Biscotcho/Kahk Cookies Recipe - Aish.com (2024)

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Learn to make the well known sephardi cookie.

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Kahk – also known as ka’ak, biscocho, biscotcho, rosca and roskita – are an ancient form of hard, round biscuit that is found throughout Jewish communities in the Middle East.

There are many forms of this popular biscuit. For years, kahk were a savory treat, often flavored with sesame seeds; with the popularization of sugar in the Middle East during the Middle Ages, many cooks began baking sweet kahk pastries as well. Kahk is often baked using a yeast-based dough, though some modern cooks make kahk with dough leavened with baking powder. Syrian Jews bake a delicious kosher for Passover version of kahk that uses ground almonds instead of wheat flour, called kahk bi loz.

In Spain, Jews baked small round pastries twice – like Italian biscotti – and called these hard pastries variously roscas or biscochos. Jewish bakers made their ring-shaped cookies differently from their non-Jewish neighbors: Jewish cooks generally used oil in their pastries (as opposed to butter or lard); another Jewish innovation was adding eggs to the dough. Spanish Jews also developed a softer version of roscas, which was only baked once and was more cake-like, which became a beloved Shabbat treat. When Spain expelled its Jews in 1492, Sephardi (Spanish) Jews took their love of biscocho/roscas with them to new homes.

“Biscocho” soon came to mean any cookie in Ladino, the language of Sephardi Jews. Hard, ring-shaped cookies became a hallmark of Sephardi Jewish cooks across the world. Like kahk, there are many versions of biscocho/roscas/roskitas. They can be savory or sweet. In some communities they lost their traditional round shape. For instance, “roscas alhashu” are popular Purim cookies among Balkan Jews: these are crescent-shaped cookies stuffed with walnuts.

Here is a traditional recipe for Biscochos:

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