Thanks rachelelen for the video, I understood by the directions but seeing it done I can understand better. Rhiannon is excited that we have grapefruit and I think that I will segment a couple for her, Hayden and me. As for the Clementines..... I think I ate 5 today, I just can't seem to stop, they are so sweet and juicy, will have to buy some more to satisfy my fix and maybe even freeze some for later. Stacie

I'm still on a calamondin cake tear! I forget how I ran across this recipe but it's gluten-free, made from almond flour, and really turned out tasty. I mean, knock you up the side of the face, citrusy! https://www.nigella.com/recipes/clementine-cake Let me preface this recipe to note that I used some brand new non-stick cake pans but the cakes didn't come out at all. The almond flour makes for a crumbly consistency in other recipes but this one has so much sugar and moisture from the calamondins that it frankly made a sticky mess trying to get them out of the pans. I added few notes I hope will help. Cover with foil after 40 minutes of cook time to keep the top from getting too brown. I think you might also consider lining the pans with parchment paper. The cake was really tasty so I think it's worth a little experimenting. I plan to try this again and will share any success/failure notes. I use deseeded, puree'ed, calamondins, and skipped all of the boiling and processing in step 1. I put the 13-oz of calamondin puree' in a measuring cup and it comes to 1 1/4 cup. Beat six eggs until they are thick. According to one of the notes below the website recipe, this helps fluff the cake up a bit. It's really moist so the baking powder needs a little help. In another bowl, combine 2 1/4 cup light brown sugar, 2 1/4 cup almond flour, and 1 tsp baking powder. Blend the dry ingredients into the beaten eggs and then mix in 1 1/4 cup of puree'ed calamondins (de-seed them and puree the rest of the fruit, peel and all). Grease two flat cake tins and divide the batter between the two. Cook at 375F for about an hour. There is so much moisture in the mixture, I think it will help to cook on a rack in the lower half of your oven so the bottom will cook a little hotter than the top. The top of my cakes got pretty brown before the inside was fully done. The recipe also suggests putting foil over the pan after about 40-minutes of cook time. I missed that note the first time so that should help. It's not low calorie with the sugar and almond flour but it does work for gluten-intolerant folks. I didn't ice mine. It' already plenty sweet but it has a great sour edge to it and would be outstanding with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, a glass of milk, cup of coffee....just brings out the best in the calamondins.

The two piece cheesecake pans don't have a spring latch. They're just plain pans. I'm following Olychick's advice and looking for the springform. Springforms (in good shape) are leakproof. That's the whole point of them. Tomorrow, I should have minions, so I'm putting it off until then. I've made similarly eggs and almond flour cakes in two piece tube pans, which are much leakier than cheesecake pans. It's not the lack of flour that's the issue--a regular butter cake made with flour is too runny for a two piece pan--it's whether the clementines themselves make the batter too runny. Thanks, everybody!

So, my tablet locked up, but the Submit button worked, so I did a submit and edit, p and I finished with a lot more to the previous. I might have overdone it—please don't feel obligated to read! no problem anout the thread. We don't have thread police here, and Floral’s article answered all my questions, plus added some interesting ideas, so I'm set for the dessert. I'm mostly Ashkenazie, middle Europe, if that's what you wanted to know, but one of my grandfathers, a scholar, grew up in what is now Israel, and his family had a lot of Eastern influences as well, which is where lamb and rice for Seder come in. Both of my grandmothers were modern women, and I think their mothers as well, before it was ”modern”, so we nowhere have the tradition that the family must follow the husband's traditions. Frankly, I think that's just a rule for peace in the home (itself an important rule of Jewish life)—that is, if you can't agree on how things should be, that's the tiebreaker. :) That's not what's said, but I prefer to think of it that way, So ”fish balls in a jar” might have been any number of things. Some jarred gefilte fish is fine. Some is pretty good. A lot is deeply disgusting. It's usually packed in its own aspic, which is fishy slime. Some people actually like eating it. I don't think you have to have fish allergies to find it revolting. For Passover one is to be more strictly kosher than normal. I don't keep kosher daily (long divergence there, so I'll skip the explanations). I do try to keep the meal meat only, and avoid things that by their nature could never be kosher. Except, I couldn't keep the family out of the Matzah Toffee, which has butter. You make a toffee of butter and brown sugar, spread it over matzah, sprinkle liberally with chocolate chips, melt in a hot oven for a few minutes, spread the chocolate evenly with a spatula, then sprinkle with high end trail mix (nuts and dried fruit bits), melt for another minute. When cool, chill overnight on the baking sheet in the fridge. Break into bite sized shards and keep in an airtight bowl in the fridge. Some people call it Matzah Crack, not because you crack it into pieces, but because it's irresistable, and my family figure if it's down to coffee and fruit, it's not butter on the seder table. I haven't heard of the smeared with version you described—nor the canned tuna based fish loaf—but they're recognizable. :) So too is the strata made with layers of veg and matzah. And eggs. I invented one when I was young, which I thought was merely serviceable, and a former roommate called months later for the ”recipe”. As if there was one. ;) Luckily, I was young enough to remember it. Blessing the greens is one of the 15 steps of the Seder, fairly early in the service. It's the parsley or other green herb dipped in salt water (for more see my previous, added-to, post), The nut salad is called ”charoset”, and among other things symbolizes the mortar used by the Israelites in building for the Egyptians, There are all kinds of different charosets, some mostly fruit, others soupier, others more of a paste. Kind of Ashkenazie standard is apples and walnuts chopped together with wine, based on what was easily available in Northern Europe in early Spring. My father's way is one apple, lots of pecans, cinnamon and sweet concord grape wine, chopped slowly, with his big knife, adding more wine and cinnamon, bit by bit, so it gets cut right into the apples and pecans as they get minced. Then they're put in a container and covered with wine, in the fridge for a few days, with the occaisional stir, adding more wine as needed, as it's absorbed. Unbelieveably good! I can come close using a spring driven manual nut chopper, but nothing is like my father's big knife. I make an avocado charoset for my two cousins with nut allergies (eaten by all, since it's good), and a date and nut based one I learned here for variety. The blessings over the matzah are the standard one for bread (for bringing the grain from the earth) and one for the commandment to eat matzah. After that, we put bitter herb (the horseradish) symbolizing bondage and toil, on a bit of matzah, mellowed by the sweetness of the charoset added to it, and say the blessing for the commandment to eat bitter herbs. Then there’s the Hillel sandwich which used to be a bit of lamb and a slice of horseradish between pieces of matzah (no, the earl of Sandwich was known for what he’d eat while gambling, but was hardly the first!), but since an interpretation in the 16th century of the common era said that eating lamb was a temple (the actual one in Jerusalem) thing, there's no lamb. It's one of the steps of the modern Seder, and some go just horseradish and a ”Whoa!”, which my family have always done, but there's nothing holy about horseradish. We have at keast two kinds of bitter herbs on the Seder plate, which might include kale, and popularly romaine, though since the lettuce blight and rise in production and consumption of romaine, it's just not that bitter anymore. Many people prefer a bit of bitter veg for this, understandably! Beesneeds, you have a great memory for what you experienced. Following the really horrible false propoganda demonizing Jews, especially in Europe, we have a tradition to invite outsiders to Seder, to share the normal reality with them. How fun it must have been for those guys sharing with you and your sister!