Happy Hanu...Channa...Festival of Lights!
December 2, 2010 It's Chanukkah, everybody! I can't believe you didn't remember! I mean, I've known for... uh, weeks and... weeks. [poker face] And, naturally, since I knew this day was coming well in advance, I've been saving all the best Hanukah wrecks for this very moment.
Now, Jen's the one with the Jewish roots, but I believe this is called a "men-OR-ah."What's that, Jen? It's not a Hannnukah cake? But...but... it's blue and white!
Fine.
Everyone knows that Hanuchah is the Festival of Lights. So, um, here's a candle:
As you can see, it's very Jewish.
And here we have the great patriarch Moses, crying over the fact that the oil has run out for the holy Jewish lamps:
(For some reason Jen isn't looking very happy right now. Hm. Well, better just keep going.)
Channikah lasts 8 nights, of course, and each night the Ghost of Chawnucahs Past visits all the good little Jewish children...
(Ow! Stop that, Jen, I'm on a roll!) ...bearing holy Jewish Dream Catchers:
And finally, while Jen is busy nursing that headache, let's end with a traditional Hawnuka cake from the great Jewess herself, Sandra Lee:
Yes, I believe those are plastic pearl beads.
Um, Jen's just gone apoplectic, but through the screeching I think I heard something about showing you the video of Sandra making this culinary delight, so you can judge for yourself. So, here 'tis:
[Update: That was sarcasm; marshmallows aren't kosher. Unless they are. In which case, they would be kosher. Those, however, aren't kosher. Glad we cleared that up.]
And now you do, too.
It means no wo-rrieees... for the rest of your daaaaaays...
Reader Comments (228)
I agree with whomever said "WHO ICES ANGEL FOOD CAKE?"
Seriously, who does that?
Aren't you just supposed to slap strawberries on it and your done?!
I was confused by her show. How is this on TV still? She iced a pre-bought cake with pre-made icing. How is this a cooking/baking show?! Anybody can come up with that. We watch the shows to get new and better ideas!
1. I am not even sure my marshmallow obsessed cat would approve of this cake or of kosher marshmallows.
2. I have frequently seen frosted/iced angel food cake - sometimes at the local wreckery, but most often at work. (at at hospital)The dietary manager puts sugar-free frosting on sugar-free angel food cake for birthdays for diabetics since they can't really have the good stuff.
3. Wow. By Sandra Lee logic *I* have a total Hanukkah decor thing rocking for Christmas. ALL of my Christmas decorations are blue/silver/white. OH and so was my wedding. How very kosher of me, apparently!
That candle definitely gives new meaning to the phrase blue balls...
Oh, my dear and fluffy lord, this bears repeating:
"Why didn't she just fill the thing with pork chops and clams?"
Anon @ 11:05, it's a good thing I didn't have a mouthful of coffee or my laptop would have been dust. I'm a lapsed Jew, and this was just the perfect response.
"Holy Jewish Dream Catchers," indeed.
wv: munnica
(Borrowing from Adam Sandler's Hannukah Song) "So drink your gin and munnica, and have a happy, Happy, HAPPY HAPPPPPY Hannukah!!"
Antikythera- try etsy, theres TONS of vegan marshmalllow makers!
In other news- I seriously love FNH, it's my second favorite blog (after cake wrecks, of course!).
Sandra Lee.. just.. BLAH.
(ALSO, darn you John.. at least it got The Song That Never Ends out of my head!
I confess that my mother used to put Saran Wrap in the center of ring pound cake so that she could frost it smooth on top but marshmallows????? Heavens!
No one has brought up the problem with CUTTING the cake yet I believe. As we all know, angel food cake is texturally different from standard cake and requires a sawing motion to cut.
Here's the humor, folks! Your unsuspecting guest comes up all set to push the knife down into the cake to cut that slice of marshmallow-y goodness and crushes the LIFE out of that angel food cake! Gales of laughter all around!
Oh, the comic genius of Sandra Lee. (Not really, just trying to find a bright-ish side to this wreck-tastic wreck-tacular.)
Even I, who is NOT Jewish, know that the Star of David has 6 points instead of 5 like the one on the great Jewess's cake!
Wait, these WEREN'T real Hanukkah cakes?? Huh. They all looked like daisies to me :)
Anyway, I'll be bringing wine into the Epcot shelter. See you all there!
We generally don't make Hanukkah themed cakes. Most of our Jewish customers order their cakes in advance with specific decorations... or they don't buy cake. Cause well, it's not Kosher. I also have never insulted anyone with a Kwanza cake.
If it were up to me we would not do any holiday themed things. Just winter themed things. Like snowmen, with the word winter.
being a jew who celebrate the holiday of hanukah and the miracles that took place, i find this post rather offensive, the pictures you posted have nothing to do with jews or hannukah, at least you could have made some connection to the holiday instead of putting up snow flakes and calling them jewish because they are blue and white, sorry for being rude, but i'm offended.
What a waste of paper towels in the video. I'd just let the dog lick around the edge of the cake platter. Since no one is going to eat that monstrosity, no harm, no foul...
PS... there are Kosher marshmallows
http://usa.kosher.com/store/kosher-grocery/candy/kosher-marshmallows
@Miranda. Cake Yule logs. Made with Swiss Cake Rolls and little tubes of decorative icing. Oh Goddess, what have I done now? I hope Sandra doesn't read this, though as a Pagan myself I would approve of this activity for preschoolers, just not for grown, able women with their own cooking show.
I can't get Burt Ward out of my head now! "Holy Jewish Dream Catchers, Batman!"
Sadly, the Tutorial is still up on the real FoodNetwork site. I just sent them a polite but firm "Perhaps you out to see to that" email.
@ DD - I, too, was surprised to make it through so many comments before I saw one about the Jewish candle, and I'm totally with you that it's comic genius. AHAHAHAHA!!! It reminds me of a quote from a movie where a woman is holding a knife to a man's *ahem* privates and she says, "With one flick of my wrist I could change your religion." John (the hubby of Jen), if you can name the movie, I will slow clap in your direction! :)
A friend of mine has warned me about this Sandra Lee person, but having never watched the show I thought my friend was exaggerating. It seems she was actually being quite kind. That was just..I can't even...wow. My five year old with serious fine motor skill issues can and HAS made better looking baked goods. So sad.
Oh My. Oh My. I'm not sure what else to say.
I think even one of our friends who claims to be a Methodist Jew (?) would have some issues with those cakes.
I'm also extremely glad that I do not (NO NO NO) have television in my house if this is the programming available these days.
I thought Martha was bad. Julia is spinning like a cat in a dryer.
John, you're lucky Jen loves you just as you are, uneducated or not. *grin*
~~Di
my favorite part of today's post is learning about foodnetworkhumor.com (link for the video)... especially since yesterday's post was sandra lee's "sensuous chocolate truffles". i've heard of a poo-gasm, but that's just too much for my holiday table.
http://foodnetworkhumor.com/2010/12/holiday-recipe-of-the-week-sandra-lees-sensuous-chocolate-truffles/
Hannuuukaaa Matata! Darnit. It's stuck in there! Thanks a whole heapin' lot.
Yeah. Saw the candle this morning. Spent the last couple hours scrubbing my brain of hood/hat/cap, three-bell jokes.
WV: fulties -- it was an exorcism of fulties
so loosely defined (by her anyway) she is "making" a Hanukkah cake.
which leads me to wonder why the weather at christmas is at all relevant? like "here, make this hanukkah cake to have at your christmas dinner!"
anyway.. I have some pictures of some
decent(ly wreckie) dreidal cakes... I may have to send them in...
Ok...holy crap.
This is my first time commenting. I had never heard of this Sandra woman before. I guess that's a benefit of not having had cable for the past 8 years. So I went and looked up the Kwanzaa cake video...and I noticed something rather telling.
Ok, she's allowed to say that the frosting she uses is storebought. But do you see that she has to peel the label off it before she can use it?? Whoever's frosting she's buying apparently doesn't want the product placement!
I've seen Sandra Lee COOKBOOKS in Costco--never have looked at them, since I like to cook. I can't believe you need a RECIPE to do that kind of stuff.
Why is "angel food cake perfect for the holidays"?--I can see it for Christmas... I'm not Jewish, but I don't think there were angels in the event celebrated with Hanukkah, and angel food cake isn't a "fried in oil" food. Maybe the marshmallows stuffed in the middle are supposed to represent the oil in the lamp??? Oh dear....
We've tried the kosher marshmallows made with fish gelatin. My kids have food allergies, and so I shop a lot at Whole Foods. The only type of marshmallows they had this summer before our camping trip were the kosher ones, so we gave them a try. They didn't taste that weird, although they were a bit different. They definitely don't stand up to the heat though. We had a rare heat wave for Washington state that weekend, and so the marshmallows melted together. When my 5-year-old twins went to roast them at the late evening campfire, the marshmallows came out in sticky globs. People around the campfire thought my kids were roasting cauliflower!
Thanks again for all the great laughs--both on the post and the many comments. See you all in the Epcot bunker!
WV: neysion--you can offend an entire neysion with these cakes, how wonderful!
It's a pity, really. The utter horror of the video has distracted us all from the utter hilarity of the rest of John's post.
However, I'd be remiss to not mention the video. My mouth was actually hanging open the entire thing. There are no words. (Well, yes, there are plenty, but none are polite.)
wv: frophtes. The noise made when trying to eat a frosting covered marshmallow.
*singing*
Let's put on our yarmulkas...
So what'd ya get for Hannukah?
Let's put on our yarmulkas and - hey, hey - do that Hebrew thing!
http://www.last.fm/music/%22Weird+Al%22+Yankovic/_/Pretty+Fly+for+a+Rabbi
Seriously, though - these cakes have left me very ferklempt (confused) and meshugga (crazy). These decorators are schlemiels (clumsy bunglers or fools).
in israel marshmallows are kosher!
1. what does blue have to do with hanuka?
2. how much icing goes into that hole? can you imagine taking a bite out of that thing?
wv: suckin: it would be suckin to make that cake
funny! I thought they were snowflakes, too... but I'm not Jewish...
and shouldn't that be HaNUka Matatta? :o)
Epcot bunker...here I come!!!!
I'm bringing the bacon. ^.^
What a craptastic cake. And I thought her "Star of David" was a janky snowflake before she told me otherwise.
I chaven't chad so much fun reading the comments page in a LONG time. I chad a feeling the marshmallows would quickly become Epcot.
I died a little watching the video. I'm making a Chanukah cake for my daughter's birthday. It will be blue and white as well, but it will NOT match my decor and even with my lack of expertise will HAVE look better than that marshmallow-gorged monstrosity.
Chappy Chanukah!
@ bluewhite:
I made the mistake of taking a drink of water just before I read your comment...it took all my powers to keep from spewing water all over my laptop (of course now I know how to neaten that right up with paper towels!). I love the word "hork" hahaha! The idea of someone making sure their crap store frosting matches their home decor in case of puking...hey, has Martha Stewart gotten in on this yet? I mean, she really NEEDS that concept.
Holy lord almighty. That video gave me a brain hemorrhage. Who in the world gave her a TV show? She's TERRIBLE at EVERYTHING.
Oh no, she didn't... I'm not even Jewish and I'm totally offended by that on behalf of my Jewish friends. If you're going to do that to a cake, just go buy one from the bakery.
Okay--I just did a search for the Kwanzaa cake video, and the food network link says "Semi-Homemade makes a most amazingly beautiful cake for Kwanza." HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It totally distracted me from my search for the http://www.jollymom.com/2009/08/semi-homemade-birthday-cakes-how-to.html" rel="nofollow">crap-tastic tiered birthday cake video! (which I had trouble finding, btw, but there's the link for the step-by-step directions.
http://extratv.warnerbros.com/2008/02/sandra_lees_nobake_birthday_ca.php" rel="nofollow">Found the link for the tiered birthday cake!
LOVE the candle CCC! "As you can see, it's very Jewish" -- heee!
Great post-- thanks for the laughs!
WV: quanurb-- What Sandra must have smoked before "making" the Kwanzaa cake. (Slightly different from what she smoked before "making" the Hanukkah cake, which I would call "Hanucrack.")
As one who IS lighting candles tonight... I just gotta say this post rocks!!!
Wow. For the record, I'm Jewish and was NOT offended at all by the post, in fact it was pretty hilarious. As for the lack of real Chanukah cakes, lets just say cake isn't really a a Chanukah thing, in fact I don't think I've ever seen a Chanukah cake in my 26 years. I don't imagine they're too in demand because traditional Chanukah foods are fried, like donuts. I don't know why but in Israel the Chanukah donut is a jelly filled donut called a sufganiya (plural sufganiyot)
As for the marshmallows, you can find quite good kosher marshmallows. I've had both kosher and non-kosher marshmallows and while the kosher ones are denser and tend to stick there isn't much difference in taste.
Bah, that video! I know that the stereotypes about Americans are just stereotypes and I shouldn't believe that they apply to a large segment of the population... But American television sure loves to reinforce certain views of Americans.
This "cake" from the video was something that I would never even have considered - and especially not done that way. Buying regular angel food from the grocery store? Buying ready-made frosting from the grocery store? It just makes me think "how lazy or pressed for time can you possibly be?" I mean - if you're planning to bake a cake anyway you could at least do something yourself, right? Especially two such easy and relatively quick things.
It reminds me of when my sister lived in the US for a while. She had a get together with some friends and brought cookies. They complimented her on them and asked where she bought them. She explained that she hadn't bought them, she baked them. So then their question was.. "Oh, ok, so where did you buy the dough?"
It would never even occur to me to actually buy cookie dough. But apparently buying dough and putting it in the oven constituted "baking" in their eyes.
Uhm, but I don't believe those stereotypes about Americans, of course not ;)
Anonymous @ 3:30: That would be Disney's "The Three Musketeers". Any movie with Tim Curry in it bears rewatchin! (With the exception of Home Alone 2, that is.)
I'd heard of Sandra Lee only in passing before now. Based on this clip, I think I will keep ON passing on her :)
WV: boxyhov - not the stuff from which kosher marshmallows are made!
All I have to say is.... Oy Vey!
check out my blog: nikkiscakery.blogspot.com
Oh how I loathe Sandra Lee. She doesn't belong on Food Network. She should be on E! with all the other lazy hags who don't do anything worthwhile, yet make millions for letting someone film it.
Seriously? Seriously!?! Why? Why! The horror! I watched that video with morbid curiosity. I kind of wish I hadn't.
Good grief, tell me that vid isn't real! Please! I mean, the mutilation of that cake was...painful to watch. Oh and don't get me started on the "star" she mashed in there.
Also loved the generalization about how people in warm climates don't want big meals. Um, what? As a Florida resident, let me speak for other tropic/swamp-dwelling folk: it's not all that warm on December 25th, and the temp does not affect our meal sizes. We have air conditioning, after all.
Other than the candle which is very jewish-y and Channuka oriented, I don't see why any of these other cakes have anything to do with Hannuka or judaism. Please explain this post!
By the way, here in Israel we have some awesome kosher marshmallows. Are peeps kosher?
Wow. All I can say is wow. Marshmallows? That's a Star of David? Really? *shakes head sadly*
Sandra Lee's Youtube channel must be where the Wreckerators learn their trade...
;)
Anonymous said:
"Ok, she's allowed to say that the frosting she uses is storebought. But do you see that she has to peel the label off it before she can use it?? Whoever's frosting she's buying apparently doesn't want the product placement!"
She has discovered another revenue stream. If I were making prepared cake frosting, I would gladly pay her a monthly retainer NOT to show my product's label or mention my brand in connection with the "cakes" she "makes" on her programs.
(Jason's joining in in the tenor section)
philosophy...
I was laughing so hard after watching Sandra's video, I had to read the comments! My husband came home and knew I had totally lost it. Thank you for a great ending to a marginal day.
I still can't get over matching my icing to my decor. I don't really like cooking or baking, but I would never buy an angel food cake and cover it with store bought frosting. My Mennonite grandmothers are rolling in their graves!
Sandra Lee does it again. I don't know whether to laugh as if my mind has gone 'round the bend or just run away in terror screaming. Could go either way.