Summer Solstice

I made a variety of cupcakes this weekend as I am preparing to go on vacation back home. These are Butter and Chocolate cupcakes topped with Cream Cheese Frosting.

For the Butter Cupcakes, I used the Ultimate Butter Cake recipe and I found Elle and Vire in one of the supermarkets here. Elle and Vire is an expensive French Butter which is being used in many successful commercial cupcake sellers and I tried it to see the difference with the regular Israeli butter that I am using. There is totally no difference in the taste of the baked cupcake. The only difference that I noticed is in the texture which turned out to be a little more smooth. Otherwise, it's totally the same! Oh well.





As for the chocolate cupcakes, Manny brought me some Ghirardelli chocolates from SFO. Chocolates here in Israel are abundant, from the more expensive Belgian/Swiss brands to the cheap locally produced ones. However, there are no Ghirardelli chocolates here. Manny bought me a lot of variety and for this cupcake, I used the semisweet chocolate chips. The chips are bigger than the normal chips, they're almost as big as the Hershey's kisses. The chocolate cupcakes turned out to be very moist and tasty. The kind of chocolate used really made a huge difference in the cupcakes.


I used Cream Cheese Frosting for both cupcakes. We kind of started liking the Cream Cheese Frosting because it's not too sweet and has a tangy taste. I normally use it for the Cinnamon Rolls and the Red Velvet Cake, only to realize now that they actually taste very good with chocolates. I always use Philadelphia.

The cupcakes were then topped with Frangipani sugar flowers with sugar pearls in the middle. I always get asked if the middle pieces are edible, and I always say, everything is edible - from the flowers to the dragees. The flowers are in Pink Rose and Blue with the Pink ones sprayed with pink edible mist and the Blue ones sprayed with yellow mist. I was pleasantly surprised at how the combination of the Blue flower and Yellow mist turned out to be - tropical like.

The cupcakes turned out to be very pretty with the bright colors. It reminds me of my favorite time of the year - Summer!