Ever since going strawberry picking, I have been on a strawberry craze. And what goes better with a sweet strawberry than a tart lemon! For this combo, I used my lemon loaf recipe to make the cupcake batter then topped it with a classic buttercream frosting flavoured with freeze dried strawberries. Yummy!
Note: This recipe makes 6 cupcakes as I am usually only baking for my hubby & me but it can easily be doubled or even quadrupled if baking for a crowd!
Lemon Loaf Cupcakes:
Ingredients:
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp baking soda & powder & salt
1/4 cup canola oil
Juice and zest from 1/2 a lemon
2 eggs
Directions:
1. Combine dry ingredients
2. Mix in oil, juice, eggs & zest
3. Distribute among 6 cupcake liners
4. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.
Strawberry buttercream:
Ingredients:
1/4 cup softened butter
1+ cup(s) powdered sugar
2 tbsp heavy cream
1/4 cup freeze dried strawberries
Directions:
1. Chop strawberries in magic bullet, blender or food processor until they are a fine powder.
2. Mix butter, powdered sugar and cream together, adding more sugar until the icing reaches the desired sweetness & consistency.
3. Fold in strawberry powder
Now for the hardest part! Wait for the cupcakes to cool then pipe or spread icing on top. The waiting is the definitely not easy, our cupcakes barely made it out of the oven before they were in our plates dripping with melting strawberry butter cream.
