teacher appreciation

I am part of the religious school parent association at my temple, and our group is responsible for celebrating and lauding our teachers and teaching assistants (called rishonim) each year. At the end of the school year, we throw a party in their honor. This year, we had a lunch party after Sunday School for the teens, complete with a taco truck and a candy bar. We hosted a dinner party on a weeknight for the teachers featuring an illusionist who was super engaging and entertaining. Sadly, more than half of us ended up with COVID after that party (not the illusionist's fault!), which I did not so much appreciate. However, our teachers and rishonim work very hard, and we want to show them how much we value them; these parties helped us say thank you.

I made a cake for each event. For the rishonim, it was a confetti cake with vanilla icing and the words, "todah rabah, rishonim!" written in Hebrew, which means, "thank you, rishonim!" It was my first opportunity to write in Hebrew on a cake, so that was fun, and impressively, the kids were able to read what it said!

For the teachers, it was an illusion cake to go with the illusionist theme (suggested by my friend Melissa - and who am I to shy away from trying something new?). I made a chocolate cake with a cascade of M&M's. Much as I'd like to claim they are held up by magic, there's actually a dowel in the cake, which I painted with chocolate and painstakingly adhered each M&M individually. Kind of a pain, if I'm being honest. I actually did all the M&M's on the cake itself individually, too. The cake was already frosted, and the frosting had firmed up, so I needed them to stay put where I wanted them. I also piled them up on top of each other to look more realistic and let a few spill over the side. The other thing that made this cake a little tricky was that you cannot refrigerate it after the M&M's are on or their candy shell will lose its sheen. So I had the cake all ready to go, and I assembled the decoration the morning of the party. It looked super cool, and I really enjoyed making it, despite the aforementioned annoyances!