Tasty Tuesdays

Lemon Drops

My mom-in-law has just arrived back from holidaying on the Garden Route with the gift of many lemons and oranges, as well as the most delicious jar of lemon curd. My husband’s desire for something baked and sweet has inspired me to make some ‘lemon drop’ cupcakes. I found a lovely recipe on the website, The Joy of Baking and used this for the basic cupcake. I actually used a measuring spoon to ‘hollow’ out a space for the surprise ‘lemon drop’ and filled this with lemon curd. I adapted the icing, opting to rather use a cream cheese and icing sugar topping instead.

Ingredients – makes 12 cupcakes:

1/2 cup butter

2/3 cup granulated white sugar

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Zest of 1 large lemon (outer yellow skin)

1 1/2 cups cake flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup Milk

Lemon Curd (if you are daring you can make this yourself!)

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius and line a muffin pan with paper cupcake liners
In the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy
Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed
Beat in the vanilla extract and lemon zest
In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt
With the mixer on low speed, add half of the flour, all of the milk and the rest of the flour. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed
Fill the paper liners with batter
Bake for about 18 – 20 minutes or until nicely browned and a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean
Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool
Once the cupcakes have cooled completely, cut a deep hole in the center of each cupcake, using a melon baller or the end of a large pastry tip
Fill each hole with a heaped teaspoon of lemon curd