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My Mother-in-Law's Recipe for a Sweet New Year

As Jan Dale lay dying in a Boston hospital last year, she sent one of her daughters to her apartment. "I made some mandel," she said. "Bring the tin." We sat with Jan and enjoyed her crumbly, cinnamon-scented cookies. I remember thinking, "This is the last time we'll have this pleasure."

But I was wrong. Even though Jan, my wife's mother, passed away, she will be with us Friday night when we celebrate the Jewish New Year -- and not just in our memories. We'll be enjoying her favorite desserts.

A few days after Jan died, we went through her possessions, and there was her go-to cookbook, stained and dog-eared. The book is called Our Favorites ... with Cocktails and Coffee. The spiral-bound book contains recipes from women in the Hadassah chapter she belonged to. It appears to have been printed in 1980, but it's redolent of the 1950s, when many of the women would have been raising families and cooking dinner every night.

I felt as if I'd found the Holy Grail. The cookbook has a recipe for mandel bread -- Yiddish for "almond bread." That's the Jewish version of biscotti, a twice-baked cookie named for the almonds mixed into the batter. I also found recipes for Jan's excellent poppy seed cookies and her moist, flavorful honey cake. On Rosh Hashana, it is customary to eat sweets, particularly those made with honey, to symbolize the sweetness of the new year.

My mother-in-law was not a gourmet cook. Nor was she one of those cooks who will devote hours to a dish. When her three daughters were growing up, she'd pour ketchup over noodles ... and voila, spaghetti with tomato sauce. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But as I read her cookbook, I could see that Jan was not just a follow-the-recipe cook. The book is filled with notes in her Palmer-perfect handwriting, as well as alternate versions of recipes on slips of paper. But which version did she prefer? I had other questions: "Why did you change the oil quantity from one cup to half a cup in the mandel bread?" (Probably she'd answer, "Who needs all that oil?") Why did you write "wash and drain" on the poppy seed recipe, then cross the words out? And then there were the missing elements -- like a pan size for the honey cake. She most likely had a cake pan she'd always use, but that sure didn't help me.

Through trial and error, and by consulting with other cooks, I solved some of the mysteries. For example, Jan called for "one tablespoon of baking powder" for the mandel bread. When I took a batch to my mother, she took one bite and said, "Too metallic -- how much baking powder did you use?" With her guidance, I reduced the amount to two teaspoons (although I'll never know why Jan called for the larger amount). Rose Levy Beranbaum, author of The Cake Bible and baking blogger, helped solve the "wash and drain" instruction for poppy seeds. Apparently, folks used to think that washing poppy seeds would remove the bitterness associated with them. But in fact, poppy seeds quickly turn rancid once they're opened, and washing won't help. The solution, says Beranbaum, is to store poppy seeds in the freezer for freshness. That would have appealed to Jan. I figure someone told her about washing seeds, she wrote the instruction down, then thought, "Who needs that extra step?" and crossed it out.

I plan to try more recipes that Jan loved, and I'm sure I'll encounter glitches and confusing instructions. I don't mind that at all. I feel as if I'm having a conversation with my mother-in-law about something both of us love -- cooking.

As for the desserts I made, I asked my kids to judge. "They taste just like Nana's," they said. "Only not quite as good."

I guess there are some ingredients that only a grandmother can bring into the mix.

Read last week's Kitchen Window.

Get more recipe ideas from the Kitchen Window archive.

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Marc Silver
Marc Silver, who edits NPR's global health blog, has been a reporter and editor for the Baltimore Jewish Times, U.S. News & World Report and National Geographic. He is the author of Breast Cancer Husband: How to Help Your Wife (and Yourself) During Diagnosis, Treatment and Beyond and co-author, with his daughter, Maya Silver, of My Parent Has Cancer and It Really Sucks: Real-Life Advice From Real-Life Teens. The NPR story he co-wrote with Rebecca Davis and Viola Kosome -- 'No Sex For Fish' — won a Sigma Delta Chi award for online reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists.