Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Curd Filling

Good afternoon!

Today my father requested some nice pretty cupcakes in order to give to some of the people at work as a thank you treat, Mum said I should make vanilla but I am so over vanilla, I wanted to make something different I could share with you on here. So I went through all my loose recipes that need to be copied into my book and I found a lemon cupcake recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery. I have done this one before but I think this time I will cover the tops with nice bright daisies instead of my stock standard rose. These are extra delicious because when you bite in to them a stream of lemon curd flows from the center and onto your taste buds causing a delightful taste sensation.

(You will find out later that I gave up on the daisies haha)


So to get started I made the lemon curd this morning. It is pretty easy. All you need is:

Lemon Curd:
The rind and juice of two large lemons
1 cup sugar
100g butter
2 eggs, beaten

 So first zest the two lemons - I didn't really here since my lemons were ugly and I didn't want black bits in the nice smooth yellow.

 Next I recommend squeezing the lemons over your bowl through a sieve - so it catches all the pips and bits of pulp you don't want.


Next add the cup of white sugar to the bowl and place over a double boiler making sure the water does not touch the bottom of the bowl.



 Now stir to encourage the dissolving of that sugar.

 Next you are going to want to cube your 100g of butter (to increase the surface area for melting) and add it to your juice and sugar mix.

 One must always have a cup of tea on hand.


When the butter has totally melted and everything dissolved you are going to want to grab two eggs . . .


 In a separate bowl whisk the eggs up to break up the yolk . . .

  . . . like this.
 Start stirring the butter, juice and sugar mix and slowly pour in the eggs, make sure you don't stop beating! Otherwise the eggs will scramble.

 Keep stirring for 20-30 minutes until the mixture thickens quite a bit.


See how thick that looks?

 Quality control of course.

 Next, to get rid of the few bits of egg that didn't quite mix and cooked into white blobs, strain the curd through a sieve.



 And there you go, a nice jars worth of lemon curd. Just pop this in the fridge after leaving to cool to room temperature on the bench.


Now for the cupcakes.
 You will need those items above and:

Lemon Cupcakes (from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook)
120g plain flour
150g caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons grated lemon zest
40g unsalted butter (room temperature)
120ml milk
1 egg
(I also added a squeeze of lemon juice for extra lemony ness).

Preheat your oven to bake at 170 degrees C.

Beat the butter and sugar together to a sandy consistency.

 Sieve in the flour, baking powder and zest and beat some more to reach an even sandier consistency.


 Next add the egg milk and beat until smooth.


 A squeeze of lemon for good luck.

 Next line a 12 pan muffin tray with patty cases of your choice.

 Spoon in the mixture until the case is 2/3 full.

 Now pop these in the oven for 16 minutes at 170 degrees or until golden and springy.

 Chris pouncing on the left over scraps of batter on the beaters and in the bowl.

 16 minutes later and they look beautiful!

 Can you tell our oven is hotter at the back?


 Now I popped on a 40-something writing tip on my piping bag, filled my piping back with a spoonful of the lemon curd and then inserted the tip into the cupcake and squeezed, filling the cake with curd.


 Make you you push the tip all the way down.


 Now put your left over curd in a clean jar to store in the fridge, ready for your toast in the morning.

Now for the icing:

I just used a normal butter cream icing but added another squeeze of lemon and a couple of teaspoons of the curd in with it. I was going to make daisies but they weren't working for me today :( I was using a 104 petal tip to make the petals but no luck. I think my icing was the wrong consistency. That or my tip was too big. Anyway I first covered them with icing to make a good base for the daisies.



 My first attempt

 That one isn't too bad, it's just when I covered the whole cake it looked really weird and mono-tone. I think I need to get a couple of bags and tips and make shades of yellow. Hmm aren't daisies white? haha my bad.


 So resentfully I resorted back to roses. Bleh I really wanted cute flowers.


Hmm the back ones look messy. Today was not my day for piping. I may or may not have thrown a tantrum over them resulting in a few of them ending up upside down . . .

So here they are, lemon cupcakes with lemon curd filling. We could only fit 11 in the box so I gave the 12th to Chris and he rated them a "really good" out of ten. Shot Chris.

Anyway I am about to post up what we made for dinner tonight as part of my cheap cooking special so check that out too, corn fritters, nom nom.

See you later alligators!