What would a Jewish holiday be without food? Luckily, we don’t have to answer that. We’ve got plenty of delicious Hanukkah recipes to fill you up on every night of Hanukkah. And since Hanukkah is eight (week)days away, we thought we’d share one a day right here on the blog. First up: Rhea Yablon Kennedy’s recipe for Hanukkah cupcakes! Below is the recipe for jelly-filled cupcakes, and be sure to click here to get recipes for lemon cupcakes and deep-fried chocolate cupcakes, too.
Jelly-Filled “Sufganiyot” Cupcakes
Makes 12 cupcakes.
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup coconut oil (or other oil suitable for baking)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup milk–dairy milk or a nut, rice, or soy milk all work fine
1 teaspoon lemon zest
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
½ cup jam or jelly of your choice
1 batch buttercream frosting, with ¼ cup cocoa powder added if desired.
Preheat oven to 350 F. Outfit a muffin tin with cupcake liners.
In a medium bowl, sift or whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.
In another medium bowl, beat eggs. Then add sugar, oil, vanilla, lemon zest, and lemon juice. Whisk together, then mix in the milk.
Gradually add flour mixture to the liquid mixture, stirring as you go.
There are two ways to get the jelly or jam filling into your cupcakes. One is to add it at this point, before you bake the cakes, and the other is to cut a hole into each cupcake after baking, fill with jam, and then close the hole. The first method is faster and perfectly tasty, but with the second method, the cupcakes look more attractive when sliced or bitten into.
If you’re planning to fill the cupcakes before you bake them, fill the liners with batter about 1/3 of the way. Add a level teaspoon-sized dollop of jam or jelly in the center of the batter. Add more batter so the liners are ¾ of the way full.
If you’re planning to hollow out the cakes after baking, go ahead and fill the cups ¾ full in one step.
Either way, bake for 20 minutes or until the tops bounce back when touched, and a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean.
To cut out the center: Remove cupcakes from tin and allow to cool until they are comfortable to handle. Using a paring knife, cut out a section about 1 inch in diameter, starting at the top of each cupcake and going down about ¾ of its depth. Slice out the section, which will look like a cork-shaped piece of cake, and fill most of the hole with jelly. Cut off part of the “cork” and place it back in the cupcake (check out a picture of what this will look like here).
Frost cupcakes with buttercream.
Buttercream Frosting
2 Tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1 ½ to 2 cups powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons milk–dairy milk or a nut, rice, or soy milk all work fine
Cream butter and about half of the powdered sugar. Gradually add milk and the rest of the powdered sugar, stirring well until smooth and spreadable.
