Lemon Cupcakes

My mom loves lemon. So when I found a lemon cupcake with lemon cream cheese frosting cupcake recipe in Elinor Klivan’s cupcake recipe book, she was ecstatic. Everytime I got out the mixing bowl, she’d ask, “Are you going to make the lemon cupcakes now? Are you going to make them now?” Finally, I went to make them. Until I realized the recipe called for cake flour. Before now, I never realized there was a difference between regular flour and cake flour. Then again, I never made a cake without just using a premade boxed cake mix before. The good old internet cleared up that difference for me: cake flour is finer than regular flour is. I bought a box of Softasilk cake flour, found down the aisle with all the regular flour bags (obviously) and I was ready to go.

Taking into consideration, my butter problem from my last cupcake baking, I softened my butter for 20 seconds in my microwave, until it was really soft and giving in the middle. I cut it into chunks and dumped it into my mixing bowl. This time, I got that “creamy texture and pale yellow colour” almost immediately. It was beautiful, I was so proud.

My next stumbling block was zesting a lemon. I had never zested a lemon before – I didn’t even know what zesting a lemon was! So off to the internet I went again, and got some handy tips. I didn’t have a zester though, so I used a vegetable peeler in its stead. I was careful not to get the white part of the lemon, and only the yellow rind. I had to chop my zesty pieces up with a knife because they were kind of large, but other than that, it seemed to work well enough. The smell of lemon was beautiful by this point!

The rest of the recipe went smoothly, the cupcake batter smelled heavenly, and was a pretty buttery yellow colour. Nomnomnom!

Into the cupcake cups, the batter went. There was a lot of batter, so I was liberal with pouring it in.

And out came the most beautiful cupcakes I had ever made. They were a lovely yellow colour, and they had risen just enough to create the most perfectly shaped cupcakes I had ever seen. I was so excited. I put them on a wire rack to cool on the kitchen counter, and was planning on frosting them once they had fully cooled. I got a little distracted, so it was much later in the night than I had originally planned when I got around to frosting. That would have been okay…

Except…

My dog, a golden doodle, had decided that the cupcakes smelled good. Really good. Despite the fact that I had pressed them as far back onto the counter as I could, she found out she could reach most of them if she practically climbed onto the counter to get to them. When I came out to frost them, there were only four beautiful yellow cupcakes sitting on the wire rack. My dog had eaten eight lemon cupcakes, cupcake wrappers and all. She looked guilty.

So… no lemon cupcakes.

And my dog didn’t have any lasting repercussions from consuming eight lemon cupcakes. She didn’t even throw them back up, so I guess that is a sign of my better cupcake baking. My mom ate two more of them, unfrosted, and agreed with the dog, “They were delicious and very moist.”

I did manage to rescue one and ice it before my household realized it was still in the house. So I frosted it (white chocolate buttercream), and took a picture. And then I ate it. YUM!