There's Nothing Cuter Than A Cupcake!

I love a perfectly frosted cupcake. There are beautiful cakes and delicious looking pies and tarts, but nothing beats a cupcake for me.

I had the cupcake itch earlier this week and Matt suggested lemon raspberry cupcakes (his favorite combination). I really wanted to do a black forest cupcake, but I decided on the lemon/rasp. I'm a good wife like that ;).

For the decoration I wanted to do something other then just flowers, pearls or dragees. I thought it would look nice and simple to make candied lemon peel and use that for decoration.

Candied Lemon Peel

You will need:

• 3 lemons
• 2 cups water
• 2 cups sugar

Peel your lemons with a veggie peeler, make sure to not peel any of the pith (white sour part under the peel).

Meanwhile, bring your 2 cups of water to a boil. When it's reached a boil, add the lemon peels and boil for about 5 minutes, or until tender. Remove the peels and add in your 2 cups of sugar. Once it has returned to a boil, add the lemon peels back in and boil until translucent. Mine could have been cooked a little while longer maybe. Remove the peels and let dry completely before storing. I sprinkled them with some additional sugar to give them a little extra sparkle.

The syrup can be save and used as lemon simple syrup for recipes or cocktails. I grabbed an empty liqueur bottle, washed it out and funneled the syrup into it after it had cooled for a while. That night I made a lemon drop cocktail. Yum!

Source: allrecipes.com

On to the cupcakes! I just made a box recipe of lemon cupcakes. After they had cooled, I took my tip #230 and filled a pastry bag with raspberry jam. I was nervous about exploding one or two of them but thankfully that didn't happen. It was pretty easy to see the cupcake rise a little as it was filling out with the jam.

Here they are, all filled and ready to be frosted!

I used the Wilton butter cream recipe. Normally I use shortening and water, but I had some softened unsalted butter so I made one batch with butter and milk and a second with shortening and milk. I think the milk gives it a better flavor than the water, but to be honest I prefer the shortening to butter. I just whipped the two batches together at the end.

Cupcakes are just so happy to me:).

I sprinkled some Wilton white sparkling sugar on the cupcakes and then topped them each with a candied lemon peel.

"Eat Me!" 

I will edit this post later today. Matt's going to eat one before we take them to the party and I'll post a picture of it cut in half to see what the filling looks like from the inside.

Here's a picture of the cupcake cut down the center. Matt gives them 2 thumbs up.