Lemon Cupcakes

My goodness how time flies! The craziness that was the month of May is finally over and I'm looking forward to a future of bigger and better things. A brief itinerary of the next few weeks:

Last Monday (I know, I said future, but this is important) I started my new job at the Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch as a Resident Treatment Advisor (RTA). I'm excited for this opportunity as it gets me a lot closer to what I actually want to do (therapeutic riding/coaching para-dressage) AND I'll most likely be able to move more and more time towards the barn. Which is AWESOME. More time I get to spend with the ponies, the better. I probably won't be saying much more about my work on here from this point out, though, since most of the subject matter is highly confidential. The girls I work with are considered "high risk" for a variety of reasons and any information about them has to be kept pretty tight-lipped. They're a fun group though, and I think this is going to be an awesome opportunity.

Next Saturday I'm leaving on a train to head back HOME! To get ready for my WEDDING! I'm so excited. I can't wait to see everyone and hang out and get everything for the wedding done and make lots of pretty and delicious things with my bestest best friends.

Saturday July 2nd I'm getting MARRIED to the most amazing man I've ever met in my life. And he's starting to actually look forward to it as well, I do believe. :) I think it's taken him these 5 months for the fact that we're actually doing this to sink in.

After that, we're headed up to the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia for a honeymoon. We'll be back in North Dakota... later. At least by the 16th, since that's when I'll be going back to work. We don't have any definitive plans yet (we're such terrible procrastinators!) but I am fairly certain that it's going to be all kinds of awesomness.

That turns out to be a perfect and unintentional segue into the main point of this post: Cupcakes! I found a lemon cupcake recipe that I like! And just in time it seems!

What I love about these cupcakes probably the most is the texture. They're moist without being falling-aparty and somehow dense and airy at the same time. They're simply awesome. They have a more subtle lemon flavor, which is okay because the icings that I made are both bursting with lemony goodness! And yes, I said Icings!

But lets start off with the cake recipe, no reason to get ahead of ourselves. The tale of the icings can come later.

Lemon Cupcakes
This recipe comes from The Cupcakery. She made mini-cupcakes whereas mine are full sized, but the recipe still works great.

You will need:

• 2 sticks of butter
• 2 Cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 3 cups All-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 Cup milk (I use skim)
• 2 Tbsp lemon zest
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice

1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and continue to mix until the mixture becomes creamy.
2. In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking soda and salt.
3. Alternate adding the dry ingredients and the milk to the sugar mixture, mixing well. (I mix by hand at this point. I don't know how people mix dry ingredients with electric mixers and don't end up with flour all over the place.)
4. Add in lemon zest and lemon juice, mixing for an additional minute. It should look light and fluffy and fairly thick for cake batter.
5. Line your muffin/cupcake tin with paper liners. Fill each cup 3/4 full and bake at 325* for 17-23 minutes (20 minutes was perfect in my oven) or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. 

The first icing that I made was a lemon buttercream also from The Cupcakery, which I thought was fantastic. It was maybe a little on the runny side when piping, but set up nicely in the rosettes. It was sweet like a buttercream should be and absolutely bursting with lemon flavor.

Lemon Kissed Buttercream Frosting

• 1 stick of butter, softened (not melted)
• 2 3/4 Cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice
• Yellow food coloring (optional)

 1. Cream butter and salt together with an electric mixer
2. Add half of the powdered sugar and the milk and beat until well combined (again, I do this by hand because I don't want to try to clean powdered sugar off my ceiling)
3. Add the remainder of the powdered sugar, vanilla and lemon juice and beat until combined.
4. Continue to beat with the electric mixer (for real this time! Switch back to it!) until the icing is fluffy and forming soft peaks. Add a few drops of yellow food coloring to achieve the desired color if  you like. I always think things taste lemoney-er when they're yellow.


When The Gamer tried them, he had a lackluster reaction. He didn't dislike them, but after quite a bit of hounding, he admitted that he wasn't a big fan of lemon cupcakes.

WHAT???

He explained sheepishly that they always seemed a little too sugar for him. I looked at my cupcakes, deflated. Lemon cupcakes were really important to me. My grandfather, who passed away a few years ago, was a lemon fanatic. I wanted something simple and understated to memorialize him, and I thought a lemony dessert would be perfect. His actual favorite was lemon meringue pie (without the meringue, he'd usually scrape that off) but I don't want to try to make that. Either way, I wanted something lemony. I had resigned myself that he was just going to have to deal with not liking one of the cupcakes (since he loved the Root Beer and Apple Cinnamon ones) when I had a brilliant idea! What about the cupcakes was so sugary? The icing! The cupcakes themselves aren't overly sweet. The one thing that he loves above all other desserts is cheesecake, and in general, he's usually a fan of cream cheese frostings. I was sure I could find a good cream cheese icing to use.

After scouring the internet (i.e. visiting five or six blogs) I had yet to find a recipe for cream cheese frosting that didn't require lemon zest. Now, for one thing, I was out of lemons. I had some more lemon juice in a little lemon-shaped bottle in the fridge, but actual lemons were gone. I also have a confession to make: I suck at zesting things. Maybe it's my grater? It's one of those typical ones with four graduated sides, that looks kind of like this:

Typical grater right? Grate cheese on the one side, zest citrus like the Iron Chef on the other? Not so much. I usually just end up with a mutilated citrus and a gunky grater. I did manage to get two tablespoons worth out of two lemons (partially by taking a fork and trying to dig the bits of zest out of the crevices of my grater) but they were shot at this point. Is there a secret to zesting that I'm missing? Because whenever I see people do it on TV, it looks like the simplest thing ever. I don't know what's wrong with me.

What I DID find, however, was a recipe that used lemon curd. And zest, of course, but regardless, a new idea was planted in my head.

"Hmm," I thought "That lemon curd was awfully lemony. I think I might be able to make something up with that!"

For you see, I had bought lemon curd with the intention of trying filled cupcakes. That didn't work out quite as well as I planned. The cupcakes fell apart as you tried to eat them, and The Gamer said they seemed more like jelly donuts than cupcakes. But in the frosting! It will be perfect!

So this is my totally original Lemon Cream Cheese Icing!

Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

• 1/2 stick (4 Tbsp) butter softened
• 1 8oz. package Cream Cheese
• 3-4 Cups powdered Sugar
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 2 Tbsp lemon curd

1.  Beat the softened butter and cream cheese together with an electric mixer.
2. Add in 1 1/2 Cups powdered sugar and mix well.
3. Add the lemon juice and lemon curd and mix again.
4. Add remaining powdered sugar until you've reached your desired consistency.

This tastes like lemon cheesecake. Which means that my cupcakes now tasted like lemon cheesecakes, which means that The Gamer now loves them. Thankfully, I only had enough buttercream to frost about half of them, and the Cream Cheese got the rest. I even have a tiny bit left. No idea what to do with that.

So Hurray for success! I now have cupcake flavors decided for my wedding! And the moral of the story is that some people are buttercream people and some people are not. Thankfully, while The Gamer is not a buttercream person (which is still sad) he is at least not a whipped frosting person, because I really don't like that stuff at all. Cream Cheese and Buttercream, all the way!