DIY: Love bug challah rolls
Celebrate love and Shabbat with “love bug” challah rolls
Hey little love bug! Will you be my challah-tine?
We’re feeling a lot of love in our home this week as we get ready to celebrate Valentine’s Day! So for this Shabbat, we’re making love bug challahs with our own little love bugs!
One of my favorite ways to celebrate a holiday is to make a special themed challah! Last year, we made challah heart pops (little heart-shaped cakes on a lollipop stick) for Valentine’s Day and Tu B’Av (the Jewish Day of Love celebrated in Summer), and this year, it’s all about cute love bugs! These are so fun to make with your own little sweeties. In Hebrew, “sweetie” is pronounced “moh-tek,” which comes from the word matok or sweet!
These love bugs are extra-easy too since we used store-bought frozen bread dough rolls, and their perfect little shape comes from baking them in a muffin tin! After they come out of the oven and cool off, it’s fun to place all the icings and decorations on a kitchen table as an “invitation to create” for a wonderful Valentine’s Day activity! So let’s get ready to celebrate a day of love and Shabbat with some little love bug challah rolls!
Love Bug Challah Rolls
Here’s what you’ll need for a dozen love bugs:
12 frozen bread dough rolls (we used Rhodes Yeast Dinner Rolls)
Egg mixed with 1 TBS of water
Icing and toppings
1/2 cup confectioners sugar mixed with 1 TBS of milk or water
Pink or red natural food colors
Candy eyes
Red and pink sprinkles
Fresh strawberry heart sprinkles (optional)
Here’s how we made them:
1. Take 12 rolls from the package and place them on a plate. Spray a piece of plastic wrap with cooking spray oil and cover the dough until they become pliable, about 30 - 45 minutes, depending on the temperature of your kitchen.
2. When they’re soft, cut the dough as shown below - one cut directly across the dough becomes the head, and the second cut in the middle becomes the two wings.
3. Place the three pieces as shown below in an oil-sprayed muffin tin and repeat 11 times! Cover your muffin tin with plastic wrap that has been sprayed with oil and allow the dough to rise for another 2 - 3 hours or so, until it doubles in size.
4. While you’re waiting for the dough to rise, make your icing by mixing powdered sugar and milk. You can divide the mixture into additional small bowls and add a sprinkle of natural food coloring to make more colors.
Another fun activity to do while your dough puffs up is to make “strawberry heart sprinkles” to top the love bugs. We make them by thinly slicing strawberries and punching the slices with a very tiny cookie cutter. This is a wonderful activity for littles for fine motor skill development too (and they taste yummy too)!
5. After the dough has doubled in size, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Take the egg wash mixture and brush it on top of the dough, and bake for about 15 minutes until golden.
Remember to spray your muffin tin so the love bugs pop out easily.
4. When the love bugs have cooled completely, it’s time to decorate with icing, candy eyes, candy sprinkles and strawberry heart sprinkles!
And that’s it! Little love bug challah rolls. They all seem to have their own personality, which is super cute too!
If you’d like, you can say a blessing before eating your love bug challah. In Judaism, there are blessings you can say for almost every moment: when you see a rainbow, when you see something beautiful in nature or when you eat food - like love bug challah!
Ba-Ruch A-tah A-do-noi, Elo-hai-nu Me-lech Ha-o-lam, Ha-motzi Leh-chem Min Ha-aretz.
If you’re looking for other sweet ways to celebrate a day of love with littles, be sure to check out these other DIYs and activities:
Felt shluffy baby for sweet dreams all month long
We have a complete Round-up of all our Shabbat activities too, and for more fun with bugs (we really do love bugs - haha) visit our no sew bug plushie, ant crowns (so fun for a picnic), mini garden and butterfly kindness rocks complete with a little habitat!
How are you celebrating Valentine’s Day? Let us know in the comments, and let us know if you make love bug challah rolls!
Wishing you and all your love bugs lots of love!
~Jennifer
More ways to celebrate love with littles!
