"Leviva Gvena" - the secret recipe of my mother in law of the golden nuggets that everyone seems to flock to at all family events in Israel. The literally translation from hebrew is cheese pancakes and I could never understand what all the fuss was about when I first started dating my husband and was going to his family's house for events as they took me a while to fall in love with them, but now I get it. These things are delicious and also super easy to make if you are not sure what to have for dinner with the kids and want to have a nice treat.

These things re FULL of fat and there is nothing 'whole food' about them, but they are glorious, and such fun comfort food, or a perfect dish to serve at Shavout, the Jewish festival that celebrates all things dairy related. They are basically a cheese heavy pancake batter, but we make them with rice flour which makes them lighter and instead of just cream cheese, I add some cottage cheese into the mix to make them fluffier.

You will need:

1 block or tub of cream cheese
1/2 a tub of cottage cheese
1 large egg (or 2 regular size)
1 table spoon of agave syrup
pinch salt
6 tablespoons of rice flour

empty the whole tub of cream cheese and half tub of cottage cheese into a bowl, mash up together with a fork
add the eggs - beat it all together to make a creamy mixture
add the agave and salt then spoon in the flour on spoon at a time until you get a nice batter that doesn't slip off your spoon.
leave to stand in the fridge for 10 minutes
heat up oil in a big frying pan (use a light oil that heats well like canola oil, don't use olive oil) and spoon tea spoon size amounts into the pan and fry on each side till golden
place on kitchen roll to remove excess oil before serving.
These little golden nuggets of joy taste better when cooled, but they rarely last that long in my house!