This intriguing recipe appeared twenty years ago, in the January 21, 2004, issue of The Jewish Voice and offers a tasty way to celebrate Tu B’Shevat.
The Jewish Historical Society of Delaware is inviting readers to share their favorite recipes and stories about your family’s favorite foods, for an online cookbook to help celebrate our 50th Anniversary. Please send your recipes to jhsd50@jhsdelaware.org and visit us at https://jhsdelaware.org for more information about upcoming 50th Anniversary events and programs.
Gail M. Pietrzyk, Archivist
St. John’s Bread for Tu B’Shevat
By Lisa J. Solomon
Once in Israel, many, many years ago, I stood on a hilltop facing the most impossibly beautiful grove of ancient olive trees. The guide who led a group of my boisterous friends and I to the site, stood with one sandaled foot braced behind the other to keep steady on the sloping terrain as he spoke with pride about the healthy grove and the fact that those very olive trees have grown for generations, still bearing their best voluptuous fruit. The day was dry, sunny, and hot. As I stood there, taking in the rugged landscape, his voice and the restless noises of my friends, began to fade and I was alone, watching the wide silver-leafed trees—with thick gnarled branches, spreading, spreading, almost touching one another—shading the graveled soil, telling their strong story of survival, how they have, for so many years, for so many people and their children, stood right there. And I could hear their wise heartbeat.
On Tu B’Shevat, The New Year for the Trees, it is a well-known custom to plant or make donations to plant new trees in Israel. But a lesser-known custom mentioned in several of my reference books is eating the fruits of the trees of Israel, such as olives, dates, almonds, walnuts, and carob, or as it is interestingly called, St. John’s Bread. When I read about this odd name for an Israeli fruit, I kept looking for a recipe. Surely someone, over all these years, would have decided to create something fitting the title. I looked through old and new Jewish cookbooks, several baking cookbooks and in my favorite bread book. No luck. So, I bought some carob chips, the sweet chocolate tasting morsel made from the powder of carob, and I set about to create the bread myself. Since along with the carob, different nuts and dried fruits are often included in Tu B’Shevat meals, I decided almonds and dates would be a nice compliment. Well, after some experimenting, the bread that emerged was deep mocha in color and even deeper in taste. The dates, almonds, and carobs offer little visual contrast to the brown bread, but the taste is quietly fulfilling like an old family recipe. Yet the melting carob, hidden inside, makes it taste exciting and new at the same time. Something like the sensation all those years ago, when I was very young, facing trees that were very old, showing me that despite it all, they grew taller, and richer, and fuller, bearing their proud fruit, silent witnesses to an ever-changing landscape, year after year, no matter what.
ST. JOHN’S BREAD
This bread is truly delicious. I bake many fruit and nut breads but this one’s dark, homey appearance only adds to the rich surprise of flavor. One hint—make sure you like the coffee you use because it is a strong flavor ingredient.
- 1 cup fresh dates, chopped small
- 3/4 cup strong coffee, boiling hot
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1 generous Tablespoon butter or margarine, room temperature
- 1 large egg
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/4 cup almonds, chopped or sliced
- 1/4 cup carob morsels
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Brush a 9x5x3 loaf pan with melted butter or coat with vegetable spray.
- In a heat proof small bowl, pour boiling hot coffee over cut-up dates. Set aside to cool.
- In bowl of electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and mix well. Sift flour, baking soda, and salt. Add date mixture, alternately with flour mixture and vanilla into bowl of electric mixture, mixing until all ingredients are blended without over-mixing. With a spatula, fold in nuts and carob and transfer into loaf pan, smoothing top.
- Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until a knife in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack for ten minutes. Turn out onto rack to cool completely.
Makes one loaf.
