Friendship Circle

The Chabad Lubavitch organization has a national program called "Friendship Circle" that matches up teens to special needs kids and does different projects with them. I ran two cooking programs for the group during November as part of their Cooking Circle program. On the first day, we made chicken matzoh ball soup, a chopped salad with creamy dijon dressing and an easy fruit tart. The second day we made cheese borekas, pizzas and the kids assembled and decorated their own layer cakes. I learned from working with special needs kids at Camp Ramah last summer that this group LOVES cake decorating. I gave them stacks of vanilla cake slices, bowls of icing and pastry bags with several icing colors and let them do what they want. Many adults are afraid of pastry bags, but not these kids. Although the result was more icing than cake, the kids had fun designing their cakes and squeezing the icing out of the bags. The helpers, including my daughter Emily, had a great time too.