandmother think of his modern takes on her baking rituals?

“They might seem strange to her, but she’d love them,” he said.