Merry Christmas - And Happy Chanukah! Chanukah Memories - a Story

Community Voices X Pen Parentis - a story + recipe during the holiday season, by Ellen Frank Bayer

Happy Holidays, One Potato Community! It just so happens that the first night of Chanukah falls on Christmas Day this year. After sharing Emily’s tips for creating your family’s own Christmas traditions, and Kristen’s recipe for Christmas brunch Eggs California, today our Community Voices essay is written by Ellen Frank Bayer, sharing her mom’s recipe for “Treasure Cake.”

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Pen Parentis, a national nonprofit that helps writers stay on creative track after having kids, is proud to sponsor Community Voices X Pen Parentis. We believe that creative careers are as valuable as corporate careers, and that they should be given the same respect. Do you have kids and a writing career? Check out our annual Writing Fellowship for New Parents, our free monthly Literary Salons, and a Cycle of Support that includes membership, mentorship and accountability meetups. More info about the help we offer writers who are also parents at writerparentannex.com 

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Chanukah Memories

By Ellen Frank Bayer

It’s always a rush in my house before Chanukah. The candles have to be lit, dinner has to be prepared, the presents need to be wrapped. Once we light the candles, we sit and watch them burn for at least 30 minutes - it is a religious custom not to do any work while the candles are burning. This is to symbolize that the candles are strictly lit to remind us of the miracle of Chanukah, and not to be used for reading or working.

No holiday meal could be complete unless my Mom baked her famous “Treasure Cake,” the recipe handed down from my Grandmother.

This is a depression era cake that includes lots of sugar, oil, and flour. It’s heavy and wet, a little moist to the touch. The “treasure” is the chocolate marbleized throughout the cake. My Mom taught me how to put the blobs of chocolate gently on top of the white batter and how to then use a knife to slowly stir in the chocolate blobs, with just a light touch, so each slice would have a good taste of thick chocolate.

Apricot nectar is the secret to moistness. I have tried to substitute soy milk or apple juice, but the thick nectar works best.

You can melt chocolate: use the dark, heavy baking chocolate bar, melt it with a bit of margarine. If you want to do it the old fashioned way, put it in a small pyrex dish and place it in a pot of boiling water. Let it simmer over a low flame for about 20 minutes. Stir it every five minutes.

If you are in a rush, melt the chocolate in a microwave, but be stingy with the time. Take it 20 seconds at a time: open the microwave, give it a stir, and put it back in for another 20 seconds. Do this a few times until the chocolate is melted.

The cake could be frozen for months, and I remember what my Mom always said: “it would defrost going down” if you had to take it out of the freezer and serve it for drop-in guests. It was a large cake, about 11 x 13 inches, and was baked in a silver pan. Some of the pans were actually developing trays from analog camera film. My mom’s brother Issac was into photography and I think the family had extra developing trays lying around.

Ellen's mother with a cake, and her husband lighting the Chanukah candles

—> Behind the Paywall: Read the rest of Ellen’s story and Grandma’s “Treasure Cake” recipe…