A Ukrainian Cheesecake

Plus: How you can help Ukraine

My guest this week on my podcast was Jennifer Mendelsohn, and she changed my life.

And while the recipe in today’s Substack is good, her effect on my life had nothing to do with cheesecake.

Many of you know Jennifer as the ‘resistance genealogist’ who uncovered the immigrant pasts of Republicans who were loud about building a wall, the evils of chain migration and illegal immigration. Armed with her skills as a journalist, her innate curiousity and an appreciation for irony, she dug into the immigrant stories of people such as Stephen Miller, Dan Scavino and Tomi Lahren. And lo! what she found! Stephen Miller’s great-grandmother arrived only speaking Yiddish. Scavino’s family used chain migration to make sure their family could all come to the U.S. from Italy. Lahren’s great-grandfather immigrated from Russia to North Dakota, where he was indicted for falsifying naturalization papers.

From there, Mendelsohn morphed into a genealogical expert. With the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Mendelsohn and other genealogists saw an uptick in interest among Jewish Americans to discover their Ukrainian roots. Along with other specialists in Jewish genealogy, Mendelsohn recently participated in a workshop to help people reconstruct their Ukrainian pasts. The workshop raised money for Razom for Ukraine and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and I would be grateful if you would consider a donation to them. Although the event is over, your purchase of an admission ticket will be donated to the charities.

On the podcast, Jennifer shared some of her favorite Jewish genealogical sites, which I could use to start the long and twisting road to discovering my family’s history. I have since spent nearly every waking hour since Wednesday travelling from Sopron to Vienna to a town 20 km outside Auschwitz called Chrzanow all from my couch (And is why my substack is only being published now, I was late to pick up my son yesterday, didn’t edit my book proposal, and the laundry literally sits in a pile at my feet as I write this.).

My dad (top right) and two unidentified kids on their way to the US, December 1939. I wish I knew who these other boys were.

Quick background: My father was incredibly lucky and escaped Vienna with his parents in 1939, travelling to New York harbor on the S.S. Vulcania. The rest of my father’s family in Austria, Hungary and Galizia were murdered in the Holocaust. His father’s sisters supposedly lived in the town of Auschwitz, so we assumed the worst. Assumed, because my father only knew the name of one of his two aunts: Rivka.

A search on my grandfather’s name turned up a Shoah testimony of a woman I’d never heard of. Surprisingly, in her video, the woman showed a sepia photo of four men, one of whom was unmistakingly my Grandpa Markus. Who was this woman and what was she doing with this picture I’d never seen before? Long story short: She is my second cousin, Rivka Rothkopf’s daughter, a daughter we never knew existed! And now my brothers and I have cousins.

Findings like that have made me unstoppable. Jennifer is right: geneaology is contagious. I now have an extreme case of it and it’s not going away any time soon.

Luckily, I have this Ukrainian-style cheesecake for sustenance. It’s known as Lviv Syrnik, and I suspect there are as many recipes as there are people who like cheesecake. The cake is unusual as it’s made with farmer’s cheese or cottage cheese, rich with eggs, baked in a loaf pan and then crowned with a chocolate ganache glaze.

Lviv Syrnik: A Ukrainian Cheesecake

What You’ll Need:

·      ½ cup raisins (optional)

·      2 ½ cups full-fat cottage cheese or farmer’s cheese  

·      ½ cup white sugar

·      2 tablespoons cornstarch

·      1 packed teaspoon lemon or orange zest  

·      7 tablespoons butter, cut into 16 pieces, at room temperature

·      4 large eggs

·      ¼ cup sour cream

·      1 teaspoon vanilla extract

·      1 tablespoon flour or cornstarch to coat raisins (if using)

Ganache glaze

·      5 fluid ounces heavy cream

·      5 ounces chocolate chips

What You’ll Do:

1.     Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a 9 x 5 “ loaf pan with butter. Lay a piece of parchment in the pan like a sling, and butter that. (This will make removing the cake easier.)

2.     If using, soak the raisins in boiling hot water, rum or orange juice for 10 to 15 minutes. Drain the raisins and lay on a bed of paper towels to dry.

3.     Press the cottage cheese (or farmer’s cheese) through a fine mesh strainer placed over a bowl.

4.     Transfer the now smooth—or at least much less lumpy— cottage cheese to a blender or food processor. Add the sugar, corn starch and lemon zest and pulse 10 to 15 times until just blended. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.

5.     Add the butter and process until blended and no visible chunks of butter remain. Scrape, scrape, scrape. Add the eggs, one at a time, pulsing until just blended. When all the eggs have been incorporated, guess what? Scrape down the sides of the processor and process for 5 to 10 seconds until the mixture is smooth and uniform. Add the sour cream and vanilla and mix until just blended.

6.     Toss the raisins in a few tablespoons of corn starch or flour until covered. Discard the unstuck flour and add the raisins to the main mixture. Pulse  2 to 3 times to just combine.

7.     Pour the batter into the loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes until the center no longer jiggles. The top may begin to brown, don’t worry. Let the pan cool on a rack completely, 1 or 2 hours, then cover and transfer to the fridge. It should chill at least 5 hours, or overnight.

8.     Remove the cake from the pan, invert so the bottom side is facing up and place on a cookie rack over a baking sheet.

9.     In a small saucepan, heat the heavy cream until it just comes to the simmer. Turn the heat off, add the chocolate chips and let sit for 5 minutes. Whisk the mixture together until smooth and lush. Let sit for 20 minutes or so until no lukewarm.

10.  Pour the ganache over the cake and spread it evenly with an offset spatula or back of a spoon.

11.  Let it set in the fridge until ready to serve.

ps: I know I boasted only days ago that Substack recipe newsletters were so much better than blog posts because you didn’t have to read a mile’s worth of copy to get to the recipe. I apologize, but I had no idea I would discover family members this week when I wrote that!