Tuesday Treats... lemon cupcakes and blackberry frosting

I'm sorry you all have to bear with me another week of either dessert either with lemon or blackberry. I really do have tons of lemons to use up, but after this week, I will change the main ingredient, I promise! Plus I have leftover blackberry jam and doesn't that sound like a lovely combination lemon cupcakes with blackberry frosting. I missed doing my usual Tuesday Treats for you lovely ladies, 

but back and ready to give you a great recipe!

First gather your ingredients for the cupcakes. This recipe calls for 24 cupcakes so feel free to half this recipe if you don't want to eat all of them in one night ;-) You need 3 sticks of butter (eck I know but the results are amazing!),  3 cups of cake flour (must be cake flour, not all purpose flour), 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, 2 cups of sugar, 5 eggs, 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, 4 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, zest from 2 lemons, 1 cup buttermilk. If you don't have buttermilk on hand, you can easily make it yourself before you start this recipe. You need one cup milk and stir in one tablespoon of lemon juice, then let the mixture stand for 5-10 minutes. It should curdle and then stir. Remember if you are making your own buttermilk that is a separate ingredient all together. You will still have to add the lemon juice as mentioned in the cupcake mixture.

Now you are ready to make the cupcake mixture! First put cupcake liner in your cupcake tin,
preheat the oven 325 degrees.

Cream the butter and sugar together and cream it for a good 4-5 minutes, which will result in a
light and fluffy mixture.

While it is mixing, in a separate bowl combine all your dry ingredients, the flour, the baking soda and powder. Then go back to your butter and sugar mixture, and with the machine running, add the eggs one at a time, give the mixture a good beating after each egg addition.

After all 5 eggs are incorporated, add the vanilla, lemon juice and zest.

Then slowly add in the dry ingredients into the wet batter alternating with the milk and completely mix all the ingredients together.

You can use an ice cream scoop to scoop the batter into your cupcake liners or fill them with a spoon until almost to the top of the liner.

Don't worry about batter spilling out, these cupcakes don't rise as much as other batters. Pop your cupcakes into the oven for a 20-25 minute bake, then take them out and let them cool completely before you frost!

For your frosting, gather your ingredients together. You need 2 sticks of butter, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, 1/3 cup of blackberry jam, 6 cups of powdered sugar, 2-3 tablespoons of milk or cream if you want a creamy texture.

If this sounds like a ton of frosting, feel free to cut the recipe in half!
 Beat the butter and vanilla together until creamy.

Then add the blackberry jam.

Add the powdered sugar 1 cup at a time, mixing well between each addition.

Then add the milk one tablespoon at a time until you reach your desired consistency. You can spread the frosting onto the cooled cupcakes or you can put the frosting in a pastry bag and decorate your cupcakes this way. 

For an extra special treat today, I decided to make candied lemons as a decoration for these cupcakes. You can stop here if you just want to eat them and enjoy!

To make candied lemons, you need 1 cup of water, 1 cup of sugar and thin slices of lemon.
You need to boil water in a medium sized saucepan, get the water to a rolling boil. The 1 cup mentioned above is not for this part of the recipe.

Remove from heat and add the lemon slices (you are doing this to soften the lemon slices). Leave the lemon slices in the water for 1 minutes then immediately pull it out and put them into an ice bath then drain.

In a skillet, add the 1 cup of water and 1 cup sugar and boil to get the sugar dissolved. 
When the water mixture is clear, reduce the heat. Add the lemon slices, one by one in a single layer. Let the lemon slices simmer for about 1 hour until the rinds are translucent.

After an hour, take the lemon slices out of the sugar mixture and let them cool on
 a parchment-lined baking sheet in a single layer.

Then add as decoration to these cupcakes.

 Then eat, enjoy and smile! I'll be back tomorrow with some more vacation photos, until
then kisses to all you lovely ladies!