It has been a few weeks since I posted because Andy and I were in Israel working on our plans for aliyah to Beer Sheva this summer. I did not intentionally plan the trip in order to miss more Mishkan-related parshiot, but that was certainly a plus :). When I got back, I was determined to finally attempt a Mishkan cake with the girls, especially since I had already bought all of the very "chametzdic" ingredients weeks ago and had to get rid of them!
First, we made two brownie mixes (in retrospect, cake mixes would have worked better). Having two of everything does wonders for sibling rivalry.
After they baked, we frosted one of them and sprinkled it with graham cracker crumbs to resemble the sand of the desert:
Now we had to try to make it look something like this:
I had a few ideas for how to make the planks surrounding the mishkan. I wanted to use rolled wafers like these but I couldn't find any with a hecsher except for these which were so tempting but would have been a FORTUNE to buy 60 I would need for an accurate replica of the mishkan. So, instead we settled on good old cheap pretzel sticks.
For the ohel, we just used a piece from the second cake and covered it with a red fruit roll up. This is when I got kind of lazy and uncreative (or maybe just tired and jet-lagged). For the entrance to the mishkan and the mizbeach/altar, we just used some graham crackers. If anyone has any brilliant ideas for other ways to represent these parts of the mishkan or for the curtains, please let me know and I will try it next year!
As usual, I was the only one who was a bit disappointed with the final outcome. The girls thought it was amazing and more importantly...delicious...
