They are incredibly simple - essentially a basic sponge recipe with some lemon zest & juice.
Here we go...
Lemon Cupcakes makes 12 large cupcakes, 24 small
ingredients
225g / 8oz butter at room temp
225g / 8oz caster sugar
225g self raising flour
3 eggs
zest of 1 lemon (if you like super-lemony, use 2!)
a squeeze of lemon juice
1) Pre-heat the oven to 180C / Gas mark 4 & line muffin trays with paper cases.
2) In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until creamy.
3) Beat in the eggs, one at a time, adding a little flour (sieved) after each addition.
4) Fold in the remaining flour & lemon zest.
6) Spoon a heaped dessertspoon of mixture into each case, being careful not to overfill to allow space for the frosting.
7) Bake in the pre-heated oven for 15 - 20mins until going ever so slightly golden around the edges.
8) Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack, ready for frosting.
Cake Count :: 800
Oh baker extraordinaire - I would like to know your thoughts on the quality of ingredients you use ie butter vs cooking marg and on using raising agents. I like to see a little domed cupcake but of course that is no good for putting icing on! What do you think?
ReplyDeleteI made these on Friday - I'm becoming quite the aficionado of your recipes!
ReplyDeleteI made a modification which I think really adds zing (although it's a bit messier).
Instead of putting any lemon juice in the mixture, make up a mixture of the juice of two lemons and some sugar (I dunno how much, some, a spoonful, two, what feels right) and, right after you take the cakes out of the oven, while they're still in the tray, spoon a tablespoonful of this mixture over the top of each one. You then need to wait for them to dry out a bit before removing them from the tray. You now have some much stickier and much lemonier cakes. You can put icing (frosting??!! when did you turn american?) on top or just leave them in sticky goodness. I used a nice simple butter icing (70g butter, 140g icing sugar creamed together, drop vanilla, spoon of milk).