How to (Actually) Cook With Your Kids for Hanukkah

I always aspire to cook with my children. While I’ve become a professional at “baking from a box,” my cooking/baking-from-scratch skills could use some polishing. I find immense joy in cooking with my kids, and it’s become a great tool for me to process grief and loss. It’s also one of the most significant ways I feel I can pass on traditions from family members whom my kids will never meet.

But, cooking with children is hard. It can be messy, and can take more than twice as long as it would doing it by yourself. The frustration can make you question why you did it in the first place, and can make you want to just skip this entire ordeal and go buy the damn cookie (instead of baking it).

Enter the queen of Jewish Cooking—Joan Nathan—with her book A Sweet Year: Jewish Celebrations and Festive Recipes for Kids and Their Families, containing Jewish recipes for families to cook together. Originally published in 1988, when Nathan had young children, the book was updated in 1995, and has now been updated again, this time with Nathan as a grandmother.

In A Sweet Year, Nathan organizes the chapters according to the major Jewish holidays, including the Sabbath. She outlines entire meals, like “Rosh Hashanah Lunch” and “Shabbat Winter Friday Night Menu.” These recipes are presented in a way that encourages adults and children to cook together. Instructions are broken down by what the children can do on their own, what the adults should do on their own, and what the adults and children can do together.

While the core of the book has remained the same since its first edition, in this third edition, Nathan includes new recipes that are more popular with families today (rainbow challah and tahini shakes) and updates classic dishes like chicken soup. And Judaism isn’t just infused through the recipes; Nathan provides explanations, prayers, and blessings for the Jewish rituals and holidays, as well as personal stories about her expanding family through the years.

While I always get excited whenever Nathan publishes a new book, this one intrigued me most of all as a mother to two young children. Not only does A Sweet Year inspire you to cook Jewish recipes with your kids, it aims to take the stress out of it by breaking down how to do it. I sat down with Nathan to chat about what it was like republishing this book as a grandmother, just in time for Hanukkah.

I love to cook with my children, but I usually find it very hard to do. I loved the way you frame this book—providing full menus and clear instructions on how to involve children. What was your motivation to update this book? And why now?

This is a way bigger, totally changed edition. I retested every single recipe and I realized that a lot of them either didn’t taste good to me, or they weren’t as up-to-date as I’d like for our modern world. And then I went to different places, and wanted to include dishes from those experiences, like a carrot dip I had in Australia, and a soup my children had in Warsaw. And then I added some recipes from my friends who are chefs with children or grandchildren.

I have grandchildren now, and I’m cooking again with them, but it’s different. I have a lot of knowledge that I have learned through the years. Children today are much more into food than they were before because parents are more into real ingredients. I wanted that for my children, and now I want it for my grandchildren. When you look at a food you’ve made, you’re going to look at it differently.

How did it feel different to republish this book as a grandmother? Making the recipes for this book and thinking about grandchildren versus your own children when they were little?

When I made the book with my grandchildren, their parents went on vacation, so they were alone with me. They listened to me, and they felt very important. I also made sure that I had a babysitter that they loved.

Most importantly, it was fun. I let them be mischievous. I told them stories about the food we were making, and about their parents’ childhood. I think they’ll remember this forever, and now they’ll have this book as a memory.

I love how comprehensive this book is, and I could see this really being a guide for someone who wants to cook Shabbat dinner with their kids or their grandkids, but doesn’t really know how to start. This actually tells them what to make, how to incorporate the kids, and it also gives a Jewish meaning. I’m curious about your thinking behind including more of that Jewish religious context in here, such as the prayers. What made you want to do that versus just being a straight-up cookbook?

Anyone could do a straight up cookbook, right? Judaism is a big part of my home, and I wanted this to be inclusive for anybody that wants Jewishness in their home. For example, making challah is a big part of my life, so I wanted to explain how to do that with kids and how to make it fun. And if we’re teaching people how to create this ritual, it makes sense to include the blessings. I’ve always felt that cooking has always been a source of connection for people, and I hope this book can be one as well.

Some of us with young children really want to cook with our kids, but it can be really hard and messy. Sometimes I’m guilty of saying, “OK, I’ll just make this while you’re out at the park,” because that seems easier. What are you hoping this book does for people like me with young kids, or anyone who wants to cook with the children in their lives?

That’s another reason that I wrote it. It’s easier for me just to cook with them (as the grandmother), because I’m not doing all the other things that you have to do like take them to school, and cook three meals a day. It’s easier to bring in a grandmother and ask her to make challah with the kids.

It definitely takes a lot of organization and planning to cook with kids. I’d say start with something more simple like pancakes, have them help put the berries and bananas in. Do it in steps, and take breaks. Make the batter the night before, and the next morning they can help spoon out the batter.

It’s not always easy to cook with kids but when you do it, some magic happens. I’m curious if you want to explain why it’s so important to not just feed your children and your grandchildren these beautiful, traditional Jewish recipes, but why is it important to include them in the process?

I think they learn a lot from us. You don’t know how much they’re going to learn depending on their age, but they’re going to learn. They’re also going to have the memory of cooking with their grandparents, and that will stick with them for the rest of their lives. And your life is going to be shorter than theirs.

I think a lot of us parents are scared to death about doing something wrong with our children, so this is something fun to do with them.

I’m 81 years old and still to this day, I remember making a plum tart for Rosh Hashanah with my mother. I would watch her so carefully, and help her put those plums in to make it look beautiful in circles. I still remember this cloth that she would roll the dough out on, and then she’d fill it, and she’d roll it up like a jelly roll, bake it and then cut it as a cookie. And it was so delicious, but more so I remember the process.

When you think of Hanukkah and the food it involves, it can be exciting and delicious. But I’m already thinking about my kids getting burned with oil while we try to make latkes or sufganiyot. I love how you provided a range of recipes from no-bake edible dreidels, to baking Hanukkah cookies from scratch. Is there anything you want to say about this specific holiday and involving your kids or grandchildren in cooking or baking this Hanukkah?

The key is involving them in the important steps. When I made my Aunt Lisl’s butter cookie recipe from the book, I made the dough beforehand and I had all kinds of cookie cutters around so the kids could make the cookies. I’ve also prepared the sufganiyot dough in advance, and had the children put the jelly in. And as they’re drying, we can sit with the children and play dreidel. It’s about being organized with your cooking, not cooking all of the dishes at once, and having fun.

So many cultures have a very close, interesting relationship with food. What do you think our unique relationship with food is as a Jewish people? In a Jewish context, like what makes this so important for us?

I think number one is the whole concept of the People of the Book. A lot of these recipes are documented, and we’ve had them since the second century.

It was also so important for me to include recipes from the diaspora, from all these countries, not just in Israel, but all over the world. We can get the recipes because they’ve been handed down orally from generation to generation.

And that’s the beauty of Judaism. A lot of these recipes were documented earlier than any other civilization, and we’ve carried them because of the cycle of holidays throughout the year, and we also have the Sabbath. There is something about this repetitiousness throughout history.

What do you hope this book does in the world in its third iteration? Who do you hope buys it and uses it? And how do you hope it lives on and inspires people?

First of all, my wish is that people have fun with it, and that they don’t take it too seriously. That’s why it is for kids and their families. I hope parents and grandparents look through it with their children and grandchildren and say, “This is what I want to make.”

And for those who don’t know anything about Judaism, I hope this will help them learn. In my history of writing about food, there have been so many people that have married into Judaism who have loved my books because I explain things easily and they’re reader-friendly. They’re not put off by them. And I think for those who want to cook, but are a little bit afraid of cooking, this book can be lots of fun.