Lemon Cupcakes

All three of you know this by now, but I didn't get to go to Italy. Let's leave it at that. Read more on my other blog if you're totally surprised by this.

Anyway! Last Sunday I made these oh-so-delicious lemon cupcakes. We changed the frosting to make it a lot simpler (and probably sweeter), but otherwise, it's true to Tartelette's recipe. They were so, so good. I wish it had made more than 16!

Lemon Salt Cupcakes

from Tartelette

Note: since we changed the frosting, that means we didn't use the salt either. So I'm not even including it, but you can go to her website to get it. It also was originally made to be gluten free, but I just used regular flour.

Cupcake Ingredients

1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

3 large eggs

1½ cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup buttermilk

zest and juice of one lemon

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350F and position a rack in the middle.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or in my case, just a bowl and some good old arm strength and a wooden spoon), beat the butter and sugar until smooth and airy.

3. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well in between each addition.

4. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Lower the speed of the mixer and add the flour mixture and milk alternatively to the butter/eggs mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture.

5. Add the zest and lemon juice and beat until smooth. Fill cupcake tins about 2/3 full.

6. Bake for 20 minutes until a cake tester inserted near the center comes out free of raw batter.

7. Let cool completely before frosting. (Seriously. It will melt right off. Try putting them in the freezer for a few minutes if you're in a hurry)

For the frosting, we just googled "easy quick frosting," added a little lemon juice to make it more lemony, and piped it on to the cupcakes using a snipped ziploc bag.