I just tried this & all went well until the glaze. I followed the instructions, but it ended up thick & gloppy - too thick to try brushing & not a good consistency for pouring. It really made a mess of the cake. I left it for a good while, then went back & warmed up the remaining glaze enough to get it out of the pan, put it in a pyrex measuring cup & microwaved it until it would flow a bit. I poured this over the first attempt a glazing. It still did not give it a good glaze. Any ideas would be appreciated. I've made other glazes with lemon juice & powdered sugar, etc. Couldn't I just use powdered sugar, water & Crown Royal for a glaze?

BTW -- I do not mix the chopped nuts into the batter - only put them into the bottom of the bundt pan before the batter goes in. I also use Pecans only. My take on the Giant Food glaze for this rum cake includes McCormick Imitation Rum Extract. The flavor of the McCormick Imitation Rum extract is exactly the same as that used in the Giant Food cake. I am almost 100% sure the store bakery did not use real rum. DL

The same color looks much darker on a horizontal surface than a vertical one. I have the same color on our screened porch siding, wood floor and ceiling and it looks completely different on each of those three surfaces. High ceilings look better with a darker paint, imo (unless they have a lot of plaster medallion ornamentstion in a really formal room--- those are best left white).This is our library colour scheme....BM Golden Straw on the walls, BM Linen on the molding, SW custom green black on the doors and transom and SW China Doll on the 14 ft ceiling. I was lying in the sofa and was struck with the similarity of wall and ceiling combination with your room. Of course, it looks totally different during the day and at different times of the day :-)

So, my tablet locked up, but the Submit button worked, so I did a submit and edit, p and I finished with a lot more to the previous. I might have overdone it—please don't feel obligated to read! no problem anout the thread. We don't have thread police here, and Floral’s article answered all my questions, plus added some interesting ideas, so I'm set for the dessert. I'm mostly Ashkenazie, middle Europe, if that's what you wanted to know, but one of my grandfathers, a scholar, grew up in what is now Israel, and his family had a lot of Eastern influences as well, which is where lamb and rice for Seder come in. Both of my grandmothers were modern women, and I think their mothers as well, before it was ”modern”, so we nowhere have the tradition that the family must follow the husband's traditions. Frankly, I think that's just a rule for peace in the home (itself an important rule of Jewish life)—that is, if you can't agree on how things should be, that's the tiebreaker. :) That's not what's said, but I prefer to think of it that way, So ”fish balls in a jar” might have been any number of things. Some jarred gefilte fish is fine. Some is pretty good. A lot is deeply disgusting. It's usually packed in its own aspic, which is fishy slime. Some people actually like eating it. I don't think you have to have fish allergies to find it revolting. For Passover one is to be more strictly kosher than normal. I don't keep kosher daily (long divergence there, so I'll skip the explanations). I do try to keep the meal meat only, and avoid things that by their nature could never be kosher. Except, I couldn't keep the family out of the Matzah Toffee, which has butter. You make a toffee of butter and brown sugar, spread it over matzah, sprinkle liberally with chocolate chips, melt in a hot oven for a few minutes, spread the chocolate evenly with a spatula, then sprinkle with high end trail mix (nuts and dried fruit bits), melt for another minute. When cool, chill overnight on the baking sheet in the fridge. Break into bite sized shards and keep in an airtight bowl in the fridge. Some people call it Matzah Crack, not because you crack it into pieces, but because it's irresistable, and my family figure if it's down to coffee and fruit, it's not butter on the seder table. I haven't heard of the smeared with version you described—nor the canned tuna based fish loaf—but they're recognizable. :) So too is the strata made with layers of veg and matzah. And eggs. I invented one when I was young, which I thought was merely serviceable, and a former roommate called months later for the ”recipe”. As if there was one. ;) Luckily, I was young enough to remember it. Blessing the greens is one of the 15 steps of the Seder, fairly early in the service. It's the parsley or other green herb dipped in salt water (for more see my previous, added-to, post), The nut salad is called ”charoset”, and among other things symbolizes the mortar used by the Israelites in building for the Egyptians, There are all kinds of different charosets, some mostly fruit, others soupier, others more of a paste. Kind of Ashkenazie standard is apples and walnuts chopped together with wine, based on what was easily available in Northern Europe in early Spring. My father's way is one apple, lots of pecans, cinnamon and sweet concord grape wine, chopped slowly, with his big knife, adding more wine and cinnamon, bit by bit, so it gets cut right into the apples and pecans as they get minced. Then they're put in a container and covered with wine, in the fridge for a few days, with the occaisional stir, adding more wine as needed, as it's absorbed. Unbelieveably good! I can come close using a spring driven manual nut chopper, but nothing is like my father's big knife. I make an avocado charoset for my two cousins with nut allergies (eaten by all, since it's good), and a date and nut based one I learned here for variety. The blessings over the matzah are the standard one for bread (for bringing the grain from the earth) and one for the commandment to eat matzah. After that, we put bitter herb (the horseradish) symbolizing bondage and toil, on a bit of matzah, mellowed by the sweetness of the charoset added to it, and say the blessing for the commandment to eat bitter herbs. Then there’s the Hillel sandwich which used to be a bit of lamb and a slice of horseradish between pieces of matzah (no, the earl of Sandwich was known for what he’d eat while gambling, but was hardly the first!), but since an interpretation in the 16th century of the common era said that eating lamb was a temple (the actual one in Jerusalem) thing, there's no lamb. It's one of the steps of the modern Seder, and some go just horseradish and a ”Whoa!”, which my family have always done, but there's nothing holy about horseradish. We have at keast two kinds of bitter herbs on the Seder plate, which might include kale, and popularly romaine, though since the lettuce blight and rise in production and consumption of romaine, it's just not that bitter anymore. Many people prefer a bit of bitter veg for this, understandably! Beesneeds, you have a great memory for what you experienced. Following the really horrible false propoganda demonizing Jews, especially in Europe, we have a tradition to invite outsiders to Seder, to share the normal reality with them. How fun it must have been for those guys sharing with you and your sister!