Pink Lemonade Miniature Cupcukes

It was First Friday Around the Cookie Jar again, a monthly occurrence in the Plan II office on campus, though last time my peers proved inadequate and shamed themselves by not showing up or empty handed! This week our theme was Spring Break, since all the students are buzzing about it.

I don't normally use cookbooks or recipes but this time I borrowed my roommate's Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. The simplest, and quite possibly smallest, recipe I've ever used can be found on page 174 and it is aptly called "Busy-Day Cake". I dressed the recipe up with the zest of a lemon and some pink lemonade icing and cute little lemon heads. Although the seemingly lemon of a cookbook proved fruitful in the end, and although life did not hand me lemons, I had to run to the store for lemons, butter, milk and eggs, I was able to make some damn fine lemonade (cupcakes).




Cake: makes 1 1/2 dozen MINIATURE cupcakes/ this recipe should make 6-10 normal sized
1 1/3 cups flour
2/3 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2/3 cup milk
1/4 cup unsalted butter (softened)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
zest of one whole lemon
yellow food colouring (optional)
Icing:
1/4 cup unsalted butter (softened)
3 tbs shortening (if you would rather exclude this ingredient just substitute more butter or some other solid oil like coconut!)
juice of one lemon
1-2 cups powdered sugar
red food colouring (optional)

Depending on how big/juicy the lemon is the amount of sugar will vary.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Mix sugar, butter, vanilla, zest till creamy. Slowly add egg and milk. In increments, add flour and baking powder till complete mixed. Add desired amount of yellow food colouring. I really wanted people to know these were LEMON cupcakes so the colouring was a necessity.

Pour consistent amounts of batter into baking cups (about 1/3 full) bake for 5-12 minutes. Stay close to the oven, these little lemonades don't take long to cook.

While the lemon babies are cooling mix all icing ingredients together until desired consistency, I was trying for lemonade-butter cream. I piped out little swirls of pink lemonade icing with a ziploc baggie snipped at one end and topped each little gout with a lemon head.



Zesty, Indeed!