The title for today’s blog is a quote from a young cook who helped bake the honey lemon cakes the other day.  It’s funny that even with family, friends, celebration and excitement for a new year, food is the part of the holiday that can stand out in the memory and bring a feeling of satisfaction and contentment.  I asked the young cooks if they had any special holiday food traditions for Rosh Hashanah.  One student answered quickly, “Tzimmes.  I love tzimmes.”  Other students weren’t fami...

Tags: Rosh Hashanah, warm caramel apple cake, brisket

One of the pleasures of what I do for a living—writing cookbooks for kids and teaching them how to cook—is that I get to watch kids having fun and truly being delighted by cooking. Yesterday I was helping 34 students, half in grade eight and half in grade one bake enough Honey Lemon Cake for fifty-six Rosh Hashanah baskets for elderly members of the community.  While cooking with kids can seem chaotic, being well organized can make it a piece of cake.  I broke students into teams of 8, with older students helping the elementary students.  Then I had half the team work on wet ingredients and half on dry ingredients, and then combine them.  The...

Tags: Rosh Hashanah, baking with kids, honey cake, lemon cake

Did you realize that we had a date with all nines in it this week, 9/9/09?  It is hard to believe that we are already in September’s double digits.  As I was figuring what to blog about today, I decided to check the calendar.  We are less than two weeks away from Rosh Hashanah, which begins at sunset on September 18.  I guess with dates in my mind, I noticed something sort of significant about Rosh Hashanah this year.  Just like some cultures find 9/9/09 numerically significant, in Judaism, th...

Tags: Cupcakes, tea, Chai, tea cakes, Rosh Hashanah