Rugelach were a regular nosh in my house – ever-present beside platters of bagels, lox, and whitefish.

This Tzimmes recipe (Tsimis recipe) is the Jewish answer to green bean casserole.

We skip the greens and the creamy soup and instead spend our holidays eating a sweet stew made with root vegetables, apples and pineapple (if you’re my mom), raisins, and other dried fruits.

Egg kichel, or egg cookies (“eier kichelach” in Yiddish), are practically weightless cookies so they’re sometimes called “nothings”.  But, don’t be fooled by their modest name.  Egg kichel are a cross between croissants, flaky pie crusts, and sugar cookies.  When you look at the ingredients, they don’t sound like anything special: eggs, sugar, salt, oil, flour, and baking powder.  They also aren’t the prettiest things (although you cookie decorators could surely jazz them up).  However, when they came out of the oven, my grandmother said they were the best thing that I have ever made for her.   If you’ve got a Jewish grandparent, neighbor, or friend, skip the chocolate gelt [paid link] (coins) and bring them these sweet nothings for Chanukah.  You will have done your mitzvah (good deed) for the day.

I’ve been thinking about making deep fried cupcakes for at least a year. I thought about deep fried cupcakes last Chanukah since I always make doughnuts (sufganiyot) on Chanukah and thought frying cupcakes would be a nice substitute for that. I got busy with other recipes and never got around to this concept.

When Chanukah came around this year, though, deep fried cupcakes were still bubbling in my brain – and now I had a mini Cuisinart deep fryer [paid link].