Last weekend, I had my first glass of lemonade from a lemonade stand of the season. Don’t you love kids with their lemonade stands? Such cute little entrepreneurs. It’s one of my personal life rules to never pass one by without buying a glass. It was, of course, the powdered stuff your mom probably made you. Mine did! No fancy organic fresh squeezed lemons infused with rosemary lemonade on my block. I love that flavor. It makes great warm sidewalk lemonade. It also makes great buttercream frosting for cupcakes.
This cupcake recipe is a great standard cupcake recipe. It also makes a great cake. It has a classic yellow cake flavor that pairs well with just about everything. I fill my cupcake tins to 1/2 full, instead of 3/4. This will give you more than 2 dozen cupcakes. I made 29 from this batch. I like my cupcakes to not rise too much over the tops of the pans. It also gives you the extra cupcake if you have kids and are sending the cupcakes to school. The schools should really think these things through when they make a 25 kids classroom size. Plus, if you want to eat one (or three) no-one’s the wiser. But you can fill them 3/4 full to make 2 dozen. Just give them a little more time in the oven.
A couple of tips about eggs: Unless a recipe calls for your eggs to be cold, you should bring them to room temperature at the same time as your butter. You’ll get better results in your baking.
Also, crack your egg into a measuring cup and then pour it into your mixer. You’ll never have to try to fish eggshells out of your batter this way.
ingredients for cupcakes:
- 2 & 3/4 c. (330 g.) all purpose flour
- 1 & 3/4 c. sugar
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 4 eggs, at room temperature
- 1 c. whole milk
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350°. Line 2 cupcake pans with cupcake liners. Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and set aside. Beat softened butter in an electric stand mixer for 2 minutes. Slowly add sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until well combined each time. Add flour in 3 parts, alternating with 1/2 c. milk and 1 tsp. vanilla (flour, milk and vanilla, flour, milk and vanilla, flour). Fill cupcake tins half full.
Bake for about 20 minutes, until the tops are lightly brown and a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Cool in the tins for 5 minutes, then cool completely on a wire rack.
ingredients for pink lemonade frosting:
- 4 sticks (2 cups) butter, softened to room temperature
- 6 c. confectioner’s sugar
- 1 c. pink lemonade concentrate, thawed
- red food coloring (optional)
Put butter into an electric stand mixer and beat on medium speed until light and smooth. Add confectioner’s sugar slowly, let sugar be fully incorporated before adding more. Once all sugar is added, beat an additional 3 minutes. Slowly pour in pink lemonade concentrate. Add food coloring (I used 4 drops). The lemonade flavor is well balanced with the buttercream. If you want them to be more intense, add a tbl. of lemon juice or lemon extract.
Put frosting in a pastry bag fitted with a jumbo round tip. Hold tip perpendicular to cupcake, just above surface. Squeeze frosting out of bag while holding bag still to make a circle. Repeat on top of frosting to make a second, smaller circle on top. Add nonpareils while frosting is still wet.
