Fred Bernstein shared with me this recipe from his mother, Mildred Bernstein, who was a much-loved caterer in Charleston, South Carolina. She and her partner, Minnie Weinberg, were famous for their babkas and other baked goods. This rich yeast dough is rolled around a filling of cinnamon-scented sugar, pecans and currants to create a pastry that looks like a snail, thus the name, schnecken, the German word for snail. Plan ahead because this dough has to be prepared the night before and refrigerated.
Note: Recipes in Marcie Cohen Ferris’s book Matzoh Ball Gumbo were compiled from a diverse mix of Jewish Southerners who have blended religion and region through home cooking.
For the filling:
From MATZOH BALL GUMBO: CULINARY TALES OF THE JEWISH SOUTH by Marcie
Cohen Ferris. Copyright © 2005 by Marcie Cohen Ferris. Used by
permission of the University of North Carolina Press.