Many of the signature dishes of Hanukkah involve either cheese or frying in oil … or both! Since I like to have it all, I created these fried sweet cheese and almond dumplings — a luscious dessert — featuring both ingredients. Happily, they are easy to make, requiring no special equipment other than a deep fat thermometer.
Basically, these are blintzes in wonton wrappers. The filling consists of ricotta, cream cheese, eggs, sugar and spritzes of lemon and vanilla, all combined with almond paste. In the olden days, it would have featured farmer’s cheese, not ricotta, but the former isn’t easy to find in today’s supermarkets. If anyone in your home is allergic to nuts, just leave out the almond paste.
As noted, the filling is encased in wonton wrappers, which can be found alongside the grocer’s Asian produce, or in the dairy or frozen foods sections. They’re a great and versatile item, but they tend to dry out quickly. Be sure to always keep them covered in plastic wrap, unwrapping only a few at a time as you stuff them. This recipe won’t require a whole package of wrappers. If you carefully wrap and freeze the unused ones, they’ll be good to go in a future recipe.
Shaping the wrappers into triangles is the only time-consuming part of this recipe. You want to be sure to seal the edges of each triangle tightly so that the filling doesn’t spill out into the hot oil. The glue is provided by the white of a single egg. If one of your triangles should happen to split as it fries, just lift it out gently, park it on the side until you’ve finished frying the sealed wontons, then give it another shot in the oil. I discovered that split triangles seem to reseal themselves as they rest.