Getting into the groove

There are many tasks that need to be taken care of between now and sundown Friday. I tackled some of them.

There were a few silver pieces that I had forgotten to kasher. I just used a smaller saucepan and a slotted serving spoon for the boiling and removal tools. The little footed cordial cups had belonged to my husband's Uncle Irving. The tomato server and the berry spoon had belonged to our dear bachelor uncle Father Blute. He wasn't actually related by blood but over the decades of friendship he had become our bachelor uncle. The pierced cake server was a gift I gave to my parents.

I polished our Seder plate.

I began work on desserts. I began with the simplest, chocolate covered matza.

I made these for my great niece and nephew who are coming for the second Seder.

My youngest is nut allergic and has been unable to eat the fabulous flourless chocolate torte that my mother began making in the mid 60s. The recipe was given to my mother by Mildred Jacobs who was a really excellent baker.

Here is the recipe, taped into my mother's machberet/notebook that held the Passover recipes that my mother wrote down probably while she was on the phone with one or the other of her friends.

The cake is delicious.

It is now hanging upside down to achieve maximum height,

Tomorrow it will look something like this.

This cake is usually made with chopped walnuts. This year I substituted shredded coconut for the nuts. My son and my nut allergic nephew will get to experience this cake for the first time.

My older son is celebrating his birthday on Friday. I baked the base of his birthday cake.

It is a lemon almond cake that will be assembled, (hopefully), into layers with excellent fillings. The fillings are made and the cake will be assembled at some point in the next couple of days. I am just going to pretend that I am a contestant on the Great British Bake-Off and hope for the best.

Until my father died we would drive to Boston for Passover. Inevitably, winter would be essentially over in New York but by the time we reached eastern Connecticut there would be patches of snow on the ground. We would, year after year, celebrate Chag ha Aviv, The Spring Festival in what my husband and I came to call, "Quincy Weather". Quincy weather is cold, damp and dreary and either it is actually raining or the air is so humid that it may as well be raining.

The last couple of days the temperature has dropped and it has been Quincy Weather here in New York. Today was still cold but bright.