Bar Mitzvah Madness

This bar mitzvah post will not have any pictures of goodies. Why? Because this is my son's bar mitzvah, and I did so much baking that there was no time for pictures before the event. And since most of the baking was aimed toward the kiddush after davening on Shabbat morning, there are no pictures of that either, it being Shabbat and all. But rest assured, it was really beautiful. As a proud mother let me say that Dani did an unbelievable job. His leining went off without a hitch - better that we ever imagined. The consensus was that he did not sound like a bar mitzvah boy; he was confident, calm, and composed. Our other kids did a brilliant job in helping with the preparation and just being great sisters. As a baker, I am so glad that things went really well. For Friday night dinner, I prepared a plated dessert: mini-Kahlua cakes with Kahlua drizzle, mini cocolate trifle, and strawberries. Shabbat lunch dessert was a buffet: mini lemon mousses, mini chocolate mousses, chocolate cinnamon cake with mocha glaze, Harvey Wallbanger cake, Oreo crumb cake from Shoshana, pies from Claire, fruit, and of course, cookies and mini-cupcakes. And for the kiddush - such a shame that there are no pictures, so you will have to settle for a list: espresso double chocolate chunk cookies, ginger crinkles, orange-cranberry-white chocolate cookies, peanut butter oatmeal sandwiches, molasses cream sandwiches, thin mint sandwiches, sugar cookie ganache sandwiches, glazed lemon cookies, chocolate dipped chocolate chip cookies, lemon drop sandwiches, linzer cookies, ginger white chocolate blondies, chewy cherry oatmeal bars, double decker brownies, cherry-pecan-white chocolate blondies spiked with whiskey, coffee and cream brownies, tuxedo brownies, chocolate dipped pecan pie shortbread, rainbow mini-cupcakes with white vanilla frosting and rainbow sprinkles, snickerdoodle mini-cupcakes (topped with fluffy vanilla buttercream and cinnamon-sugar), red velvet mini-cupcake (topped with fluffy vanilla buttercream and red sprinkles), vanilla cream filled vanilla mini-cupcakes topped with buttercream and chocolate tefilin, chocolate mousse buttercream filled chocolate mini-cupcakes topped with buttercream and square chocolates embossed with tefillin, and finally, cake pops. Was that enough? It was a real joy to be able to make everything for my son's bar mitzvah kiddush myself, and am grateful that I was able to pull it off. There are a couple of things I had hoped to make, but never got to. I am pretty sure I am the only one who noticed. May we only hear about smachot. Dvora

Rafi's Bar Mitzvah

For Rafi's bar mitzvah, a large group of friends from the US wanted to send something special for the Thursday morning celebration in the Old City. Rafi is here for the year with his family, and his family's close friends wanted to help out with the preparations, something that would have been easy within the community. But from 7000 miles away, Cookie Creations can fill the void. The two giant platters contained a large variety of flavors.Linzer cookies, toffee bars, orange-cranberry white chocolate cookies, thin mint sandwiches, double decker brownie bars, espresso double chocolate chunk cookies, and ginger crinkles. On top, Sefer Torah sugar cookies to mark the event.For the Shabbat with family, another friend, this time a local, wanted to send cookies, including sugar cookies, but to make sure the composition was very different. She is partial to the funkier styles that Shana creates, so we topped the platter with those.This time, the cookies were sugar cookie ganache sandwiches, ginger white chocolate blondies, alfajores, pecan pie thumbprints, chocolate raspberry truffle brownies, and chocolate dipped chocolate chip cookies. The sugar cookies were particularly cute - here are a couple of close-ups:
Much mazal to Rafi and the whole family - with so much love from friends from all over, they are already on the right path!

Dvora