creative jewish mom

Hexagon Orange Juice Bites

This Passover we are enjoying the simplest yet oh so delicious treat, hexagon orange juice bites, frozen of course! What can I tell you? Passover is the time for eating fresh and basic food, and with many opting not to purchase processed food, or the bare minimum, squeezing your own juice and making some shaped ice cubes truly fits the bill! I had been saving my hexagon silicon molds together with the Passover dishes, as I figured it would be a great time to use them, though now I'm thinking I'd like to start making these delicious little popsicle bites in a range of colors to serve for shabbos desert, so the trays may just be left behind when we pack away all the dishes! And then I'll have an excuse to get some more in a different shape! Keep on reading to see the molds I used......

How To Sprout Mung Beans And Use Them In A Colorful Salad!

We are all relieved to say goodbye to 2020, though the silver lining is that is gave many of us the chance to try some new things, and for me one of those things is sprouting! Now that I've got a bit of experience under my belt, I just had to share with you our new family favorite, sprouted mung beans! They are packed with nutrients, truly delicious, and so simple to sprout that they've become a weekly staple in our home. They can be eaten raw, or cooked, though we enjoy them the most in a colorful mixed vegetable salad, perhaps with a bit of quinoa added! And to my great surprise, when I shared this salad with a few neighbors they (and their kids, gasp!) loved it so much they have jumped on the sprouting wagon as well! So get some mung beans and lets get started. One important note: sprouting in general can lead to growth of non-desirable bacteria, so if you are pregnant, or have health issues do cook the sprouts and/or sprout mostly in the fridge, which I'll mention below. Okay, ready?

Chocolate Chip Cookies With Sprinkles For Chanukah Or Any Festivity!

Wishing everyone a lovely light-filled Chanukah on this fourth night of Chanukah. It is pouring cats and dogs here in Northern Israel creating a very dramatic setting for the glowing flames of the holiday. My kids are all snugly tucked in bed with a book so I’m taking a moment to share these fun cookies with you. Courtesy of my teen daughter I might add, who does all the baking......and who baked some more goodies today as we have a small army of guests coming for meals this special upcoming Shabbat!

This idea is pretty self explanatory but keep on reading for a few tips......

No Bake Popsicle Cookies Are Simply Adorable

With everything looking pinker than pink in blog land this week, I thought I'd contribute with these super simple and beyond adorable no-bake popsicle cookies! And I'll just add that these are courtesy of my 16 year old daughter who is quite the expert at these kinds of things.......her mother would rather be painting, or making something healthy! Regardless it is great to have a trick like this up your sleeve when another neighbor's daughter is having an engagement party and the desert bar needs to be beyond gorgeous! Ah yes, and with Purim coming up, some of these presented with a summer theme could be an amazing mishloach manot! In fact I think that is what we'll do, just need to come up with the rest of the presentation, like summer umbrella, fruit punch, sunglasses..... stay tuned for that, in the mean time let's learn how to make these cuties!

Snowglobe Cookies With Royal Icing Make Great Winter Party Favors!

 

How about a big round of applause for my 15 year old daughter on her second attempt ever at royal icing, the outcome being these too adorable for words snowglobe snowman cookies! There is just something so wonderfully irresistible about royal icing, though since I'd rather not spend my creative time baking I'm more than happy to let my daughter have all the fun with this one. Since I'm there in any case I do get to live vicariously......though hoping we can figure out how to do this kind of thing without the huge time investment required, at least until we get to the top of the learning curve. We are learning all about royal icing and getting totally inspired to get really good at it from a lovely online cookine decorating class from brit and co, that I can recommend. Plus winter is a great time to spend learning something new, and especially something you can then use to spread joy all around.

The response when we served these cookies with desert this past shabbat was worth all the effort, though the Israeli born folks at the table aren't all that familiar with snow globes, so it was largely lost on them, nonetheless, the American guests appreciation was enough for the crowd. And as it turned out, we were in the middle of a huge storm, that even included a very nerve wracking power outage on Friday night, so the snowglobe theme fit right in.

My Teenage Daughter's Cookie Decorating Adventure

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It sure is wonderful to have a teenage daughter who enjoys creative pursuits, and lately we have been bonding over baking and brush lettering. The baking is her department though, I'm just a spectator of sorts! When I saw this really cute class for online cookie decorating on brit and co. I knew my daughter would love it, and so I purchased it for her as Hanukkah gift. And yes, indeed she was thrilled, as who wouldn't want to make the most adorable cookies ever? Now, as it turns out, making those adorable royal icing cookies is something one has to work at, which I knew, having attempted it myself once, so I do think that getting expert advice from someone who really knows the ins and outs of this particular baking experience is well worth it. No need to make mistake after mistake when you could be using that time just practicing your icing making and icing skills!

These cookies are my daughter's first attempt, and are somewhat on the simple side as we quite honestly ran out of time. We wrapped each cookie in cellophane tied on each end with a silver ribbon and placed one on each plate last shabbos, when our table was packed with guests for Hanukkah. The table looked amazing and some of the guests where already eating their cookie before the main course was served! We really weren't sure whether the cookies were more for decoration as opposed to being actually good tasting (especially since we couldn't use butter as the cookies would be eaten after a meat meal) but the guests all raved about the cookies and we even had to bring out some more as one guest ate his cookie as well as someone elses!

DIY: Miniature Candy Apples Are Perfectly Adorable

I now present you dear readers with just about the simplest and most adorable way to decorate a cake, cupcakes, a dessert plate: mini candy apples made from toffee candies with clove stems! And of course you can use this same idea to make mini candy lemons, oranges and grapes. It is true I am the kind of mom who shudders at the thought of buying candy, but of course the candy thing is way beyond my control and the dreaded stuff does make its way into our house, and especially those little colorful gummy toffee candies as those are very often thrown from the balcony of the synagogue (at the groom, called the chatan) on the shabbat before a wedding. And yes, you'd better believe it, my kids are there front and center to scoop up as much as they can. The good news as that I can now tell the kids I need those toffees to make some adorable little candy apples, ah yes and one could even make a bunch and freeze them!

Oh, and just by the way, this was not my idea, though the clove stem was actually, it was directly inspired by the amazing candy filled cornucopia that I've featured on Craft Schooling Sunday, here, for two years in a row, because I just couldn't resist.

Ready to learn how to make these? I'm sure you'll be nabbing toffees from your loved ones too, as you should if you really love them, right?

Cinnamon Roll Cake Pops For The Dessert Bar Are Perfect In A Pinch!

Okay dear readers, I'm off sugar and flour entirely so I'm trying to post this fantastic idea for making cinnamon roll cake pops that look like lollipops without really looking too closely at the photos, and with the idea that while certainly I'm not encouraging folks to eat un-healthfully, sometimes you've just gotta bake that cake or make that special dessert for your child's birthday, a special event in school or important family occasion. If you're like me, and you're trying to mend your ways in the sugar department it may just be advisable to skip the baking and just assemble something from bakery bought items........and that is where this cinnamon roll cake pop idea really shines!

Of course if you love to bake, and especially if you can whip up a healthier version of cinnamon rolls using say spelt, why then go for it! The cinnamon rolls shown here were home baked by a friend of mine, and I just loved the idea so much I had to share it. Keep reading to find out how she made the display stand, an important part of the whole presentation!

Black And White Flower Or Spider Web Icing Trick

Making baked works of art can really be quite simple if you know a few little tricks, right? Courtesy of my 14 year old daughter who I have now appointed as chief family baker, I bring to you a little tutorial for how to make black and white icing flowers or cob webs! While she made black and white flowers on mini doughnuts, one can certainly use this trick on cookies, cupcakes and even cakes.......the results will be truly gorgeous, promise! And doing this on a cake would be so less time consuming than many other types of decorations, so give it a try, I'm going to encourage my daughter to do so as well sometime soon, and will share the results, of course. (Well assuming there is time to photograph the results, that isn't always possible, as you can well imagine.)

One disclaimer, we are not professional bakers, and certainly not specialists when it comes to making icing with dairy ingredients as almost all of our baking is for items that will be eaten on shabbat after a meat meal, and thus cannot contain any dairy products. So I will provide you with the icing recipe we used, but there are likely many more options out there that may be more suited to your needs.

Mini Doughnuts For Hanukkah Baked By Kids In A Mini Doughnut Machine

Mini doughnuts really are just the cutest, and perfect for Hanukkah aren't they? My fourteen year old daughter is now the head baker in our home, and she made these to serve to our houseful of guests this shabbat, and after lighting the menorah for the eighth night of chanukah, just a few hours ago. And no, these aren't what one could call a "healthy treat" but certainly preferable to the fried traditional hanukkah doughnuts!

Best of all is that making these doughnuts can be a fun activity for any little bakers, together with the use of a mini doughnut or combo mini doughnut maker. If you are wondering whether a mini doughnut maker is a worthwhile item, I'd say yes if you have a  child that loves to bake cute little things! And of course, a combination baker that can make mini doughnuts and cake pops and more might be the best way to go. My daughter has certainly used hers quite a few times in the past year and a half, so go for it. And if you are lucky maybe you'll be able to hand the baking over to one of your kids too!