It isn’t Rosh Hashanah without duvshaniyot

By Vered Guttman, The Nosher

Apples dipped in honey and honey cakes are popular across the Jewish world around Rosh Hashanah. But if you grew up in Israel, you most likely came across a variation of honey treats: duvshaniyot. These dense, dark, round honey cookies are a must in many families’ High Holidays nosh rotation.

The modest duvshaniyot — their name derives from the Hebrew word dvash, meaning honey — can be found on the cookie shelves in supermarkets around the country.

They are cheap pareve and so no wonder they have become a regular for Rosh Hashanah, for breaking the fast on Yom Kippur and dipping in a cold glass of milk in the sukkah. These unassuming cookies hold a long history, as most Jewish and Israeli dishes do.

Duvshaniyot are the Israeli adaptation of a popular Russian cookie called pryaniki. Dating back to medieval Russia, pryaniki were made with honey, rye flour and berry juice, and were known simply as “honey bread.”

Starting around the 12th or 13th centuries, when Russia started opening up to imports from the Middle East and India, spices and dried fruit were added to the cookie.

In different regions in Russia, people experimented with newadditions, from jam filling to a later invention of sweetened condensed milk. Some versions were imprinted using delicate wooden forms, and some were rolled by hand and dipped in sugar glaze — the same version that’s still popular in Israel today.

People sometimes confuse pryaniki with German lebkuchen (aka gingerbread cookies), but it is rare to see ginger added to these classic Russian cookies, and even lebkuchen don’t always have ginger.

Different versions of pryaniki can be found around Eastern Europe, like piernik in Poland and lect in Slovenia, which are heart-shaped, painted red and artfully decorated with colorful icing. These Eastern European versions were adapted by Jews for their own holidays, mainly Rosh Hashanah, for the use of the symbolic honey.

From Eastern Europe, the little honey cookie made its way to Israel and the US. The Settlement Cook Book, a classic 1901 American Jewish cookbook by Lizzie Black Kander, includes two versions of lebkuchen, both with citrus and almonds, but no ginger. Neither include honey, but instead call for brown sugar or molasses.

An early Israeli cookbook, Folklore Cookbook by Molly Bar-David, has recipes for honey cookies that are similar to pryaniki and lebkuchen. She suggests adding ginger and calls for margarine, maybe to keep the cookies pareve.

You can add any of the classic gingerbread cookie spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, coriander, clove and even black pepper and cumin) as well as cocoa powder, strong coffee, chopped chocolate anad candied citrus peel or any tart candied fruit. You can try to replace some of the flour with rye flour to be closer to the original Russian version, or replace some of the flour with almond meal and make it closer to the German lebkuchen. It’s up to you.

Some recipes, including centuries-old recipes, suggest letting the dough rest for a few hours and up to a week before baking the cookies. This will deepen its flavors and will make rolling the dough easier.

Even if you bake them right away, the cookies will improve with time, so I suggest baking them at least two days before serving. You can easily prepare them the week before Rosh Hashanah and then serve them for break the fast on Yom Kippur.

As is the case with most baked goods, homemade is better, but I’ve noticed Israeli brand duvshaniyot cookies at many Russian stores in the US.