fluffy lemon cupcakes

Lemon!!

Who doesn't love the tangy, tasty, sharp and light savour of this lovely yellow fruit? I am now in week two of the Wilton course of cake decorating and this week's commission is to bring in some pre-iced cupcakes. Having long had a craving for lemon cupcakes, I baked a batch earlier:













and hastily iced them with some fluffy, well beaten buttercream. Delish!


The recipe was great, very quick and simple - perhaps a bit too much baking powder (it asked for 1½ teaspoons), as they nearly slobbed over the edges of the cupcake papers. I got the recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hummingbird-Bakery-Cookbook-Tarek-Malouf/dp/1845978307

At the course tomorrow I'll be learning how to pipe The Rose and I hope to come back a buttercream pro (to some extent...!). In the meantime, for anyone who hasn't come across him yet, here is the inimitable Dan Lepard's Lemon Butter Cake. All I can say to you is, beat it up, bake it and savour a lemon treat that's very hard to beat...

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Lemon butter cake (Dan Lepard)

100g unsalted butter, melted
125g condensed milk
150g caster sugar
2 egg yolks, plus 1 white
125ml lemon juice, strained
Zest of three large lemons
275g superfine self-raising flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
100g icing sugar

Heat oven to 170C (same for fan assisted)/335F/gas mark 3-4. Line the bottom and sides of a 2lb loaf tin with nonstick baking parchment.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the melted butter, condensed milk, 125g of the caster sugar, egg yolks, 100ml of the lemon juice (saving the other 25ml in a cup) and two-thirds of the zest until smooth and the sugar has dissolved.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg white with the remaining 25g of sugar to a soft meringue. Sift together the flour and baking powder, beat this into the lemon mixture until smooth, then fold through the meringue quickly and evenly. Tip the mixture into the cake tin and smooth the top.

Bake for 40-45 minutes until an inserted skewer comes out clean. When cool, beat remaining lemon zest with the icing sugar and the reserved 25ml lemon juice (adding a bit of water to soften it if necessary), and slather this over the top of the cooled cake.

Well, for all those out there who may have been following the journey of my blueberry cake, here we are again!!

I have been locked out of google for months and have just cracked the secret, well hidden code :)

Sooo...having completed the PME Knightsbridge course in royal icing recently (yay! - I reeeally loved it), I will be posting lots of up to date stuff on what I'm up to cake, cookie and cupcake wise.

See you soon!!

Pfirsich-Sahne küchen

Sooooo... We're finally here then! It's taken a while, with numerous distractions of the Christmas-cake-and-lemon/lime-curd-and-marmalade-making , random gardening sessions when there's a random bit of sun in Reading, 'Ich bin aus Deutschland!' and (the best of all!) the Lindt chocolate factory visit kind of excuses. All will be revealed visually, I promise.

In the meantime, just to get my own taste buds salivating again for cake, here's an image of the glorious edibles I have been indulging in during my visit to Hameln recently...

I give you...Pfirsich-Sahne küchen (German peach cream cake)!!

Can I at this point let you know that the point of me taking this photo while ecstatically eating this most light, 'deluscious', creamy, not over sweet, pastry-yet-cake-like confection was to try and replicate it when I got home. That's my feeble excuse anyway.

And to give you a taste of the olde-worlde cake shoppe in which we were thus enthralled:

That's enough reminiscing for now, I must away to sustain myself with a slice of homemade shortbread and a cup of Kenya coffee. Not quite in the same league but I'm hoping the shortbread will be good. Tis a secret recipe - available in exchange for others of the same, of course...