Date Chews and Poppy Seed Cookies

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we went from one cooking project to another with tefillah and hafsaka (recess) the only breaks between the two. We began the day up in the Oneg Room at our monthly cooking session. This month, we made date chews in honor of Tu Beesh'vat (the holiday of the trees,  which is celebrated this coming Friday night into Shabbat).

As usual, the Edot students worked together with students from Shira and Y'tzira, schmoozing about life and every subject under the sun while preparing the recipe. The results were, as usual, quite delicious!

Karen demonstrating the best way to take the pit out of the date before slicing it into small pieces.

This was, to say the least, very sticky business.

Ten large medjool dates proved to be just the right number to yield a cup of chopped dates

Once the dates were chopped, it was time to beat two eggs. Breaking the eggs without getting shell pieces mixed into the egg yolk and white proved to be a challenge.

Once the dates were chopped, they had to be coated in the flour and sugar mixture.

While some students used the spoon to coat the dates, others went all in with both hands.

Checking to be sure every single date is coated.

Once the mixture was prepared, it was time to pour it into the baking pan.

Making sure every last bit of mixture gets into the pan

We went to tefillah directly from the Oneg Room - fifth graders to the Beit Knesset and sixth graders to the Sanctuary. Since it's been too wet and cold to have outdoor hafsaka, we went to our classroom where some students opted to use the recess time to answer stumper questions to earn stickers, while others schmoozed. Then it was time to prepare poppy seed cookies, part of our unit of study about Ashkenazi Jews.

Since we didn't have enough class time to make the dough from scratch, I prepared the dough at home and the students rolled it into small balls...

...then took a fork dipped in flour and pressed the ball down, forming a crisscross pattern on the cookie as they did so.

We made gluten-free and sugar-free cookies as well.

The dough was very oily, and very sticky.

Very, very sticky!

Within 20 minutes, the cookies were all formed and lined up on the baking sheets.

All ready to pop in the oven

Once we had cleaned up and the cookie trays were in the ovens, there was still time to work on completing the Shabbat Seder Booklets we've been making for the past few weeks. Some of the students completed them and brought them home, while others will be continuing to decorate them as I read the story at the beginning of our sessions.

This coming Sunday we'll be decorating wimpels, one of the earliest forms of Ashkenazi folk art, initially from Germany and southern Italy. Stay tuned!