Friday 2 April 2010

Lemon Buttercream Cupcakes

I've ignored the Hummingbird Cupcake book for a while, having had quite a few disappointments, but these lemon buttercream cupcakes turned out much better than i'd initially expected.

The recipe only uses one egg, replacing it with more milk, i'm not entirely convinced of this method and the sponge broke apart when prised from the cases. Another minor criticism is the use of plain flour instead of a combination of plain and self raising. The cupcakes didn't rise as much as usual and I prefer mine to rise into domes which makes the buttercream look more impressive. That being said, the sponge was just lemon-y enough without being overpowering.

Using plain flour and bicarb made the cupcakes pretty flat!

From experience with the Hummingbird recipe book i know that the buttercream quantities are a little mean, so i decided to double the quantity. I guess this is down to personal preference and the style in which you decorate, but I just like lashings of the stuff! The buttercream was ok, but i'd definately recommend using less butter and milk and replacing with more icing sugar, the texture was a bit too sloppy for my liking. I also prefer to use both the rind and juice in lemon buttercream (Hummingbird only used the rind) to give an extra zesty kick

Do excuse the rather garish colour of these cupcakes, the yellow food colouring from Waitrose came out somewhat brighter than i'd imagined! I also thought i'd better have some sort of nod to Easter, hence the mini egg decoration.

Finally for the scoring, a respectable 7/10.

Happy Easter Baking xxx

2 comments:

  1. Hello,



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    Thanks,



    Jude

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  2. I love the yellow icing and think these cupcakes look stunning, especially with the pink cases. I finally got around to using the Primrose Bakery book at Easter, but haven't yet posted about it.

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