Lemon Cupcakes

A couple of weekends ago, I catered a wedding.  I have had so many compliments, it's going to my head.  One of the favorite items seems to be my lemon cupcakes.  Now, this is adjusted from a recipe I got on the internetz, but I made some changes.

First off, all the recipes I found had a version of either a lemon glaze or a buttercream type frosting.  No, no, no.  Do you know what I believe made mine a winner of dozens upon dozens of comments?  A lovely cream cheese frosting!  It gave them a hint of Lemon Cheesecake!

So, here is the recipe for the cupcakes followed by the specifics of the cream cheese frosting I use (the recipe if adjusted from my sister-in-law and couldn't be simpler!)

Tip before we get started: 

Make your own buttermilk.  Put 1 Tbs lemon juice into cup measurer, then add milk until it reaches 1 cup.  Let sit 5 minutes.

Sour milk works great, too - in fact I usually avoid wasting sour milk by making cakes!

LEMON CUPCAKES (WITH TIPS FOR CAKE)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (always have your butter at room temperature before you start!)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon corn starch
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon lemon zest
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs plus 3 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon flavoring
1 cup low-fat buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk flour, corn starch, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and lemon zest.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. With mixer on low, beat in eggs and yolks, one at a time. Beat in lemon juice and lemon flavoring. Alternately beat in flour mixture and buttermilk beginning and ending with flour mixture; mix just until combined.

Spoon batter into cupcake liners, 2/3 full. Bake 16 minutes. (Go out and buy a 24 gauge ice cream scoop/food scoop. I recently did this and will NEVER go without again! It saves time, mess, and makes the cupcakes come out evenly! Worthwhile investment, I promise!)

Top with cream cheese frosting.

Frosting:

8 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
1 tsp lemon flavor
About 3 cups powdered sugar

Mix cream cheese, butter, and flavoring. Add powdered sugar until it is thick enough to form peak; decorator frosting. This is more powdered sugar than a carrot cake frosting.

CAKE ADJUSTMENTS

Alternatively, boil 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, and 1/4 cup lemon juice. Thinly slice a fresh lemon. Add to boiling mixture and turn to simmer until peel is soft; about 20 minutes. Lay candied lemon around bottom of cake pan or bundt pan. Pour cake batter over top. (Save lemon sugar gel)

Cook 350 until done (15 minutes for cupcakes, 25 for bundt or cake pan).

For bundt, add powdered sugar to candied lemon juice/gel from pan just until you create a glaze. Pour over bundt/cake when cooled and serve.

Baked Beans

Pet peeve # 348
Recipe blog that post 300 pictures with text in between and bury the recipe at the bottom of the page (if they are kind enough to post the recipe that way instead of letting you pick it out of the unneccessary images and blabbering text.)

I've had requests for some recipes.  I like to pin to Pinterest anyway, but there aren't enough character for the recipe so putting them here is literally just to make it easy for me to pin my own things.  There ya go.

I did not have the foresight to get pictures of the baked beans last time I made them so maybe I'll make them again soon and add to this post.

Guys!  To follow my recipes you usually have to have a 6th sense about food.  Some measurements are estimates!

BAKED BEANS
Give yourself 12-18 hours.  Add 18 hours if you plan to soak the beans yourself.
5 cans of beans (or the equivalent should be soaked a minimum of 18 hours)

I start with 
1 can black beans
1 can dark kidney beans
1 can butter beans
From there, pick your favorites or whatever is one sale. I recommend the following (pick 2)
Anasazi
White Northern
Navy

(You can pick your favorite 5 beans, but variety helps. I'm not a fan of pinto or garbanzo, but they are perfectly acceptable!)

Put all the beans, drained and rinsed, into a crock pot (minimum 4 quart)


1/2 bottle BBQ sauce (something with hickory smoke is best)
1/4 cup mustard OR 2 Tbsp fresh ground mustard/dry mustard powder)
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
2 8 oz cans stewed tomatoes (not drained)
Bacon (if desired.  I've made it vegetarian and been perfectly happy!)
1 small can Green chili (not drained)

The following are "to taste", but I put a guess after it....
Pepper 2 Tbsp
Worcestershire 2 Tbsp
Liquid smoke 1/4 tsp
Lemon juice 1 Tbsp

Add all ingredients to beans in crock pot.  Cook on low 12-18 hours until it starts to thicken.
If you are in a rush, after 10-12 hours you can force thickening:
1/4 cup corn starch
add just enough cold water to mix the corn starch.  Add to baked beans and stir.  Give yourself an hour to 90 minutes before your event for the corn starch to take effect.