Stuffed monkey kichels – a historic, ever-evolving pastry

Stuffed monkey kichels are a delightful hybrid of a Sephardic cake and an Ashkenazi cookie! This easy and delicious ‘stuffed monkey’ recipe is a tasty Jewish treat.

I love finding unique Jewish foods, and I think the stuffed monkey kichel definitely falls into this category. It’s a fabulous fusion of Sephardi cake and Ashkenazi biscuit (cookie), and a real local delicacy among Jewish communities in the north-west of England.

I also recently learned that something very similar, and also called a stuffed monkey, is popular among the South African Jewish community. I’d love to know how this delicious confection made its way across continents! If you have any idea, please let me know.

Victorian Sephardic patisserie

One of the earliest mentions of stuffed monkeys is in the novel Children of the Ghetto (1892) by Israel Zangwill. He describes a Purim celebration in Victorian London.

The confectioners’ shops, crammed with ‘stuffed monkeys’ and ‘bolas’, were besieged by hilarious crowds of handsome girls and their young men, fat women and their children, all washing down the luscious spicy compounds with cups of chocolate;…

Gil Marks’ Encyclopedia of Jewish Food traces the evolution of the stuffed monkey from bola – a Spanish/Portuguese yeast-raised fruited cake. The recipe made its way to London via the Netherlands, where it changed shape and gained it’s eponymous ‘stuffing’.

Stuffed monkey?

Although there seems to be no consensus on the origin of the name stuffed monkey, Evelyn Rose’s explanation seems to me to be the most likely. In her awesome New Complete International Jewish Cookbook she explains that the delicacy was first introduced into the UK by a Dutch baker called Monnickendam. She writes,

The most plausible suggestion for the name is that with popular usage Monnickendam’s became Monnicke’s from where it’s a small step to ‘monkey’ and then but a whisker to ‘stuffed monkey’.

Early recipes

Much to my surprise, the oldest recipe I can find is from an American cookbook – The International Jewish Cookbook by Florence Kreisler Greenbaum, published in New York in 1919. It contains a recipe for ‘Filled Butter Cakes (Dutch Stuffed Monkeys)’. These consist of a rich, sweet butter pastry made with brown sugar and cinnamon, filled with candied peel, almonds and vanilla. The top is brushed with egg and sprinkled with poppy seeds before baking.

This does support the theory that the recipe originated with the Dutch Jewish community.

Not just a Jewish cake

Stuffed monkey clearly made it beyond the boundaries of the Jewish community, as a recipe can also be found in the 1945 Women’s Institute Home Cookery Book. Their recipe makes individual monkeys – a mixture of candied peel, sultanas and almonds is sandwiched between two small rounds of dough before baking.

The oldest stuffed monkey recipe I can find in my British Jewish cookbook collection is from Florence Greenberg’s Jewish Cookery Book, originally published in 1947. She also calls for a a rich brown-sugar pastry, which is again filled with a sweetened mixture of ground almonds and candied peel.

Florence Greenberg’s recipe is also reproduced in Jane Grigson’s English Food, first published in 1974.

Stuffed monkey recipe evolution

Evelyn Rose’s stuffed monkey recipe is very similar to Florence Greenberg’s. However Evelyn is more generous with the filling, to which she also adds some vanilla and lemon zest.

Meanwhile the recipe from Carr and Oberman’s The Gourmet’s Guide to Jewish Cooking (1973) deviates quite significantly from the others. Their stuffed monkey uses chopped rather than ground almonds, and adds sultanas and mixed spice to the filling as well. However this sounds much closer to the filling found in the beloved bakery product of Stuffed Monkey kichels that I know and love.

It’s also much closer to the South African version of the cookie. The recipe from The International Goodwill Cookbook, published by the Johannesburg Women’s Zionist League in 1969 (5th edition), uses assorted dried fruits, jam, and cinnamon in its stuffed monkey filling.

Recipe book index listings…

Of course, including a recipe for ‘stuffed monkey’ in your cookbook does ensure some fun when it’s time to prepare the index. Scan down the list and you’ll see

• stuffed cabbage
• stuffed chicken
• stuffed dates
• stuffed eggs
• stuffed monkey

Wait, what?!

Regional delights

Monnickendam’s bakery, which probably gave the stuffed monkey its name, was located in Wentworth Street, in the East End of London. This was a densely Jewish area at the time, filled with Jewish shops and businesses of all kinds – bakers, grocers, tailors, ironmongers etc etc.

However today, it seems that the Stuffed Monkey kichel is really a Northern phenomenon. There are several Jewish bakeries in Manchester and Leeds that produce them. However I have yet to find any in London that offer anything under the name ‘Stuffed Monkey’ or ‘Stuffed Monkey kichel’. If you know of one, please let me know!

North-South divide

This North/South divide was reinforced for me when a friend brought a package of stuffed monkey kichels back from a trip to Leeds. She brought it to our shul’s Shabbat morning kiddush. The Northerners in attendance descended at once, demanding to know where she had got them from. I think there was a glimmer of hope that some local outlet had started to stock them – however unlikely that might be!

In contrast, those present from the South of England had never seen them before. They were mostly just intrigued by the name – “What on earth is a stuffed monkey!“

Never mind that! What is a kichel?

Well, it depends who you ask…

Kichel is simply the Yiddish word for a cookie, biscuit or cracker. They are traditionally made with an egg-rich dough, and have been eaten by Eastern European Jews for centuries.

The kichels of my childhood were a sort of irregular-shaped, very sweet baked biscuit. They came in various flavours including chocolate, nut, cherry, and (my favourite) ginger.

There’s also gefilte kichel or ‘stuffed kichel’. The dough encloses a dense and sticky dried-fruit filling, and there is usually a thick layer of icing on top. (These were always the first to go at the shul kiddush when I was a child. There was also a hierarchy of preference related to the colour of the icing.)

I was alarmed to learn that when Americans talk about ‘kichel’ they’re referring to some kind of sugar-encrusted bow-tie shaped cookie. It’s apparently often served with, of all things, herring.

However, as we trace the history of the stuffed monkey kichel, we can disregard the Americans and their strange baked goods. That’s a story for another day.

Stuffed monkey kichels

All of which brings us (finally) to the stuffed monkey kichel.

Unlike the original Victorian stuffed monkey, the 21st century kichel version uses a sweet cookie dough rather than a brown sugar pastry. They are shaped into individual pieces – kichels – rather than one big ‘monkey’ that is sliced up for serving like a pie.

The filling includes elements from both the original Sephardic stuffed monkey recipe, and the Ashkenazi gefilte kichel. It is a light, zesty dried fruit filling, gently perfumed with cinnamon and spices. The candied peel remains but it seems the almonds are history.

Essentially the stuffed monkey kichel combines the best parts of both stuffed monkeys and kichels. It is a beautiful Sephardi-Ashkenazi hybrid confection that celebrates the wonderful and delicious baking traditions of the International Jewish community.

It’s also terrific with a cup of tea!

Ingredients for making stuffed monkey kichels

My stuffed monkey recipe is divided into two parts – the sweet biscuity outer part, and the fruity, spicy filling. To make a batch of stuffed monkeys yourself, you will need:

For the dough:

• Sugar – I use a combination of white and brown sugar, but you can use just white sugar if you prefer
• Sunflower oil or other neutral-tasting vegetable oil
• Egg
• Plain flour – also called all purpose flour
• Baking powder
• Vanilla essence

For the filling:

• Raisins or sultanas (golden raisins) – or a mixture of both
• Currants
• Chopped candied peel
• Cinnamon
• Plum jam – or other smooth fruit jam or marmalade, without ‘bits’

First, soak the dried fruits in hot water to plump them up. Make the dough by whisking the egg, oil and sugar, then adding the dry ingredients. While the dough is chilling, add the rest of the ingredients to the filling and give it a good stir.

To assemble the stuffed monkeys, roll out the dough between sheets of greaseproof paper. Trim into a rectangle. Brush one long edge with water, then add a row of filling and fold the dough over. Pinch the long edges together to seal. You can brush the top lightly with water and add a sprinkling of sugar if you like! Then slice into cookies. Repeat with any remaining dough and filling.

The kichels should be baked until they are just cooked. You don’t want them to get too brown or they will be hard and crunchy instead of tender.

Tastes of childhood

DH, who is diabetic, doesn’t usually eat a lot of my baking, but he came into the kitchen just as these stuffed monkey kichels were cooling. He decided to try one.

And then, after just one bite, he started gushing nostalgically about some long-closed Liverpool Jewish bakery I’d never heard of – I told you it was a Northern thing!!

Stuffed monkey recipe – evolution

I love watching recipes change and adapt before my very eyes. This stuffed monkey recipe has gone from a candied citrus and almond pie, to a soft vine-fruit stuffed cookie, over the space of about 130 years or so.

Only the name remains the same!

I wonder what the future holds for the delicious stuffed monkey, and what the stuffed monkey recipe of the future might look like? Watch this space…

In the meantime, here’s my recipe for 21st century, British, stuffed monkey kichels. I hope you enjoy eating them as much as we do!

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📖 Recipe

More delicious biscuit/cookie recipes

I must admit I am quite partial to a good biscuit, or cookie as Americans might call it. Some of my favourites include:

• Seeded maple-spice cookies
• Soft and delicious spiced date cookies
• Easy muesli cookies (or double chocolate muesli cookies)
• Gingerbread Chanukah gelt cookies
• Irresistible orange cookies with hidden melting truffle centres…. mmmmmm.