Lemon Buttermilk Cupcakes with Lemon Cream

Do you see the lemon goodness?

I love it when I have an occasion to make something. Like those Lemon Buttermilk cupcakes, which I made for a teacher’s conference. Why lemons? Well, that’s what I had left over from a while ago and I finally wanted to use them. There was also some buttermilk and voilá, you have instant goodness. Although, decorating them was not so instant.

Baking can be sometimes a bit tricky, at least North American it seems. Recipes tend to ask for buttermilk and I never seem to have some at my house. Dry ingredients are so much better to keep than liquid, except milk, we always have milk. But buttermilk is one of those things: when I want to bake something and look at recipes I never have buttermilk at my house. When I actually have buttermilk it seems all my recipes does not require it. Slightly frustrating. In this instance though it worked perfectly.

The recipe comes from “125 best Cupcake recipes” by Julie Hasson:

– 1 cup flour
– 1/2 tsp baking powder
– 1/4 tsp baking soda
– salt
– 3/4 cup sugar
– 1/4 cup unsalted butter
– 2 egg whites
– 2 tsp grated lemon zest
– 1/2 tsp lemon oil or extract
– 1/3 cup buttermilk
– 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

Mix dry ingredients together and set aside. Then mix butter and sugar together, add egg white one at a time until well combined. Now add lemon zest and lemon oil and add flour mixture and buttermilk alternating. Finish with adding the lemon juice. The batter will look a bit like it flocculated a bit. Beat it well and it will go away. I think it has something to do with mixing buttermilk and lemon juice.

Spoon the batter into forms, it should make twelve though it doesn’t look like it.

Tip: Spoon every form in a first round and then in a second round so that all twelve cavities are equally filled. The dough will rise quite nicely.

Bake at 180°C in preheated oven.

Lemon Cream:

– 2/3 cup whipping cream
– 3 tbsp icing sugar
– 1 tsp lemon zest
– 1/2 cup lemon curd

This is the interesting part. You need to make lemon curd before you can make lemon cream. Yes, it is a bit work intense but it’s worth it.

Lemon Curd:

– 1/2 cup icing sugar
– 1 tsp cornstarch
– 2 tsp. finely grated lemon zest
– 1/2 cup lemon juice
– 4 egg yolks
– 6 tbsp unsalted butter

In a pot or sauce pan: whisk sugar and cornstarch together, add lemon zest and juice as well as egg yolks. Now add the butter and heat, whisking constantly otherwise it might burn. This takes about 6 min until the mixture is thick. Put it in a bowl and cool.

Now you can make the lemon cream. Mix the whipping cream with icing sugar and lemon zest until the mix is stiff. Now carefully fold in the lemon curd.

Tip: Refrigerate the mixture before decorating. It is not really a mix you can use for piping but I like that more than just slapping it on. If the mix is cold, piping will be easier.

There is a lot of lemon in this puppy but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course it depends on what people like but I didn’t hear any complaints.