The judges have submitted their rankings and the winners for this year’s contest have been determined. This was such a wonderful competition, and I thank each and every entrant for putting their baking skills to good use and inspiring both me and the panel of judges.
When the competition was first put together, I only had enough prizes for one winner. But four generous individuals — an anonymous donor, Danya Mustafa, one of the judges, and my sister — kindly supplied SMP with an entire collection of gifts: books, trinkets from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and a range of other symbols of Palestinian identity. The submissions were fantastic and it would be irresponsible not to recognize them or the individuals who designed them.
So, without further ado, here are the winners! Congratulations to these talented individuals and to everyone who took the time to put their politics into the oven.
First Place: Hazar Alkhawaja, Hadeel Alkhawaja
Prizes: A Palestinian flag handcrafted in Gaza and a hand-stitched coin purse custom-made by Gaza students
Second Place: Zakia Ali, Maha Ahmad, Fatima Ibrahim, Salwa Barhumi, Zeenat Umar
Prizes: A keffiyeh manufactured in the Herbawi family’s factory in Al-Khalil and Ilan Pappe’s book, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”
Third Place: Amina Marwa
Prizes: An olive tree branch carved into a pencil sold exclusively in Gaza City and Ali Abunimah’s book, “One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse”
Fourth Place: Shirien D.
Prizes: A hand-stitched and fluffy key chain and a set of illustrious Palestine stickers
Fifth Place: Team @iRevolt
Prizes: Donald Neff’s book, “Fifty Years of Israel”, and a hand-stitched Palestine-themed bracelet sold in Gaza
On behalf of the judges — Nora, Nader, and Anwar — and myself, thank you again for showing us such delicious creativity. The prizes may be small but they are definitely not meaningless. Wave your flag with pride.
These were brilliant. Great job everyone!
Wow. Just wow.
Those are *beautiful*.
The winner of #2 prize is appeals to my inner engineer (ok, she’s pretty close to the surface…) and team iRevolt is also stunning – well, they all are.
Beautiful!
Thanks for hosting the competition, Sami! We had a lot of fun working on our entry and are looking forward to the next one!
I can’t get over the knafeh cupcake! hahaha so cute!
and I want to knwo how they got the cake to be the colors of the flag on the inside?!! Incredible!
Wow, these are all amazing!! What talent all these bakers have! LoL at the knafa cupcake, took me a min to realize why there there was an orange cupcake!
48Refugee, my thought (or how I would do it, if I made it!) is that each layer is a separate cake with food coloring. Then layer the 3 stripes and cup a triangle in the cakes. Cut a triangle out of red cake to fit into the 3 layered triangle. If this is not how they made it, I would love to hear how they did it!!
Amina Marwa is by far the best. Really cool Cupcakes.
gogo amina
WOW! Second place was super cool. First place was gorgeous. And the rest were amazing, as well! Great job, everyone!
FYI, I loved #1 and #2 so much, I had to pin them to my “Yum” board on Pinterest.