It’s a holiday classic!

The legend is that this was my grandmother’s signature recipe–the elusive Jennie Small-Thal-Robinson, mother of five and inspiration for everything that is/was the Epicure Market in Miami Beach, from the late 1940’s until its sad closing following the disastrous hurricane Irma, which ripped through South Beach in 2017. By that time the Epicure had passed into the hands of the LA deli kings Isaac Starkman and Jerry Seidman, the renowned Jerry’s Famous Deli, which had locations all over the LA metro.

The Epicure is gone, and now, and so, I believe are most, if not all, of the Jerry’s locations. But the Epicure had a long and loyal following, famous as one of the originators of cooked foods in grocery stores, which have become a staple of most stores now. I worked as a chef in one of the Miami Beach stores back in the 1970’s, and still use many of their most popular recipes, some of which have been published here, and are available through messaging–assuming I can remember any of them beyond the few I still regularly use.

This recipe for sweet noodle pudding was one of our most popular, and we made batches of 60 1-pound aluminum pans three days a week, and they never lasted in the display cases more than a day or two, so it was always fresh, as if you’d made it at home.

And now you can make it at home, exactly the same recipe we used back in the day, scaled down to family size. Because no one wants to make 60 pounds of noodle pudding at one time–except maybe some adventurous places that still cater to the deli crowd. But if you love a good sweet noodle kugel, this is the one to make. Here’s the plan…

Epicure’s Famous Noodle Pudding

Ingredients:

• 12-ounce bag wide egg noodles (I use No-Yolk)
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 6 TBSP unsalted butter
• 4-ounces cream cheese, room temp
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 lb. small-curd cottage cheese or ricotta
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• ½ cup raisins, soaked in 1 cup hot water for ½ hour, then drained well
• 1 TBSP ground cinnamon

Preparation:

1. Boil noodles in salted water for 7 minutes (no more!). Drain, return to pot and toss with 3 TBSP butter. Butter will melt.
2. Preheat oven to 350℉.
3. In a large bowl, combine cream cheese and 3 TBSP melted butter. Beat until smooth.
4. Add eggs, sour cream, cottage cheese, vanilla, and raisins. Stir well until all the ingredients are well mixed. Add noodles and mix well.
5. Generously butter a 9×13 glass baking dish (or 9×9 for a thicker kugel).
6. Pour noodle mixture into the baking dish and jiggle the dish to smooth the top. 
7. Sprinkle cinnamon over the top.
8. Bake in preheated oven for 50 to 60 minutes, until the kugel looks firm and the outer edges beginning to turn golden. Do not overbake. The kugel should jiggle a bit when first taken from the oven. It will tighten a bit as it cools, but should be moist and creamy in the center.