Homemade Halloween: Make your own Kit Kat, from ‘Balaboosta’

The new cookbook “Balaboosta: Bold Mediterranean Recipes to Feed the People You Love” might seem an unlikely place to find a recipe for a homemade version of the mass-market candy bar Kit Kat. Israeli-born author Einat Admony is chef and founder of three restaurants in New York: Taim, Balaboosta and Bar Bolonat. What’s Kit Kat have to do with eggplant slathered with tahini, lemon and herbs or Yemenite oxtail soup?

But the book is less about chef-y Middle Eastern-inflected recipes than it is about her love of cooking at home. “Balaboosta” is devoted to the “trust-your-gut style of cooking” passed down from generations of balaboostas, a term “reserved for the most energetic of women who tirelessly cooked and cleaned while taking charge of the spritual and emotional well-being of their husband and kids.” Admony refers to herself as a modern balaboosta.

One who runs several restaurants, then goes home and cooks for friends and family a few times a week. “What I really love about having people over is the chatter, the laughter, the symphony of voices rising and falling in pitch over the clinking of glasses and scrape of forks on plates -- and knowing that my food is what brought us together.”

So there are homespun dishes such as shakshuka (eggs simmered with tomatoes, peppers, onion and cumin and paprika), chicken tagine, lamb chops, turkey meatballs and “not-so-Jewish chicken soup.”

The easy-to-make Kit Kat is tucked into the chapter “The Grown-Up Table: Casual Dinner Party Dishes.” All you need is chocolate, butter, Nutella, cornflakes and cream.

Just in time for Halloween (I’m going to make this and watch “The Omen”), here’s the homemade Kit Kat recipe as it appears in the book (note: not tested by the L.A. Times Test Kitchen). The hamin, an overnight Sephardic stew of beef, chickpeas, beans, potatoes, prunes, apricots, eggs and barley, I’ll make another time.
My Homemade Kit Kat

Makes about 24 pieces

14 ounces 72% cacao chocolate, broken into tiny pieces
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
3/4 cup Nutella
2 cups crushed cornflakes (about 3 cups whole)
1 3/4 cups heavy cream

Fill a medium saucepan three-quarters full with water and bring to a simmer. Combine 1 ounce of the chocolate with the butter in a large bowl. Place the bowl over the saucepan and slowly melt the chocolate and butter together, stirring occasionally with a rubber spatula. Remove from the heat, reserving the pan of hot water, and stir in the Nutella. Cool completely, then mix in the crushed cornflakes. Spread thsi mixture evenly in a 9-by-13-inch baking pan and reserve in the refrigerator until the coating is ready.

Bring the saucepan of hot water back to a simmer. Combine the remaining 13 ounces chocolate and the heavy cream in a large bowl and place it over the saucepan. Stir the mixture occasionally with a rubber spatula to combine the melting chocolate with the heavy cream. Remove from the heat and slowly pour the ganache over the crispy Nutella mixture. Place the baking pan in the refrigerator until the chocolate is completely set and firm. Cut into finger-sized rectangles and watch them disappear in minutes.

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