DIY: Graham cracker sukkah
A delicious way to build your own sukkah with graham crackers and pretzel sticks
In just a few days, we’ll be celebrating one of my favorite holidays, Sukkot! It lasts for seven days and it is the longest and happiest holiday season of the Jewish year!
Jewish people have been building sukkahs for thousands of years. Long ago, when they were farmers in Israel, they built them to live close to the land while bringing in the fall harvest. Going back even further in time, they constructed little booths as temporary shelters after being freed from slavery in Egypt and while wandering in the desert for 40 years (that’s a lot of years of sukkah building)!
Each year at Sukkot, we remember all the times the Jewish people lived in Sukkahs by building our own! I’ve shared instructions on how to make edible sukkahs in one of my earliest blog posts, and thought it would be fun to show you step- by-step photos to build your own graham cracker and pretzel stick sukkah.
It’s just so easy, and so much fun (and it’s actually a mitzvah to build one)! You only need a few ingredients. So come build a sukkah with me!
Graham Cracker Sukkah
For each graham cracker sukkah, you will need:
3 graham crackers
Melted chocolate or candy melts
Thin pretzel sticks
Pieces of dried fruit, nut, seeds
Pre-made frosting
Leafy herbs (rosemary, oregano, etc)
Here’s how to build a sukkah:
1. We’ll start with the 3 walls of our sukkah. Take one graham cracker and dip the edges in the melted chocolate…
and glue it to two other graham crackers to form three walls. It’s helpful to have a couple of glasses to support the side walls of the sukkah as the chocolate dries.
2. Once the chocolate is hardened, stand your sukkah up.
3. Take three or four pretzel sticks and dip the tips into the melted chocolate and place them on top of the graham crackers to become the roof. Leave a little space between each pretzel so at night, you can look up to see the stars in the sky!
4. After the chocolate on the pretzel dries, it’s time to decorate (a perfect activity for littles and adults alike)! We’ve had decorations of cereal and small candy in the past, but this year, our fall harvest was dried fruits, seeds and nuts.
5. With your pre-made frosting, use a pretzel stick to “glue” the dried fruit and nuts onto the sukkah. This is a good activity for littles for fine motor skills!
6. Finish your sukkah by topping the pretzel stick roof with rosemary or oregano leaves.
And that’s it! A little sukkah! Make many sukkot (plural for sukkah) to share with friends or as a table top decoration for a sukkah party.
When you’re ready to eat your sukkah, you can say a blessing if you’d like. In Judaism, there are blessings for almost everything, for waking up each morning and going to sleep each night, for doing something for the very first time (like building a sukkah), or before eating a graham cracker sukkah!
Ba-ruch A-tah A-do-noi, Elo-hai-nu Me-Lech Ha-o-lam, Bo-rai Mi-nai Me-zo-not.
How are you celebrating Sukkot this year? Let us know in the comments below, and let us know if you make a graham cracer sukkah!
For more family Sukkot activities, you can:
Bake a harvest of gourd cookies - really little buttery sugar cookie gourds!
Bring in the fall harvest with a visit to a pumpkin patch
Welcome guests into your home or Sukkah by making a “sukkah greeter” from fallen branches
Make an edible sukkah (our OG Edible Sukkah post - so cute!)
Our full Sukkot Round-up is here, including our Sukkot dessert sweet table featuring graham cracker sukkahs!
I hope this sukkot is a happy holiday for you, and I hope you love these delicious graham cracker sukkahs! Enjoy (B’tayavon)!
~Jennifer
Gourds and sukkahs go together! Learn why and how to make these adorable gourd cookies for fall here!
