The Story Behind the Story: The $150,000 Rugelach
In The $150,000 Rugelach, our latest middle-grade novel and PJ Our Way selection, Jillian Mermelstein recalls the kernels of wisdom imparted by her late mother during her first baking lesson, making chocolate rugelach in the kitchen of Joan of Hearts Pastry Shop—just the two of them, shelves full of ingredients, and endless possibilities.
By Allison and Wayne Marks
In The $150,000 Rugelach, our latest middle-grade novel and PJ Our Way selection, Jillian Mermelstein recalls the kernels of wisdom imparted by her late mother during her first baking lesson, making chocolate rugelach in the kitchen of Joan of Hearts Pastry Shop—just the two of them, shelves full of ingredients, and endless possibilities.
Told through a series of flashbacks, Jillian learns step by step what it takes to make an extraordinary rugelach, a traditional Jewish pastry. Along with practical advice about chilling the dough and adding the right mix of ingredients to make the filling, she listens to her mother’s words about the importance of putting love in her baking:
“Trust me, without it, your rugelach won’t taste nearly as sweet. Nothing will.”
Before placing the crescent-shaped pastries in the oven, her mother gives one final instruction:
“As I bake, I pull memories from my memory box. Sometimes I’ll remember my own grandmother and the wonderful smells coming from her kitchen. I can see her singing ‘Hinei Ma Tov’ as she rolled dough for a crust. My memory box is so full I can always find something new to pull out. A good baker never enters the kitchen without a fully stocked memory box.”
The power of memory was very much on our minds as we told the story of Jack and Jillian, eleven-year-old classmates who make cricket-filled oatmeal cookies for a school project, battle Jack’s brother in a winner-take-all putt-putt challenge, become mismatched partners in a televised baking contest, and, eventually, blend their talents and memories together to find the right recipe for working as partners. Jack, Jillian, and the book’s antagonist, Phineas Farnsworth III, each has a back story about baking that shapes their character and ultimately helps them to grow and heal.
For inspiration, we turned to our memories of Passover and Hanukkah dessert tables singlehandedly created by Rita Marks, Wayne’s mother and baker extraordinaire.
Within our circle of friends and family, Rita’s kitchen creations are works of culinary legend, expanded waistbands, and indelible memories for anyone lucky enough to feast upon her lemon rolls, pecan pies, chocolate chip mandelbrot, and cherry-covered cheesecakes—each a testimony that love is, indeed, as essential an ingredient as milk or sugar. As for her own memory box, it overflows with Shabbat dinners around our tiny kitchen table, where her mother, Esther Weiss, presented home-baked apple and lemon meringue pies, the pièce de résistance of our Friday night gatherings. Like sorting through a well-organized recipe file, she can select memories of watching her grandmother, Freda Jacobs, make hamantaschen to send to relatives every Purim, bake a perfect kuchen, and pull dough on a long table for a strudel.
Each delicious bite, every enticing smell wafting from a long-ago kitchen lives on through Wayne’s mother, as will Rita’s resplendent dessert tables live on through us and our children.
Our hope is that in between all the craziness and laughter found in The $150,000 Rugelach, our young readers will pause to consider how moments in their own lives—perhaps seemingly insignificant and mundane to them at the time—will one day become powerful images they can pull from their own memory boxes, savor, and share with loved ones.
In The $150,000 Rugelach, our latest middle-grade novel and PJ Our Way selection, Jillian Mermelstein recalls the kernels of wisdom imparted by her late mother during her first baking lesson, making chocolate rugelach in the kitchen of Joan of Hearts Pastry Shop—just the two of them, shelves full of ingredients, and endless possibilities.
Told through a series of flashbacks, Jillian learns step by step what it takes to make an extraordinary rugelach, a traditional Jewish pastry. Along with practical advice about chilling the dough and adding the right mix of ingredients to make the filling, she listens to her mother’s words about the importance of putting love in her baking:
“Trust me, without it, your rugelach won’t taste nearly as sweet. Nothing will.”
Before placing the crescent-shaped pastries in the oven, her mother gives one final instruction:
“As I bake, I pull memories from my memory box. Sometimes I’ll remember my own grandmother and the wonderful smells coming from her kitchen. I can see her singing ‘Hinei Ma Tov’ as she rolled dough for a crust. My memory box is so full I can always find something new to pull out. A good baker never enters the kitchen without a fully stocked memory box.”
The power of memory was very much on our minds as we told the story of Jack and Jillian, eleven-year-old classmates who make cricket-filled oatmeal cookies for a school project, battle Jack’s brother in a winner-take-all putt-putt challenge, become mismatched partners in a televised baking contest, and, eventually, blend their talents and memories together to find the right recipe for working as partners. Jack, Jillian, and the book’s antagonist, Phineas Farnsworth III, each has a back story about baking that shapes their character and ultimately helps them to grow and heal.
For inspiration, we turned to our memories of Passover and Hanukkah dessert tables singlehandedly created by Rita Marks, Wayne’s mother and baker extraordinaire.
Within our circle of friends and family, Rita’s kitchen creations are works of culinary legend, expanded waistbands, and indelible memories for anyone lucky enough to feast upon her lemon rolls, pecan pies, chocolate chip mandelbrot, and cherry-covered cheesecakes—each a testimony that love is, indeed, as essential an ingredient as milk or sugar. As for her own memory box, it overflows with Shabbat dinners around our tiny kitchen table, where her mother, Esther Weiss, presented home-baked apple and lemon meringue pies, the pièce de résistance of our Friday night gatherings. Like sorting through a well-organized recipe file, she can select memories of watching her grandmother, Freda Jacobs, make hamantaschen to send to relatives every Purim, bake a perfect kuchen, and pull dough on a long table for a strudel.
Each delicious bite, every enticing smell wafting from a long-ago kitchen lives on through Wayne’s mother, as will Rita’s resplendent dessert tables live on through us and our children.
Our hope is that in between all the craziness and laughter found in The $150,000 Rugelach, our young readers will pause to consider how moments in their own lives—perhaps seemingly insignificant and mundane to them at the time—will one day become powerful images they can pull from their own memory boxes, savor, and share with loved ones.
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