Happy Easter/Passover weekend/spring! To celebrate the arrival of warmer weather (hopefully) and spring, I decided to make Lemon cupcakes with Lemon cream cheese frosting! Something about lemon just screams spring, doesn't it? This little pillows of sunshine were a welcome treat after this long, awful, winter. Here's the recipe!
Lemon Cupcakes:
Yields 2 dozen cupcakes
3 cups cake flour*
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
8 oz (2 sticks) butter, room temp
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
Zest of 1 lemon
1 cup milk
1. Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Line 2 cupcake pans with cupcake wrappers.
2. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in medium bowl.
3. In bowl of stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar together for 5 minutes, with paddle attachment, until pale and fluffy.
4. On low, add eggs 1 at a time, mixing well in between each egg.
5. Add vanilla and lemon zest.
6. Add 1/3 of dry ingredients and mix on low, just until combined.
7. Add 1/2 of milk, and mix gently.
8. Add remaining ingredients, dry, wet, dry. Don't over mix.
9. Fill cupcake liners 2/3 full.
10. Bake for 17-19 mins, or until toothpick inserted cones out clean.
For lemon cream cheese frosting:
16 oz cream cheese, softened
4 oz butter, room temp
2 lbs powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 lemon, juice and zest
Food coloring (optional)
1. Using stand mixer with paddle, beat butter and cream cheese until smooth.
2. Add vanilla, lemon zest, and juice and mix until combined.
3. Gradually add powdered sugar, then mix until combined. Add food coloring. Scrape down sides of bowl. Mix again.
And blue!
Final step:
Once cupcakes are cool, pipe frosting in whatever way you want! Have some fun with it!
Tip: 
Put ziplock bag into a cup to fill, makes it so much easier and cleaner!
*to make cake flour: measure out the amount of flour you need in all purpose, then scoop out 2 Tablespoons for each cup and throw away/put back in bag. Then add- however many tablespoons missing - of cornstarch and sift, sift, sift!
I split the frosting up and colored each portion a different color, which gave me an assortment of cupcakes! These cupcakes were delicious, bright and citrusy!
Have a good week everyone!
P.s. I made an Instagram account for blog! @thisliittlelifeofmine
Check it out!
