Beyond honey cake: Rosh Hashanah recipes for a sweet new year
Celebrate with pistachio cake, pumpkin challah, and more.
Rosh Hashanah is more than just the holiday of apples and honey: It’s a baker’s dream. This celebration marks the start of the Jewish New Year, but unlike other holidays (I’m looking at you, Passover) there are no specific dietary restrictions. Instead, tradition and symbolism primarily guide the food choices at Rosh Hashanah. Honey and apples will certainly ring in the new year, but ingredients like pumpkin and pomegranate also symbolize abundance and reinforce the cyclical and seasonal elements of this important festival. Above all, sweet foods usher in a sweet new year, which is why baking for this holiday is such a joy.
We asked a few of our favorite bakers to share their beloved Rosh Hashanah recipes. The bakers included here have drawn on these New Year traditions as well as their own backgrounds — spanning from Ukraine and Iran to Oregon and Brooklyn — to develop deeply personal holiday bakes. Whether it’s babka bursting with seasonal plum jam; a nutty, soothing-green pistachio cake twinkling with a pomegranate glaze; or golden pumpkin challah spirals, these recipes represent Jewish baking at its finest. - Lara Rabinovitch
Sonya Sanford’s Plum Almond Babka
Every year around Rosh Hashanah, I remember my Soviet-Jewish grandmother tending to a pot of Italian plum jam made with fruit foraged from local trees. My family immigrated from Ukraine to Washington state in the late 1970s, where we blended old-country culinary customs with new ones. During the Jewish High Holidays, my grandmother’s kitchen was filled with extraordinary scratch-made dishes and desserts.
These days, as Italian plums ripen in the late summer in the Pacific Northwest, I carry on my grandmother’s tradition and collect the fruit to turn into jam. The smell of sugary plums and their inky purple hue takes me back to my childhood, and I often think of my grandmother as I knead the dough to make plum-filled babka.
And this association is fitting: Babka, a sweet, twisted yeast bread, is said to derive its name from "Baba," meaning grandmother in Polish and Russian. This beloved pastry originated in Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish communities in the early 19th century, and immigrants to the US helped globally popularize it in New York City bakeries in the 20th century. Historian Gil Marks notes that in the 1800s, babka was simpler; it was a way to use up extra challah dough by filling it with preserves or cinnamon. In contrast, the modern versions of babka are made with a far more buttery enriched dough, commonly filled with a decadent chocolate spread, and finished off with a shiny syrupy glaze or sugary crumb topping.
Babka requires time and effort, but it pays off with a glossy, golden loaf that reveals a labyrinth of layers when sliced. Rolling the dough as thinly as possible before spreading it with the plum jam and frangipane yields those satisfying swirls in the finished bake. In our home, a slice of this seasonal babka at breakfast marks a sweet new season — and new year.
Sonya Sanford is a writer, chef, and podcast host specializing in Ukrainian and Soviet cuisine, Jewish food, and Pacific Northwest seasonal cooking. She is the author of Braids: Recipes From My Pacific Northwest Jewish Kitchen. Explore more of her work at www.sonyasanford.com and follow her on Instagram @sonyamichellesanford.
Leah Koenig’s Pumpkin Challah
In my family, like so many others, tradition typically takes center stage on our holiday dinner table. As Ashkenazi Jews whose ancestors hail from Lithuania and Russia, Rosh Hashanah must include crisp apples dipped in honey, a saucy brisket, tzimmes (a medley of roasted root veggies and dried fruit), and a big, round challah to celebrate our wishes for a full year ahead. Unlike the rest of the year when this holiday bread is braided into a loaf, the round challah marks this time as particularly special — the circular shape symbolizes the cycle of the seasons and the start of a fresh year.
More than just a seasonal twist, though, this pumpkin challah is inspired by pan de calabaza, a yeasted pumpkin bread hailing from the Sephardi Jewish community. The Sephardi diaspora originated in Spain and Portugal, but after the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century forced Jews to convert to Christianity or flee for their safety, this community spread throughout the Mediterranean, Middle East, North Africa, and beyond. For Sephardi Jews, pumpkin holds special significance on Rosh Hashanah because the word for pumpkin or squash in Aramaic (k’ra’a) sounds similar to the Hebrew word kara (to cut or rip). As a result, eating foods made with pumpkin or squash is considered an edible expression of hope that all mistakes from the past year will be ripped from the record as we start fresh in the new year.
Beyond its symbolism, pumpkin challah is also irresistible. The loaves are coiled into majestic spirals and baked until the outside is shiny and bronzed and the inside glows golden and warm. A hint of cinnamon in the dough evokes fall, while the pumpkin lends extra softness to the crumb. The tender, squishy bread is delicious on its own or drizzled with honey, and it makes the ideal tool for mopping up any last puddles of sauce on your plate. Whether you celebrate Rosh Hashanah and want to try something new or are simply in the mood to bake a bread appropriate for autumn, this Pumpkin Challah is the ideal addition to your baking repertoire.
Leah Koenig is the IACP Award-nominated author of seven cookbooks, including the acclaimed The Jewish Cookbook and Modern Jewish Cooking. Her newest cookbook, PORTICO: Cooking and Feasting in Rome's Jewish Kitchen was a National Jewish Book Awards finalist. Leah's writing and recipes can be found in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Food & Wine, Epicurious, and Food52, among other publications. She also writes a weekly newsletter, The Jewish Table, which shares recipes and stories from the world of Jewish food.
Tannaz Sassooni’s Pistachio Cake with Pomegranate Glaze
As an Iranian Jewish kid growing up in Los Angeles, I always felt a little different from my Hebrew school classmates. At our home, the Rosh Hashanah dinner table would be packed tight not with sweet and sour brisket but with Persian foods: mounds of long-grained basmati rice studded with barberries, slivered carrots, or almonds alongside dishes filled with long-cooked stews — maybe quince and pomegranate molasses, maybe a tart mix of fresh herbs and kidney beans. Large platters would hold roasted Cornish game hens or huge salmon filets. Finally, the saffron-scented tahdig, perched like a golden crown at the center of the spread — its crispy rice formed at the bottom of the pot — was the most coveted of all.
Before we even got to dinner, we performed a full Rosh Hashanah seder. Seders are frequently associated with Passover, but Iranian Jews also celebrate Rosh Hashanah by eating a series of ritual foods, each with a blessing to carry us into the new year. We would eat apples and honey with a blessing for sweetness in the coming year, but then we would continue with a slew of other foods: slow-cooked black-eyed peas that came with another blessing for abundance; meat from an animal's head such as braised beef tongue, for which we asked to be recognized as the head and not the tail in the coming year. Dates, sautéed zucchini, Persian leeks, and beets round out the list, each with prayers for protection from our enemies. But my favorite was always the big bowl of pomegranate seeds.
The Persian love for pomegranates is legendary, and Rosh Hashanah tends to fall at the start of the fruit’s season as summer moves into fall. As we eat the seeds, each one bursting with sweet juice, we hope that as the pomegranate is filled with seeds, we may be filled with merits in the new year.
Even if you don’t have a history of elaborate Iranian Jewish Rosh Hashanah seders, you can bring the symbolic significance of pomegranate to your holiday table with this cake. It also incorporates the classic Persian ingredients pistachio and rose water, resulting in a fragrant pale green cake, a beautiful contrast to the deep pink pomegranate glaze. It is then piled with fresh pomegranate arils that glisten atop the glaze like tiny jewels. Brightened by orange juice and zest and enriched by olive oil, this tender cake is not too sweet and deeply flavorful. Iranians end every meal with sweets and a delicate glass of black tea, which is a perfect pairing alongside this dessert.
Born in Tehran to a Jewish family, Tannaz Sassooni is a Los Angeles-based food writer interested in exploring the city’s global culinary landscape and is currently interviewing moms and grandmas for a forthcoming regional Iranian Jewish cookbook. Follow her cooking adventures on Instagram @tannazsassooni.
Looking for more Rosh Hashanah recipes? Try Harvest Apple Challah, Zingerman's Honey Cake, or Zingerman's Halvah Swirl Cheesecake.
Cover photo by Patrick Marinello; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne.
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