Mini Lemon Cupcakes

Well, last minute today we decided to have some family over for dinner and my Nonna asked for me to pick up a special cake.  Anyone who knows me knows I would much rather make the dessert than buy one that is no where near as good, so, that is what I did!

I wanted to give my new mini cupcake tins a use so I decided to go with a lemon cupcake.  It was a perfect fresh finish to our spicy jerk chicken that we grilled up on the BBQ.

For the cake I used the same vanilla cake recipe from a previous post (with the strawberry icing).  However, since the mini cupcakes are so small I halved the recipe.  To make the cake have a lemon flavour I added in some lemon zest (one lemon) and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice (about half a lemon).

The icing ingredients consisted of:

• 1/4 cup butter in 1'' cubes at room temperature
• 3 cups icing sugar
• 3 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice
• lemon zest (about one lemon) **careful not to zest the pith (the white part) as it is very bitter and will ruin the flavour of your icing.

Directions:

Using a stand mixer beat butter on low until smooth.  Add in 1 cup of icing sugar beat on low until mostly incorporated.  Add in second cup of icing sugar and lemon rind and beat again until the sugar and rind is blended nicely with the butter.  Add in the third and final cup of icing sugar and beat once again until incorporated, then add in lemon juice and beat on high until the icing is nice and smooth, about a minute.

Place into a piping bag and pipe those cupcakes!  

For a garnish I cut up thin slices of lemon and coated them in sugar,  you may need to repeat the sugar step 2-3 times as it will initially start to release its juices and the sugar will seemingly disappear.  I let them sit on a paper towel so that the juice would be soaked up.