A Few More Eggs

Growing up, Passover was always about time with family and food. There were so many great things that we only had once a year, but there were also times when we didn't look forward to it. When I was 3 and my sister was 5, we didn't care for any of the breakfast options provided for us. My Mom tried to create breakfast foods for my sister and I - eggs, Matza Brei , cream cheese on Matza - we wouldn't eat anything. We were used to having cereal every day, or occasionally waffles, pancakes or eggs. How were we supposed to last a whole week without our precious breakfast treats.

This was back before the days of boxed cake mix being plentiful. The cereal options were disgusting and we were finicky matzoh-ed out children. My mom was able to get past all this and figure out a solution. She took my Grandma Betty's beautiful sponge cake, sliced it up and soaked it in egg and turned them into Passover french toast.

What you have to understand about this recipe is that like many items cooked over the week, it already contained twelve eggs. The idea of soaking the cake in more eggs and frying it was delicious, but hardly the healthiest idea. That didn't matter at the time - we were kids and we weren't eating anything, so she did what she had to do. In less than a week the entire cake was gone and everything was fine.

Until my Mom casually mentioned to Grandma what she had done.

"You did WHAT?"

Grandma was not happy that her precious sponge cake had been defiled, no matter how ingenious the idea was. She was shocked that it was used to "make breakfast". These were famous cakes that were baked in mass. My father, aunt and uncle used to come home from school to find dozens of them laid out on their beds. In the end Grandma Betty got over it, probably because my Mom was able to recreate the cake so well on her own. She continued to make the cake for us each year, and we loved it in it's original form as well. To this day my mother makes the cake using Grandma Betty's recipe and her cake pan.