Help with baking for kosher guest!

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I need to do some baking - one of the guests eats kosher food.

All the vegetable baking spreads I can find locally have buttermilk in them - I'm not convinced they are kosher! (I usually just avoid anything with the world milk in it.)

Would olive spread be kosher and if so, would it work in a normal pound cake style recipe? It doesn't say what you should/shouldn't use it for on the label...

Most kosher Jewish guests would expect to eat milky/fish in someone's house. Just do milky fish stuff and you can bake with what you like

Is your kitchen kosher? My SIL is from a Jewish family and last time her dad and brothers were staying with them, they had to do things to their kitchen to make it kosher (mostly involving tinfoil iirc). Then again, I suppose if that was important to your guest they'd have mentioned it!

There seem to be lots of recipes for kosher pound cakes online.

^ what?! Don’t feed your guests milky fish 😂

It’s usually no dairy with meat, and no pork at all. The dairy has to come from a kosher animal, so I would say yes to olive spread just to be on the safe side.

Stork is vegan.

Yes, actual milky fish would probably be rank. Normal cows milk is fine for those keeping kosher..... The prohibition is mixing meat with dairy within certain time frames, but that doesn't apply to fish. So you can bake a cake using cows dairy as long ad not serving within a few hours meat, but you can serve fish. Hence my wider family calling it milky fish!

TBH, people keeping kosher know that its a massive ballache, and outside of very observant groups, everyone does it differently anyway. So just ask x

TBH, I don't know a lot about it, but I always try to pick up a baking spread that doesn't contain any dairy to be on the safe side. I think it is Stork that I usually get - can't remember. There is none for sale today!

I do bake with a set of utensils I keep separate from everything else (so I don't for example make meatballs using the same bowl/spoon). No one's ever asked how I bake anything, but I think that helps?

I don't think any of these people are strict about their diet (I've seen them tuck into random food without any labelling - other than actively avoiding pork, you'd be hard pressed to notice). However if I can make an effort, I will - I have some random allergies to cater for too and I try to make something everyone can eat.

Dairy should be fine as long as u not serving meat as earlier people say (unless they are reeeealy strict which it sounds like they are no). Very kind and thoughtful of you to make the effort.

It sort of depends on how observant they are. If they're really religious, they would probably only ever eat in a kosher kitchen, prepared strictly in accordance with kosher rules. So probably safe to assume they're not that religious, in which case dairy should be fine. Perhaps best though to avoid lard or gelatine!