From A Sweet Year © 2024 by Joan Nathan. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Edible Dreidel
December 10, 2024
Gabriela Herman
O dreidel, dreidel, dreidel
I made it out of clay
And when it’s dry and ready
Then dreidel I shall play.
This is my favorite Hanukkah song. While you’re eating sufganiyot (Israeli jelly doughnuts) and potato latkes, what better thing to do than play dreidel? It used to be a German gambling game. The rules are simple. The letters written on the four-sided top are nun, נ (nothing); gimel, ג (all); heh, ה (half); and shin, ש (add one item to the pot). Together, the letters mean “a great miracle happened here.” Each person should start with about ten pennies, carob chips, nuts, raisins, M&M’s, or stones. Each player puts one of these tokens in the pot and one in the center of the table or floor where they are playing. In turn, each person spins the dreidel, which is like a top. The face-up letter determines what he wins. When the pot is empty, each player adds one object to it. If an odd number of objects are in the pot, the heh person takes half plus one.
When one person wins everything, the game is over. When the children are tired of playing dreidel, they can make an edible one.
Ingredients
For the Edible Dreidel
- 1marshmallow
- 1whole strawberry
- 1Hershey’s Kiss
Equipment
- Toothpicks
- Dull knife
Yield: Makes 1
Preparation
To make the Edible Dreidel
- Step 1
Child: Thread a toothpick through a marshmallow. Hold the strawberry with one hand and use a dull knife to cut it with your other hand into a 1-inch drum, then thread it onto the toothpick. (Strawberries are great fruit with which to practice cutting skills.) Add the kiss to the end. Eat it, don’t spin it! Repeat to make more edible dreidels.