Dvora's cupcake bakery

Another week gone by. The summer is (literally) melting away. Okay, the assessment is a bit premature, but time does just slide by in the summer. The rest of last week was a good one. On Tuesday I delivered my cupcake order to Modiin.

Two dozen vanilla cupcakes, frosted (1/2 chocolate, 1/2 vanilla) with sprinkles. The happy customer forwarded pictures of the party, so I was very pleased. And I will say, those are some yummy cupcakes. We can't get suitable cupcake boxes here for more than one cake at a time, so we cleverly constructed our own, MacGyver style. Necessity is the mother of invention. Now if I could only find a way to make better sprinkles. I miss American colored jimmies. If any US reader wants to bring some here, you would be my hero, as well as the recipient of some samples!

The remainder of the week was pretty quiet. We had company for Shabbat dinner, a new family to the yishuv. We had a nice time - more lively than our usual Friday nights. On Shabbat, the a/c in shul was broken again. This time they knew in advance, and in fact, warned everyone that the repair could only be made after Shabbat. The main minyan was very quiet as a result; many people went to the earlier minyan in the downstairs hall, where the air was working. Ironically, the davening upstairs was excellent. Let's hope that lots of people head for the 8 am again next week! In the end, one half of the shul had working air conditioning. Let's just say that is the shul was a ship, we would have capsized from the uneven weight distribution. It was definitely reminiscent of teenagers trying to pull a prank on an airplane.

We were also out for seuda shlishit at our neighbors Ari and Debbie. Ari's cousin is an OLD friend of David's - from elementary school! - and was visiting with his family. It was nice to catch up, and Debbie made an unbelievable amount of food! Yum.

This week's cookie flavors were chosen by my friend Caryn, who was celebrating her birthday by treating her hashkama minyan kiddush chevra with cookies.

Her flavor choices were as follows: molasses cream sandwiches, orange-cranberry white chocolate cookies, penaut butter bites, sugar cookie ganache sandwiches, alfajores, and kicked up chocolate chip cookies. In truth, while everything was yummy, the chocolate chip cookies were not quite as kicked up (with cinnamon, cayenne, and black pepper) as they should have been. Didn't leave enough heat in the back of your throat. So I am making another attempt today to get the proportions worked out properly, and will try to get Caryn to be my taste-tester. And if not her, then I am sure her daughter Mira will not protest taking over.

Tonight we hope to treat the kids to New Deli, so hurray, no cooking tonight! David won a discount voucher in an online auction, so we are going to redeem it - how cool. Just FYI: it's not the cooking I mind, since I actually love to cook, which may not come as a surprise to anyone who knows me well enough to be reading this, it's just the heat and the cleanup.

Anyway, have a wonderful week. I will be back when there is something interesting to say!

Dvora