Butterflies
Dot Frank first found this recipe in a newspaper under the name Miami Sweet Rolls. The other women of the sisterhood recognized them immediately as Butterflies, a yeasted cookie with a light, airy tex...
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Rugelach, Cheesecake, and Butterflies: The Sisterhood Holiday Bake Sale
The women at Temple B’Nai Israel have been baking kosher goods for more than fifty years.
When I arrive at one of the baking days for the Sisterhood of Temple B’nai Israel, Dot Frank is just packing up the butterflies, crescents of delicate cookies thickly dusted with powdered sugar. At quick math, there are 480 butterflies to be packed, and you get the idea that Dot Frank has overseen each one.
“This is my baby,” she says. “I found the recipe somewhere, and they were called Miami Sweet Rolls. I came down to the kitchen with a batch of them while the girls were working and the ones from up north said, “Butterflies! Who made butterflies?”
She gives me one to taste. It’s a pastry with all the usual challenges of powdered sugar-coated pastries—namely the lungful of airborne powdered sugar—but in this case, paired with some kind of lightness that seems to dissolve in your mouth. There are nuts in there, sure. Somewhere. But also the taste of things you can’t buy around here in grocery stores or bakeries, things too fragile, too fussy, too homemade to be replicated for retail.
Which is how, actually, the annual Sisterhood Holiday Bake Sale began, out of a need for traditional Jewish foods not readily available in the Upstate. “When we started,” Dot says, “you couldn’t find a whole cheesecake in Spartanburg.”
Dot has been part of the Bake Sale since the beginning: fifty-one years of rugelach, cheesecake, strudel and butterflies. But she grew up in a different kind of kitchen altogether, between Greenville and Spartanburg, the oldest child of 8, cooking for her household from an early age. “The kitchen is not foreign to me,” she says. “You had to make a lot of food to feed a family of ten.”
She comes by her love of baking from her mother, whose specialty was old-fashioned three-layer cakes. Dot remembers she’d make five different kinds for the holidays: raisin, chocolate, fresh coconut where all the kids had to grate the coconut for her. There is something about effort that inspires lasting affection. “I married into this religion,” she says. “And I loved all the Jewish foods more than my husband.”
Walking back toward the kitchen, somebody sees Dot and calls out: “The general has arrived!”
Dot laughs. She’s not just getting here, but she’s definitely in charge. She’s been the chairwoman of so many bake sales, she says, but at 89 years old, she’s trying to hand things over to the next generation.
Photo 2: Cheryl August, this year’s chairperson, and Dot Frank, consult on recipe details.
Photo 3: In the kosher kitchen at Temple B’Nai, women of the sisterhood once made kosher cookies to crumble for their cheesecake crusts.
The kitchen at Temple B’nai Israel is kosher, which means it adheres to the body of laws that govern Jewish food preparation and consumption. Not traditions, but laws: about leavened and unleavened breads, shellfish and pork, dairy and meat. This comes into play when you start thinking about butter, or lard. Back when the bake sale started, the Sisterhood had to bake their own cookies to crumble for the crusts in their cheesecakes.
The cheesecakes have been here since the first bake sale. This year’s chairperson Cheryl August says the recipe comes from a longtime member of the Sisterhood, Nancy Lyon. She and Cheryl spoke the other day: “Nancy asked, are you putting the powdered sugar in the sour cream? Because for a couple of years now, people have been forgetting…” Cheryl assured her they’re back on track. As we speak, tin after tin of cheesecake is being pulled from the ovens to the countertops, where a giant bowl metal bowl of sweetened sour cream is waiting.
Marilyn Litoff introduces herself as the one who makes the challah, which is the braided, egg-rich bread traditionally for Sabbath and holidays. When I ask her how it became her specialty, she shrugs. “My husband just didn’t like commercial bread,” she says. The first year they participated in the bake sale, the Litoffs made 60 loaves in 2 days, so the challah would be fresh. “It’s different than Publix, I will say that.”
Recipes for much of what’s being baked here today are collected in A Little Bit Of This And A Little Bit Of That, the Sister- hood of Temple B’nai Israel cookbook, now in its second edition. Volunteer Barbara Mears says the recipes remind her of her grandmother’s: “Put all the ingredients in and cook it until it’s done.” She laughs. “I’m like, come on, Grandma.”
Not all of the goods at the bake sale come from the Temple kitchen. Members of the congregation contribute whatever they like from home. The bake sale has grown larger and larger each year, with more and more advance orders for the holidays, as most everything makes a lovely gift, and freezes well. The proceeds this year will go to Mobile Meals, an organization that delivers hot meals to some 1500 homebound residents of Spartanburg County every day.
Leaving, I take a wrong turn and end up in a community room with a lot of old photos on the walls, including one of Dot Frank in a long formal gown with an apron tied over it, a jar of cocktail cherries in her hand. She’s gathered with a bunch of other women in the same kitchen I’d just come from. I go back and ask her about it. She leans her shoulder into mine, looking at the picture I’ve taken of the picture with my phone. “It was right here,” she says. “Some formal occasion. I remember that dress. It was a green brocade. I loved that dress.” There’s such warmth in her voice, remembering. The women with her were all members of the Sisterhood; only one is still living. Fifty-one years is a long time to do anything.
As I’m leaving again, she calls out “Do you have your goodies?” A Ziploc of butterflies, a loaf of challah, a picture of a picture of a time gone by that’s also still going on—I do.
Temple B’nai Israel
146 Heywood Avenue
Spartanburg
864-582-2001
Sisterhood Bake Sale
November 8th
8am-3pm
Butterflies
Dot Frank first found this recipe in a newspaper under the name Miami Sweet Rolls. The other women of the sisterhood...
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