Happy Spring! Strawberry Cupcakes with Lemon Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Saddened by the cupcake not looking that pretty…but they tasted wonderful!

I’ve been dreaming about that Swiss meringue buttercream since I made the Andes Mint Cupcakes!  The texture was so silky and light, like a cloud.  I knew I had to do another cupcake with it, so I did.

In my CSA produce delivery box I received both strawberries and lemons this week.  So, that became the theme for today.  I usually use all of my CSA delivery to inspire my dinners, and I rarely use it in baking.  But this just made sense.  I mean, spring is starting, today was Easter Sunday, and a strawberry and lemon cupcake will be absolutely perfect.

Also, my parents recently purchased a stand mixer.  Having never even played with one before, and as I was making cupcakes at their house today, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to try out a Swiss meringue buttercream the “easy” way.

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49er Faithful – Black Forest Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

It has finally happened – the San Francisco 49ers have prevailed and will be playing in the Super Bowl this Sunday!  My father has claimed that his children have always brought the 49ers luck.  A month after my brother was born, our boys won their first national championship.  Just 15 days after I was born, they won their second.  They have been undefeated since then in their five Super Bowl games.  I am just hoping with all hope that this Sunday they can make it six!

To celebrate, I have developed a deep, rich, and tangy cupcake to show my love for my team.  I am borrowing my all-time favorite chocolate cupcake recipe (developed for a Super Bowl party three years ago), filling it with tangy and boozey cherries, with a topping of red and gold pride in the form of a rich cream cheese frosting.  Start the cherry filling a few days ahead so the cherries can reach full re-hydration and flavor.

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Dark and Stormy: Vegan Rum & Ginger Cupcakes

cupcakes, complete and covered in rum syrup.

I have an enormous bottle of rum.  I guess it’s really not that enormous, but rum isn’t something I drink with any great frequency.  Thus, the only use this rum has seen has been in cupcakes.  Upon deciding (I really have been hitting the 19th century literature hard the last few weeks) I was well enough to bake again, I decided on rum cupcakes.  With ginger.  Some preliminary research on the subject brought me to the idea of a Dark and Stormy, which fits very well into my theory that cocktails make fine inspiration for baked goods.

(Note to the purists:  I did not buy Goslings.  I have a budget for my cupcake and drinking forays, I already have rum, and it’s a pain to get to the liquor store.)

Anyways.

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Gluten Free Cupcakes: Lemon Almond

Lemon Almond Gluten Free Cupcakes

A friend of mine who recently had a birthday has  a twin sister who is gluten-intolerant, so when the invite for the potluck party was made, it was pretty clear that I was going to make gluten-free cupcakes.

Since it is finally summer in this city, it seemed like a citrus-combo cupcake was a best-fit for the weather and a backyard barbeque.

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Earl Grey Cupcakes with Lemon and Honey Buttercream

These little beauties have been on my mind for quite a while.  They would be the perfect addition to any tea party or just a nice snack on a Sunday afternoon.  The earl grey did not come through as strongly as I had hoped, but I was delighted with the frosting!  The honey added another sweet dimension that is usually not found in a frosting; it was a more complex flavor.

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Lemon Gluten-Free Vegan Cupcakes with Lemon Blackberry Buttercream Frosting

The pink is so pink!

Okay, so, gluten-free vanilla cupcakes I suspected might be a wee bit dodgy, so I decided to doctor them up with lemon extract and lemon zest.

As it turns out, this was a really good decision, not the least because of the oddly intense yellow that the corn flour lends to the cupcakes.  Not that you can quite tell in the photo to the left, but trust me: they are quite quite yellow.

I have mixed feelings on the texture…it felt a little gritty, but that might be because I hadn’t ground the flax seeds well enough?  Unclear.

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Raspberry Lemonade Cupcakes – Hello Spring!

For Easter with my family, we originally planned on having a picnic.  My brother would make fried chicken, my mom would whip up my grandma’s macaroni salad, we’d have a jello mold, the whole deal.  Well, the weather did not cooperate.  However, we still made picnic food and ate at home!

I’ve been wanting to make raspberry lemonade cupcakes for a while, and what better time than for a picnic-themed Easter celebration!  I used lovely spring-colored liners and planned to use food dye to brighten up the frosting, but it didn’t need it – the raspberries did their job.

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Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Lemon & White Chocolate Whipped Cream

Man, the chocolate shavings are pretty.

D Clark won our 100th comment contest, and since D Clark has also made it clear for months that I need to make Lemon Chocolate Cupcakes, a la Trader Joe’s cookies that I have never had, that is what Mels and I will be working with.

Recently, while trawling other baking blogs, I ran across this recipe at Smitten Kitchen (where I also found the inspiration for the Chocolate Peanut Butter Bombs) and knew immediately what I wanted to do.

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Marbled Lemon and Chocolate Cupcakes

D. Clark, I’m really glad you requested this flavor!  It was a lot of fun to work with, and, according to my co-workers, one of my best recipes yet!  The fun was really in finding a good balance between the lemon and chocolate.  How much should there be of each?  How dark should the chocolate be to counteract the tartness of the lemon.  So, the Marbled Lemon and Chocolate Cupcakes are my response to your challenge.  I hope you enjoy the food porn pics :)

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Birthday Lemon Ricotta Cupcakes with Raspberry Compote

These are, I think, the prettiest cupcakes I have ever made.

I am not having a good punctuation day.  I have had, I think, a 50% success rate at typing the correct mark throughout the day.  I am so very glad that I finished my thesis and it sits in a sparkley grey cover in a box under my bed with all my drafts, keeping their collective typos to themselves.

Hoookay, after that grammar-neurosis interlude, I now feel comfortable talking about cupcakes.  KVH (I’m sorry that I haven’t yet thought of a clever and mildly entertaining pseudonym yet) has, as I have been led to understand, a birthday tomorrow.  I had been planning to make lemon ricotta pancakes, but cupcakes, as always, seemed like a better idea.  I decided on the raspberry compote because frosting seemed way too heavy for these cupcakes, and I was right.

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