Shushas Cupcakes

Picture by: Oren Cohen

Picture by: Oren Cohen

"Cupcakes are adorable and fancy. They make me happy and also more importantly the reciver happy. They are fun to bake because they are full of color and you can make them different every time. Cupcakes always give a little something back to the eye. They are also perfect for almost any occation. Who don't love a mini-cake?"

By: Shusha Biton

Cupcakes  

Ingredients (12 pieces)

125 grams of self-rising flour

125 grams of butter, softened

125 grams of casted sugar

2 eggs

2-3 tbs milk
      

Cupcake butter cream  

1 kilo of powdered sugar 

400 grams of soft butter

1 tbs milk

1 tsp of vanilla extract

Optional: You can add any flavor or color to the butter cream, choice of your own. It's also good without any extra flavor.

1. Heat the oven to 180C degrees.

2. Mix flour and butter with a mixer until you get crumbs. Add the sugar and beat in the eggs. Finally add the milk and mix until the batter is combined and creamy. 

3. Take out a cupcake tin and add the paper muffin cups. With a spoon put in the batter, approx. 3/4 in every tin. 

4. Bake for about 15 minutes until they turn golden brown. Let cool on a cooling grid. 

5. Start preparing the butter cream. Put half of the sugar in a mixer and add the soft butter, the milk and the vanilla. Beat until combined and add the rest of the sugar. Mix until fluffy. If you want to add color and flavor, do it in this fase. 

6. Put the butter cream in to a pastry bag with a nozzle of your choice. Depending on how you want your batter to look on the cupcake. Press out the butter cream on the cupcakes in a nice pattern. Decorate with something cute and eatable if you want, or serve them just like that.

Enjoy! (YUMMY)

Tip: 

•  The butter cream can keep in the fridge for three days if stored proper. Just make sure to mix it again before you use it to make it fluffy and easier to work with. 

•  If you want to find cool muffin cups or other cool baking stuff you can't find in a normal super market, check out the store Motek - Sugar Boutique on Sderot Yehudit 15 in Tel Aviv. If you are lucky you might meet Shusha, because she works there part-time.  

© 2012 Jill Schweber and Channa Waje, all rights reserved

Leikaj de Pesaj

For Pesach we don't eat chametz (anything that is leavened). So we don't eat anything good dessert wise. Instead of regular flour we substitute with matza meal, which to be quite honest doesn’t taste that good. There is of course ways to go around (like the amazing Principe Alberto Cake) but we are supposed to suffer a bit because of our ancestors that walked out of Egypt, and therefore we eat matza.
 
This is a good Pesach cake with cake meal (finely ground matza meal) and orange. This is a big batch, so if you have a lot of people coming over this is a perfect cake to make.   

Ingredients
11 eggs
1 cup cake meal
1/2 cup orange juice
Peel from one orange
1 1/4 cup of sugar
3 tbs vegetable oil (not olive oil)

Topping: icing sugar

1. Line a round pan with butter and matza meal.

2. Separate the yolks from the eggs whites. Beat the yolks with the sugar. Add the remaining ingredients (except for egg whites).
 
3. Beat the egg whites separately and then mix gently with the batter, so the air stays.

4. Place in oven for 50 minutes at 180°C. This is a big cake, so it can be put into a big round pan or two medium ones (we put a pan underneath because it sometimes leaks). If you use two medium ones, let them bake for 30 minutes instead of 50 minutes. 

Yummy!

Enjoy!