Bar Mitzvah / Bat Mitzvah Cake

September 27, 2020

A close friend of mine is Jewish. She's very active in the Jewish community and sings lots of songs about Judaism and loves to tell people about it who are curious.

So, even though I'm not Jewish myself, I felt it was past time that I made a Jewish-themed cake. So, with my friend, Rachel, as a consultant, I designed this Bar Mitzvah cake (or Bat Mitzvah, of course).

After debating a long time, I decided to go with a rectangular sheet cake. I just like how much space I have on top of the cake to decorate.

I also should quickly mention ingredients. If you're going to make a cake for a Bar Mitzvah, you're going to want to make it Kosher. So, a few tips about making sure it's Kosher: if you're planning on using gelatin in the cake, make sure there's no dairy in it. Gelatin is an animal biproduct and according to Kosher laws, meat and dairy should not be consumed together. I did ask Rachel, and she assured me that eggs don't fall under that rule. So, it's fine to use eggs and dairy together. However, because of the difficulty with gelatin, I would actually advise against using it at all. Many gelatin brands also use pork biproducts, which is definitely not Kosher.

After frosting my sheet cake, I covered it with white fondant.

I used my alphabet cutters to cut out the words mazel tov and the age of the person who's having the bar mitzvah, 13. Mazel tov is always a good phrase for a congratulatory cake.

I should probably mention the choice of color, though. Most bar mitzvah cakes I looked up were solely blue and white. I asked Rachel about it, and she said that was for the Israeli flag. But that gifts, decorations and prayer shawls can be any color at all and told me hers was actually red. So, I decided I wanted to show this one the cake. There are more colors in this world than just blue and white. Feel free to decorate with any color that the person prefers. I chose hunter green.

I centered the words onto the cake as well as the age.

Now, a bar mitzvah (bat mitzvah) is all about leading the congregation in reading the Torah. So, we can't have a bar mitzvah cake without a Torah model. I rolled out some white fondant fairly thick and used a couple of lengths of skewer to roll the edges together.

Then I covered the ends of the skewer with some black fondant to look like the handles of the Torah.

And I placed it on the cake. Now, I was told that every day that a bar mitzvah happens has a section of the Torah associated with it, which also has a name. It would be a perfect opportunity to use an edible marker to write the name of the Torah section onto the Torah model. Or you could write the name of the person having the bar mitzvah. Just a few options.

Then I rolled out a rectangle of white fondant and some more green fondant and cut out two different sizes of stripes. Some thin and others slightly thicker.

I laid the stripes across the prayer shawl in the order of thin, thick, thin on each small end and laid it on the cake slightly folded, so you can see that it is fabric. I also made a few small tassels and glued them onto the corners.

However, I felt that the Israeli flag should also be present. Because many people having bar mitzvahs receive gifts in order to allow them to fly to Israel. So, travel to Israel is definitely something Jews are focusing on at a bar mitzvah.

So, I made a few blue stripes and placed them around the cake at the top and bottom of the sides. Then I used some leftover stripes to create triangles and laid them on top of each other to create a Star of David.