pssst…originally published this in 2019; republishing for passover 2020!
GEFILTE FISH COOKIES.
that’s right. your eyes / brain aren’t deceiving you. gefilte fish. cookies! gefilte. fish. (sort of.) COOKIES.
…to those of you who haven’t yet frantically x’ed out the browser window / catapulted your computer out the window / called the police, then: hi! thanks so much for sticking around.
it’s amazing, really, because i actually did set out to write a nice, normal post today. featuring a nice, normal recipe. with nice, normal ingredients. and the next thing i knew i was researching fish puns and shoving gefilte fish cookies into tiny jars.
here’s how it all came to pass.
i was walking through new york cake (fancy bakery supply store here in the city) the other day, as one does, when i saw some tiny candy carrots in a little plastic container by the check-out. (new york cake, by the way, is heaven on earth — it’s basically a warehouse-ish storefront here in manhattan filled with every size and shape and color of fondant and cake pan and sprinkle known to man. honestly, the place probably has more cookie cutter shape options than amazon dot com. it’s madness. glorious madness.)
anyway.
i spied the carrots, which were absolutely part of an easter candy display, but, never mind that…and i immediately thought to myself, “wow. candy carrots. what about candy gefilte fish to go with them?”
like any normal girl would.
of course, i very quickly realized there’s no such thing as candy gefilte fish! and homemade flesh-colored gummies sounded…repulsive.
but as for flesh-colored cookies? well, those are just COOKIES.
the rest, as they say, is history. history that i have painstakingly documented here for you to see.
the jars are tiny, by the way! pinky for scale:
i’ve included a little how-to at the bottom of this post, which is, truthfully, not so much a step-by-step demonstration as it is a shopping list. these are impossibly easy—just throw everything together in a tiny jar (bonus points for a gold lid) and call it a day. i initially thought they’d be cute as seder favors, but quickly realized they’d work perfectly for mishloach manot, too, and added the purim-specific label.
truly an all-purpose dessert / favor / conversation-starter / april fool’s joke / everything.
“gefilte fish” cookie jars
what you’ll need:
- gummy carrots
- one batch of any miniature version of a, um, “gefilte-fish-looking cookie”! some options:
– lemon almond flour cookies (kosher for passover)
– gluten-free crescent cookie, un-crescent-ified (kosher for passover)
– almond flour cookies (kosher for passover)
– pecan puffs (NOT kfp, and roll in light brown sugar, not confectioner’s sugar)
– brown sugar pecan shortbread (NOT kfp) - small jars (I used these ones that I found at Michael’s; they’re only $1 each so you can really stock up if you’re giving these as favors or gifts)
- full-sheet label paper and scissors
- letter stamps and ink (i used a pack by Studio G that was similar to these or these or these — all three of those are the correct size!)
- metallic gold sharpie
what you’ll do:
- make your cookies according to the recipe!
- place the candy and cookies into the jars in an alternating pattern — it doesn’t have to be perfect! You just want both to be visible from outside of the glass.
- seal the jars and work on the labels. stamp a punny message of your choice onto the sticky label paper, draw a little something with your gold sharpie, cut out, and stick onto your jars.
- that’s it! gift for purim as mishloach manot, share on passover, or give them out as favors at shabbat. or, well, there’s always april fool’s.