Menorah Mold

Submitted by Flora Rosefsky

I confess I wanted to find a new Chanukah recipe with few ingredients that seemed easy to make for both children and adults.

Bingo! Ahavath Achim Synagogue’s Sisterhood has a newly published cookbook, “A Century of Sweets,” with compiled dessert recipes from three prior Sisterhood cookbooks. In the holidays section, I found Harriet Draluck’s Menorah Mold recipe. In a phone call with her, she told me she had edited the “Golden Soup” cookbook in 1975 where the recipe first appeared. It brought back memories of the ’70s, when gelatin molds were popular side dishes.

As an artist, I appreciated the recipe’s novelty, to create a menorah embedded into a pool of gelatin, while allowing some creativity.

6 ounce box orange gelatin
6 ounce box lemon gelatin
2 bananas cut into nine vertical pieces for candles (One should be slightly larger.)
9 maraschino cherry halves, for candle flames
17 ounces can crushed pineapple, well drained
Cooking spray to grease the dish

Grease and chill a 9-by-13-inch pan. Mix orange gelatin with 1 ½ cups boiling water to dissolve and then add 1 ½ cups cold water. Pour into greased pan and chill until partially set. Arrange banana slices to resemble the candles on the Chanukah menorah, with the longer candle in the center and the cherry halves on top to resemble the flames. Place in refrigerator again to set until it gets hard. Mix lemon gelatin with 1 cup boiling water to dissolve and then add 1 cup of cold water and the pineapple. Be sure to wait until the orange layer with the menorah fruits is hardened before pouring the lemon with pineapple gelatin over the orange layer.

Chill several hours before unmolding onto a platter or Draluck said it’s OK to serve it from the Pyrex dish.

Notes: Place the Pyrex dish in ½ inch of hot water in your kitchen sink for a minute to keep the mold hard, but just enough to unmold it.

Source: Ahavath Achim Synagogue Sisterhood and Harriet Draluck.