Look no more for the per­fect Chanukah gift for your enthu­si­as­tic young chefs. Joan Nathan has updat­ed and expand­ed her clas­sic Children’s Jew­ish Hol­i­day Kitchen for a new gen­er­a­tion with a wider range of tastes and a greater inter­est in veg­etable-based dishes.

Cook­ing through A Sweet Year is an enjoy­able and live­ly way to intro­duce chil­dren to Jew­ish food and tra­di­tions. The book opens with an intro­duc­tion to kashrut and fol­lows with a sec­tion that describes nine Jew­ish hol­i­days, sug­gest­ing menus as well as a descrip­tion of the hol­i­day and the bless­ings accom­pa­ny­ing that hol­i­day. Craft activ­i­ties are a bonus: an edi­ble drei­del, a cup­cake meno­rah, a chal­lah cov­er paint­ed with home­made dyes, and oth­er sim­ple projects. Nathan’s sto­ries, which often recall her grand­par­ents and oth­er rel­a­tives, add warmth to the book and under­line the impor­tance of hol­i­day tra­di­tions and time spent togeth­er dur­ing fam­i­ly celebrations.

The book is attrac­tive­ly designed to make the recipes easy to fol­low. Down the left side of the page is a list of ingre­di­ents and all the equip­ment required for the recipe. The recipes open with a lit­tle back­ground about the dish and an occa­sion­al sto­ry. All the recipes are planned so that read­ers can cook togeth­er, with each step assigned to the appro­pri­ate cook — the child or an adult or old­er child. The more expe­ri­enced cook­ing part­ner may explain or demon­strate cer­tain steps, teach­ing kitchen skills that are the basis for a life­time of cook­ing. All the while, chil­dren and their adults will have a good time as they cre­ate meals that make the hol­i­days memorable.

This edi­tion has twen­ty-five new recipes, reflect­ing Nathan’s trav­els and her life­long inter­est in the foods of Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties through­out the world — Yemenite High Holy Day Soup accom­pa­nied by Lekoach, a Yemenite bread; Per­sian Pome­gran­ate Punch; Moroc­can Apri­cot Chick­en Tagine; and Shak­shu­ka, an egg dish from Libya, to name a few. Many of the dish­es can be served as either veg­e­tar­i­an or meat meals; beans, chick­peas, and veg­eta­bles are fre­quent ingre­di­ents. There is even a recipe for gluten-free brown­ies. In some instances, dish­es are a lit­tle sim­pli­fied and less high­ly spiced to accom­mo­date children’s tastes.

For those raised on The Children’s Jew­ish Hol­i­day Kitchen, the new edi­tion offers them and their chil­dren a chance to cook tra­di­tion­al favorites and new takes with greater vari­ety and fresh fla­vors. Pho­tographs through­out show Nathan and her grand­chil­dren at work in the kitchen enjoy­ing their cre­ations. A Sweet Year brings togeth­er Nathan’s love of fam­i­ly, her vast knowl­edge of Jew­ish food tra­di­tions and prac­tices, and her desire to pre­serve them and pass them on to the next generation.