So, since my teacher dropped the word count of our first paper (it only has to be 600 words now), I decided that I had time to procrastinate, and my favorite way to procrastinate is baking.
I absolutely love taking a recipe that I've used before and doing something different with it. That's what I've done with these delicious little things.
First what you will need:
The Cupcakes
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp of salt
1 cube of butter (room temperature)
2/3 cup white sugar
zest from 2 lemons
2 eggs (room temperature)
1 tsp vanilla
2 TBSP oil
1/3 cup lemon juice (2 lemons)
1/2 cup milk (room temperature)
1/2 a bag of mini chocolate chips
The Frosting
2 TBSP of butter (room temperature)
3 cups of powdered sugar
3-4 mushed up strawberries (room temperature)
1/2 tsp of vanilla
It is really important to have these usually cold ingredients at room temperature. The butter whips up nice and fluffy, but if you add a cold egg or cold milk to it, the butter will harden right up and ruin the fluffiness of your batter. It takes about an hour and a half to get butter and eggs to room temperature. To speed up the process I usually cut it in cubes (more surface area). The milk doesn't take that long. I usually take out the milk and then prepare everything else and by the time I need to add it, it's warm enough.
This recipe takes a bit of preparation. First, preheat your oven to 350 F and line a cupcake tin with liners (I did mini-cupcakes, makes about 36 and it makes about 12 regular sized cupcakes). Zest both lemons and juice them. Make sure you pour the juice through a strainer so you don't accidentally get seeds or big chunks of pulp in your batter.
First, combine the dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
In a large bowl, whip up the butter and add the sugar and the lemon zest and whip until all mixed up and fluffy.
(Sorry this one is fuzzy. I was trying to take a picture and keep mixing at the same time.)
Add the eggs one at a time. Again this is important to make sure you have the eggs evenly distributed throughout the batter. Add vanilla. Add oil.
Now, this is also very important. You can't add the lemon juice and the milk at the same time. The acids in the lemon juice will curdle the milk and you don't want that with this recipe. So take the flour mixture and add about 1/3 of it to the wet ingredients. Mix it up really well. Add the lemon juice. Again, mix really well.
Add another 1/3 of the flour mixture (an original 1/3, not a 1/3 of what is left which would actually be about 1/5. YAY! Math!). Mix it well, and then add the mix. Finish it off with the last bit of the flour mixture.
Mix it really well, and make sure you scrape the sides so everything is mixed up. Add the chocolate chips with a spatula.
Scoop into your cupcake liners. For mini cupcakes, bake for about 14 minutes. For regular cupcakes, bake for about 20 minutes.
To make the frosting, take 3-4 strawberry, cut them up and mush them. This is much easier if they are room temperature.
Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and just mix away. It may take awhile to get this consistency, but be patient. Don't add more liquid! Please note that there is no food coloring in this recipe. I don't use food color if I can help it. The pink in this frosting is JUST from the strawberries!
Once your cupcakes are cool, frost them.
AND THEN EAT AND ENJOY!
