Edible Da’wah

So, we’re tight on money this year (every year?).

But we want to make this Ramadan/Eid a blast with beautiful and creative da’wah (outreach).

We know our actions speak WAY louder than our words, and we’ve already exhausted our vocal chords at every opportunity–describing the wonderful and colorful ethnic foods, community gatherings, and heightened worship for Muslims in this amazingly blessed month with our co-workers, neighbors, and friends of other faiths.

We need positive, kinesthetic activities that provide opportunities to celebrate and learn about Ramadan for our children at home, our local youth groups, and even charity organizations…and did I mention we’re still on a budget?

We need to promote hunger awareness, find an attractive means to explain what Islam is all about, and find some halal fun time with our girlfriends who are fasting alongside us in this joyous month.

And our wonderful Prophet asws taught us words that are reiterated by so many of the wisest Muslims in our blessed community—Tahaado, Tahabbo… “Give gifts to one another and you will love one another” (Bukhari).

So, the answer?

Make Some Edible Da’wah!

Step 1 – Consider the questions below when creating your overall theme:

- Who are you making these treats for? Coworkers?  Co-Muslims?  Neighbors?  The relationship you have with the recipients of these beautiful gifts should, in part, dictate your overall theme.   Also, who are you making these treats with?  If you’re doing this project with children, take their opinions into consideration!  Do they have a favorite theme they’d like to use?

-  What is the message you are trying you promote? Would you like to simply wish a blessed Ramadan, include a few key pearls of Islamic wisdom for your fasting siblings in faith, or explain what Islam is all about in a few words to your neighbors?  Please keep in mind that for legal reasons you should not proselytize (openly promote faith) in the workplace.  The below example I made for my co-workers and my students and I kept the message universal (world hunger) and steered well away from any religious language.

-  What tiny treat would you like to use for your crafts? Do you bake ooey-gooey should-be-world-famous brownies?  Mouthwatering fudge?  What about lemon tarts?  I used baklava because I have a great family recipe (photographed below), but anything homemade gives a very sweet impression (pun intended), although I’m sure you could get away with just buying a bunch of fresh sugar cookies at your local deli.  Also keep in mind your time concerns and budget—baking an already-prepared box of cupcake mix is much easier, cost-effective, and foolproof than making baklava from scratch!

-    What color theme would you like to use? Oh, don’t we love colors!  The best thing about these fun treats is that you can actually make them as professional—or as fun and cute—as you’d like.  A lot depends on what kinds of supplies you choose to purchase and make sure to pay attention to the details!  The below examples are more whimsical, as I work at a community college and the atmosphere is pretty laid back.

Step 2 – Gather Supplies.

Ok, so now that you’ve set a theme it’s time to get the goodies.  What you’ll need:

-    Prepared bakery food of choice

-    Colored Cellophane Wrap

-    Matching Napkins

-    Ribbon

-    Of course, scissors, hole puncher, and access to a printer

Step 3 – Design your gift tags!

I’m not much of a graphic designer myself, but if you search the web you can find many appropriate pieces of artwork that you can use to design little gift tags on your computer with a simple Ramadan Message.  Take your computer art to your local Kinko’s or print them on your home printer (I put eight to ten on a page), cut, hole-punch, and you’re almost ready to begin with the fun!

Remember to keep your theme in mind as you’re creating your template.  You can use a more ethnic theme, like the one to the bottom (image used from a screen saver found at www.imuslimz.com):

Or, you can have a little fun with color with something like this quirky design to the bottom (the Ramadan buttons were taken from www.silverenvelope.com):

You can also use photographs of flowers, nature, or even personal pictures that you have taken.  If you have kids, I recommend having them draw up Ramadan art cards and then scanning their artwork (if you can).  When you scan their work onto the computer, you can then use it as a colorful backdrop to create very personalized Ramadan tag’s for the family—and I’ve tried it…they come out looking gorgeous!

One thing to keep in mind when making your design is to always leave room for where the hole-punch will go.  In the above green design, I punched holes to tie ribbon at the bottom left hand corner, which is why it’s blank in that region of the design.  In the colorful design to the right, I simply left enough space at the top to hole punch right in the center of the corkboard above the button.

Just keep in mind that whatever your design is will basically make or break your overall theme—so if you’re going for a professional black-and-white, you may not want to find fruity pictures or images that may be beautiful but are mis-matched.

Step 4 – Get bakin’!

For this craft escapade, I made two trays of baklava: one with roughly thirty pieces and one with forty.

In all honesty, I’ve tried using our secret family recipe and trying low-fat or non-sugar (Splenda, gah!) variations of this blessing-from-Allah-of-a-sweet, but nothing does it justice.

My advice?  DON’T experiment with new creative recipes or variations of tried and true recipes at the last minute.

I went with classic ingredients and the tray you see to your left was dubbed by my diabetic-slash-former-chef father the “best ever made.”  Now, I know he’s A. Biased because I’m his daughter and B. Previously deprived of baklava for years now because of his condition, but the feedback certainly gives you warm fuzzy feelings.

So think of those warm fuzzy feelings while you bake, and good luck making a recipe of something that rocks—even if it’s those oh-so-easy-to-make-gooey-(halal)-crack brownie boxes!

Step 5 – Prepare Supplies.

This is the part where you cute squares of cellophane a little larger than the size of your napkins, like so:

Then, you cut pieces of ribbon and, if you’d like, curl them with the scissors, as displayed below.

You also prepare your little gift tags—cut, hole-punch, and thread with the ribbon:

And—one of my favorite parts—roll up your little napkins like scrolls and make sure to tie them before they unroll!  The image to the left is the little napkins, and what I found out the hard way is that most people eat their baklava, throw away the napkins assuming they’re just scrolls for décor, and then approach me asking if I have any (yes, you guessed it) napkins.

Spare yourself the heartache and tell your gift recipients right off the bat that the decorative scrolls are also functional.  Please.  You didn’t spend that dollar in the Party City clearance rack for nothing, did you?

Step 6 – Make a Demo:

I always make a demo before I get started, just to make sure I’m not missing something.  Here’s the first little before:

…And then a little after!  If you’re the kind of person who wants to make sure everything is absolutely perfect, you may want to make your demo before Step 5 so that you can make sure you’re cutting the cellophane at the right size, using the right colors, etc.

Step 7 – Portion out your sweets and begin wrapping!

The wise will heed—it’s much more time efficient to set up an assembly line type of workstation for these sweets.  This way, if you’re working in a group you can also delegate various tasks to different people and everything should go like clock-work.

Step 8 –Trouble Shooting:

Running out of ribbon?  Gift tags?  Anything is possible.  I ran out of colored cellophane and guess what I had to use (hint: look above).

…Can you find the oddball out?

The main thing to keep in mind is that these are fun and you can’t be too picky.  I wished mine had come out more uniform, more photo-worthy, more “insert-random-criticism-here.”  But the main thing is to lighten up and appreciate your work, regardless of how “perfect” it could have, would have, or should have been!

Step 9 – Lastly, enjoy your work and happy gifting!

And more colors!

The End