I whipped up these little delights for the State Attorney's Office for my favorite attorneys. One of them was leaving, so I figured I'd give her some to celebrate and help everyone else drown their sorrows because they were losing an amazing coworker!
While searching for recipes for my devil's food with whipped ganache, I saw some recipes for chocolate sour cream cupcakes and I thought sour cream would probably be an amazing component for a cupcake. These were my first batch using sour cream and my first attempt at a cream cheese frosting... they were awesome. Definitely the kind that demands a glass of milk or water to accompany it, because they were super dense and very rich. But so yummy :)
I found the recipe at http://www.dianasdesserts.com/
Here is the recipe for the cupcakes:
Lemon Sour Cream Cupcakes
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks/8 oz/226g) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1tsp. lemon extract
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 eggs
2 (8-ounce) cartons dairy sour cream
2 teaspoon finely shredded lemon peel
| Instructions: 1. Preheat the oven to 350 degree F (180 C). Line thirty 2 1/2-inch muffin cups with paper bake cups; set aside. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside. 2. In a large bowl, beat butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add granulated sugar and vanilla; beat until well mixed. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flour mixture and sour cream alternately to beaten mixture, beating on low speed after each addition just until combined. (The batter will be thick.) Stir in lemon peel. 3. Spoon about 1/4 cup of the batter into each prepared muffin cup *(See Tip Below). Bake in preheated oven about 18 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean. Cool completely on a wire rack before frsoting and topping cupcakes with lemon or orange zest (optional). I followed the advice from some of the user reviews and beat the crap out of the butter before moving on to the rest of the recipe so the cupcakes came out fluffier, but I could have probably beat it longer. I also added about 1tsp (I think, I don't remember measuring, I may have just winged it) of lemon extract (not originally in the recipe but I added it in above). In the process, I learned a valuable lesson about capping extract bottles when you're finished with them... while trying to get one of the batches of dry ingredients into the mixing bowl, I knocked over the lemon extract and it got EVERYWHERE. The kitchen smelled great, though, and luckily lemon extract is relatively cheap compared to vanilla. So now my printed recipe has some battle scars because it soaked up most of the extract. Like a nerd, I just smelled the paper but was disappointed to learn that it doesn't smell like lemon; just paper. Oh well. I topped them with some lemon cream cheese frosting for an extra kick of artery-clogging deliciousness... I can't remember where I got the recipe from (allrecipes? recipezaar? no clue...), but it's a generic recipe so I don't feel like I've ripped anyone off by not linking to their site on this one. Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting: Ingredients: 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened 1/4 cup unsalted butter 2 teaspoons lemon zest 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 5 cups confectioner's sugar Directions: Beat cream cheese, butter, lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla together until smooth and fluffy. Add confectioner's sugar in two additions. Beat until creamy. Add more icing sugar or juice as needed for easy spreading. Makes about 3 2/3 cups. I think I added just a bit of lemon extract (I actually had some left after my spill, and no, I didn't wring out my recipe paper for this) to the recipe, and I'm not sure how much lemon zest actually made it in there. I just zested until I was tired of it and used whatever I could get off of the zester (I don't even know if that's what it's called). I also didn't quite use the 5 cups of sugar. I think a 1lb box of confectioner's sugar contains about 4 1/2 cups, but it worked out fine. I wasn't piping it anyways... I think I initially tried to use the ghetto ziploc method, but gave up. I ended up just using a spoon to spread it on, and it didn't turn out bad with a little experimentation with technique. |
Being that these were specifically made as gift cupcakes, I wanted them to look a little fancy. I went to the store but couldn't find anything cute to use (I wanted little lemon drop candies or something along those lines, but no luck) so I picked up some blueberries.
I was told by my favorite cousin that they look like surprised eyes... and by a former coworker that they look like boobs :) I have very creative people in my life and somehow my cupcakes always end up looking like hilarious things. They still didn't look as fancy as I wanted, so I started brainstorming... it was kiwi season and I had a couple kiwis on hand. I busted out the paring knife and started meticulously cutting and placing bits of kiwi, and ended up with a not-too-shabby final product.
I like this artsy-style picture, and it was even taken with my antiquated iPhone 3G. I was actually up pretty late decorating them because I wanted them to be just right. They weren't what I had envisioned, but I was still confident enough to not leave them anonymously in a ding-dong-dash style at the SAO. And I also had to weasel my way through security at the court house (at least most of the bailiffs recognize me) without giving up any of them for the "I want to make sure they aren't bombs in disguise" trick that they tried to play. But I did get the guilt trip of "why didn't you bring us any?!" Here's a less flattering picture of the final product, along with some others that I took from various parts of the decorating process.
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