Hanukkah

Our friends invited us to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah with them. We were very excited and honored to join their family on such a special night. Their adorable son (also Dude's best friend) explained the meaning of Hanukkah. ("The bad guys won at first, but then the good guys kicked them out of the temple...") Then he lit the middle candle (called the "shamash," we learned.) He used the middle candle to light one more candle on the menorah.

Notice the Hanukkah gelt, which Dad bought at our local supermarket. A lady in the store said, "There used to be more in those bags, when I was a kid!"

On the fifth day of Hanukkah, our friends came to our house for burgers and latkes. But first, we prepared the dough for sufganiot, a traditional jelly-filled pastry. The boys really enjoyed helping with the prep...

Here they are adding the yeast and warm water to the flour, sugar, eggs, and butter.

The dough seemed a bit dry to me, so we wet our hands before kneading. That made it just right. We put the dough in a warm oven to rise and then started working on the latkes.

We used a Betty Crocker recipe that calls for potatoes, carrots, onion, four eggs, two tablespoons of flour, and snipped chives. We saved time by using a bag of hash browns instead of shredding potatoes, but I did get out my food processor and shred the carrots and onions.

That's a lot of oil, but they didn't seem greasy when they were done.

Not bad for our very first attempt at latkes! The kids ate them as fast as we could make them!

When we checked on the sufganiot dough the first time, it was puffy and had doubled in size. Unfortunately, the second time it looked deflated and had dried out a bit. I think my "warm" oven got a bit too hot for the yeast. I was a bit worried as the boys rolled out the dough...

But we cut out the little rounds and hoped for the best. The boys used a juice glass sprayed with Pam.

They didn't rise much on the cookie sheet, but they puffed up nicely in the hot oil!

The next part required three people working as an assembly line. I didn't want the kids near the hot oil so the grownups removed the cooked pastries from the oil, filled them, and sprinkled them with powdered sugar. We made a raspberry version and a chocolate version.

There was a slight chocolate mishap. (See puddle below.)

I have NO idea if they turned out the way they are supposed to, but the kids sure liked them! We made 20 and there were 2 left over.

Happy Hanukkah!