21 Comments

Oh yes, I'd love a copy of 'Tava'!

I've been eyeing it since it was released in the UK. Grew up with Romanian family friends, one of whom was named Constantine Constantine, which delighted me as a child — obviously, still does!

Thanks for sharing the cake recipe, which I'll try for sure!

Susan

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Romanian pastries are the best! I would love a copy of Tava.

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The holiday baking plan is to make your sourdough granola (prime way to use up all my accumulated discard in the freezer), David Lebovitz’s spiced nut mix, Dorie Greenspan’s world peace cookies, maybe some sort of chocolate/vanilla checkerboard and swirl cookie situation, a Roman Jewish biscotti recipe from Tasting Rome, and Ina Garten’s shortbread. Looks like a lovely book! Would love to learn more about baking from that region!!

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I would love a copy. My paternal grandmother was raised in a (mostly) Serbian village in Western Romania. I'm planning on making a few recipes of hers for the holiday. One she called Pita which is a nut filling mixed with apple, raisins, honey and milk in between two thin layers of a rich yeasted dough baked in a 13x9 pan and cut into small squares.. I don't know anything about other Romanian foods. Thanks for the write up Andrew.

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I’m going to bake a pie and some sort of roll. I’d love to check out things in this book though.

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I've made two different fruitcakes this season,a custom of at least 30 years.

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What a beautiful book cover. I would love to see the inside and try some of the recipes. Thanks for the opportunity. For the holidays, I will be cooking some of our traditional French-Canadian dishes like Ragoût de boulettes et pattes de cochon (meatballs and pig's feet stew), some tourtières (meat pies) and sugar pies. Enjoy the holiday season 🎄

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Will be baking choreg, Wordloaf recipe.

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The book sounds like it would be a great addition to our library!

My wife's father's family came from Romania in what today is across the border in Moldova. I, myself, spent a few weeks in Romania in 1972 as a young teenager. I have quite fond, albeit not-overly-distinct memories of eating new and delicious foods What really sticks in my mind were the plums, plums, plums. Fresh! In pastries. In cakes! And, of course, delicious bread. That was my first foray into good European bread. Given the backdrop of the Eastern European food supply at that point in history, I am still impressed at the delicious food we were served.

Good fresh plums are not in the mix right now, but cranberries sure are. I was about to bake my tasty apple-cranberry pie, but seeing the cranberry gugelhopf, I think I will have to have a crack at that. I lived on the border between Baden and Alsace for a decade and it has been way too long since I baked a gugelhopf.

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author

You won the book giveaway, Yafa and Bob! Please email me at ajanjigian at wordloaf.org to make the arrangements!

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Def will be making croissants and apple pie. Probably babka too.

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My holiday baking is hazelnut-pepper biscotti, which I handed out early this year. Am fascinated by this book and the recipe you chose to include. My mother was born in Neu Benat just after the end of WWI, a few years later the family emigrated to Chicago. Although my grandmother and mother never baked Gugelhupf, they did bake other things like Kipferl, Kräpfen (sp?) which were fried donuts filled with apricot jam, and a yeasted coffee cake with plums. My mother also baked an orange-cranberry torte which was sort of a fruit cake soaked in orange juice syrup and served with whipped cream.

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I’m thinking I need to revisit nut rolls. The recipe came from my mom’s best friend. The egg yolks go into the dough, and the whites get whipped and folded into the nut filling. I haven’t made them for years!

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Wow, looks like a wonderful book! Can’t wait to try that Gugelhupf!

I’m making cookie tins for gifting this week (persimmon, linzer, biscotti, and oatmeal chip nut), along with peppermint bark, peanut brittle, and my grandmother’s pecan divinity candy. Also I will be attempting Rachel Mennies’ challah! A delicious season indeed.

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I'm planning on baking the cranberry lime pie from Bon Appetit -- I made it at Thanksgiving and can't wait to make it again. And now also I'm going to make Irina's Gugelhupf, because I bought a four-mini-bundt pan on a whim last month, and am ready to bundt it up all over the place (we have fun).

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I am planning to bake a lot of cookies

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I'm only going to bake a few batches of cookies--Eric Kim's gochujang cookies from the NYT, some pandan-flavored shortbread, and windmills.

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