Said my Yiddish teacher, Sascha, yesterday as he finally gave in and ate the blintzes, crepe-like pancakes filled with a slightly sweet cheese mixture, folded, and fried in butter.

And was he ever right. These were fresh as they get.  An hour before Sascha made his comment, these blintzes were individual ingredients in the fridge.

I made the blintzes (singular: blintz) for my Yiddish class in honor of Shavuot, the holiday that comes 49 days after Passover.  Shavuout is a huge deal in the Bible. It  commemorates the giving of the Law at Mt. Sinai, and often there are all-night study sessions.  In the Bible, Shavuot is a pilgrimage festival where the first fruits of the year are delivered to the priests.  In Israel, on farms and in the country, and also in Palo Alto when Jewish preschool teachers feel like it, little children are dressed in white, wear garlands on their heads (CUTE!)  and present baskets of flowers and produce to the poor.  Shavuot  has sort of degenerated into an excuse to eat dairy products.

Thus the blintz. Because  Hubby was not in the house, I used the richest recipe I knew. Which was also the easiest recipe. And the most delicious.

The Blintz consists of two parts: the skin, or “bletel,” (Yiddish for leaflet)
I used Joan Nathan’s recipe: 1 cup flour, one cup milk, one tablespoon soft butter, 3 eggs, processed in blender for 15-20 seconds, then let rest for 15 minutes, then coated the bottom of a heated and greased omelette pan (small, maybe 8 inches across) and cooked the bletlech until they released from the pan.

 and the stuffing, which undoubtedly has a Yiddish word, but I don’t know it.
Because two of the people in my Yiddish class are Russian, and I was near a store that carried it, I bought a dairy product called “Sweet Kiss,” which was a smooth, not-quite-yogurt cream that had raisins and sugar in it.  Well, actually it was corn syrup, but I didn’t know that until I was cleaning up. The Russians call the stuff “Trowrog,” or something like that.
I mixed the “Sweet Kiss” with Friendship Farmer’s Cheese, which is what my mom used for blintzes, along with an egg.

This is not a low fat dish.

Anyway, blintzes are assembled by taking a bletel,  laying it cooked side up, and putting a spoonful of filling near the lower edge of the circular pancake, folding up the bottom, folding the edges in, and rolling the blintz up.  Now it is a blintz.  It needs to be fried in butter to be complete.

I served mine with Apricot jam.

After Sascha ate one plate of blintzes, he ate another plate full.

We all enjoyed it.