This has been a favorite recipe of mine for many years. The sour cream gives the cupcakes a great texture and fits in well with the tang of the lemon flavoring. I especially love the combination of lemon and raspberry, and you’ll see my suggestion for a lemon buttercream and raspberry jam topping. They shout spring!
LEMON CREAM CUPCAKES
Makes 48 small cupcakes. These are very moist and delicious but not terribly lemony. Very good with a topping of a layer of raspberry jam and lemon buttercream. The original recipe is from Taste of Home, but had a yield of only 30. By dividing up the batter to make 48 I've made the recipe yield smaller cupcakes that have room for the jam and a nice layer of buttercream.
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 2 cups sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1/8 tsp lemon oil or 1 tsp. grated zest*
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups sour cream
Instructions
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In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add lemon oil or zest and vanilla; mix well. Combine dry ingredients; add to creamed mixture alternately with sour cream (batter will be thick). Fill foil-lined muffin cups enough batter to fill about 1/3 of the muffin tin. (Yes, only 1/3. You want these to be small. And foil cupcake liners work much better than paper ones, as they are easier to peel off. A quick spritz of baking spray makes them even easier.) Bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes; remove to wire racks and cool completely.
Recipe Notes
*I keep lemon oil on hand and always use it in place of zest. It is pressed from lemon peel, so it is the substance that gives lemon zest its flavor and is extremely strong. Be very careful not to overdo this ingredient, as you can ruin a whole batch that way. If you taste the batter and feel that it's not lemony enough, add additional oil literally drop by drop. Citrus oils last forever in the fridge.
This recipe is so delicious that it’s worth going to the effort of getting an unusual ingredient. (The photo is pretty bad, I know.I should be making these again in the foreseeable future and will re-take it.)
My dear friend Cindy took a picture of the final product under less-than-optimum circumstances in the low light of the wedding reception. Thank you, Cindy! As usual I wasn’t prepared to take pictures and had left my camera in the car.
I’m not indulging in many desserts these days, but this one isn’t all that sugar-heavy, clocking in at 1 cup of sugar for the entire recipe. That’s 2 tablespoons of sugar per serving if you cut the pie into 8 slices, or 24 grams total. The goal is to keep daily added sugar consumption below 25 grams, or 100 calories. So you could have a regular-size slice and not go over your allowance for the day, as long as that’s all the added sugar you eat! Ice cream or sweetened whipped cream would be out as toppings, but unsweetened cream, whipped or unwhipped, would be fine.
Brownies, or some kind of simple bar cookie, are a great asset to have in your recipe box. You can pull them out, whip them up, and get them to the potluck or party in reasonably short order. You probably have a simple chocolate brownie recipe that you use; these two are a little off the beaten track. I’ve always had good success with them.
Here’s a shot of one of the chocolate lava cakes I made for my brother-in-law’s birthday party. I think the last time I made these was for the same occasion, two years ago. Gideon had said periodically since then that I should make them again, and my answer has always been, “I’ll make them for Ed’s birthday.” So here they are. I made some changes from the recipe I found online, and this is now a pretty standard recipe anyway. I did find it interesting that, as for a number of recipes, the innovation came about because of a mistake. Its originator, chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, apparently pulled a chocolate cake out of the oven too soon and realized that its underbaked warm center was actually an asset. Then he must have developed the individual cakes that are usual today. A full-sized version would be very messy to serve.
I’ve been serving this cheesecake for many years, having gotten the original recipe from the old Gourmet magazine. (I think.) It’s very unusual, with a flavor combination of white chocolate and ginger that’s just delicious. As with any good cheesecake it’s very rich, but that richness means that a little goes a long way. Dividing it up into muffin cups is a great portion control mechanism. If you eat only one you’ll be well within the 25-gram added-sugar limit for one day. The picture, however, is of a leftover portion baked in a small pie plate.
A number of years ago I was asked to do the rehearsal dinner for a gluten-intolerant bride. I wanted to make a dessert that she could eat, and I was told that she liked chocolate and pumpkin. Hmmm. I hadn’t ever really thought of that flavor combination, but it sounded pretty good. So I went online to see what ideas were out there, and I came up with a pumpkin-chocolate pie, basically a two-layer cheesecake baked as a pie. It had a crumb crust, which I couldn’t use, so I needed a way to make it easy to slice and eat without one. That’s how I came up with the idea of making it in muffin cups, and I called them “timbales.” Sounded pretty classy, and they were a great hit. Awhile after the dinner we were told that what the bride actually liked was raw pumpkin from the can mixed with chocolate chips! (I could have saved myself a lot of work by just serving a bowlful of that combination.) You’ll note that the picture doesn’t have the muffin liners, and that the timbales look a bit messy. That’s because I discovered at 6:15 AM that I didn’t have any liners. They are definitely easier and neater with the liners. Since I’m not making these gluten-free any more, I’ve added the chocolate-graham-cracker crust.