More Crazy Cupcakes and Rushashonah

For those of you who follow the food section in the Washington Post (one of my favorite things to read) you will discover that their writers are also on a quest to find the perfect cupcake over a six week period of 'Cupcake Wars' and waddayaknow their first week of the wars they wrote about a showdown of CakeLove versus Sticky Fingers (sounds like a WWF wrestling match-cheesy-or in this case sweet-names and all). Annnddd hodamn "Count us among all those who complain that despite Brown's fame, CakeLove's cupcakes are too dry. Neither cake nor frosting had enough flavor, and the frosting was generally stingy." Am I right or am I right? The dryness is the problem here. Apparently all of Sticky fingers' cupcakes are vegan, as are all of their other baked goods. The Washington Post reviewer, however,, gave this one another low mark due to dryness and general overall untastiness. I guess the t-shirts for the store is right-make CakeLove not War. This was no WWF wrestling match.

OK-2nd week. Buzz vs Pastrise by Randolph. Buzz sounds haldway promising since they said that they had a mixed bag of cupcakes where some were fusfficiently moist but others were a dissapointment. Randolph=stale flavors.

3rd week- Baked & Wired vs Lavender Moon Cupcakery. Finally a good one! B&W recieved some rave reviews about a mosit peanutbutter snickers like cupcake. (1052 Thomas Jefferson St., Georgetown) I MUST go. The LMC review just confused me. It just sounded like the tasters were not adventurous enough to appreciate. Pshaw.

And now we've gotten to the last week-week 4. Just Cakes vs Couture Cupcakes. I so wanted to visit Just Cakes when I went to visit Justin in Bethesda during his lunch break but it had taken so much tiem to find a parking spot with so little pocket change for meters that we ran out of time. Sadly enough, they scored quite low and were described with words like, dry, crumbly and stale. Perhaps its a good thing we didn't stop in. Couture cupcakes sounded mediocre, getting what sounded like a mized review. Perhaps worth a try.

Anywho, this week is Rushashonah so I went home last night to celebrate this Jewish holiday with my family. There are only three times a year my mom cooks-Rushashonah, Yom Kippur and Passover. Every other day of the year its frozen tv dinners or something from a bag/box. Upon arriving home it was decided that I should help prepare everything that was left because I am the 'cook' of the family. My mom let me make her famous kugel recipe which, I think, is the best kugel recipe around-and let me tell you, I have tried a lot of different kinds of kugel over the years. For those of you who don't knwo what kugel is its basically like a sweet, cinnamony bread pudding that is made with noodles. A great Jewish tradition.

Dairy Kugel Recipe

1/2 cup sugar
8 oz cream cheese
8 oz egg noodles
4 eggs
1 cup of milk
1 1/2 cups of raisins
cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350. Boil the noodles in a pot of water. Cream together the cream cheese and sugar in a large bown. Add the eggs and the milk. Add the noodles and raisins to the mixture. Mix ingredients together until well combined. Pour the mixture into a casserole dish. Sprinkle a genrous amount on top. Let the kugel bake in the over for approximately one hour or until firm.