Vanilla Bean Lemon Cupcakes- and the saga of the butter cream

I am a fly by the seat of my pants kind of cook, a pinch of this, a dash of that, season to taste, readapt. I have to admit I’m a whirl wind in the kitchen. But because of this I can’t follow a recipe to save my life! This style of cooking works well for most things, but not for baking!  So when I was asked to bring dessert for my Grandmother’s Birthday my panicked mind raced through what I could make for her. I have a very short list of things bake well, and figured no one wanted Italian bread for dessert. The last time I made a cake for her, it was a spice cake out of a box that we attempted to frost while not cooled totally, and it fell apart, melted frosting, crumbled cake, and at the end of the day a “scrambled birthday cake.”  This cake had to be better than that and it was with that memory that I decided it was time to finally face my fears of the cupcake.

Now to be honest I’ve never made a cake from scratch before! So I decided I would start my journey with a search for a lemon cupcake and came across an amazing blog http://quartercupkitchen.wordpress.com/ where there was a lovely lemon cupcake that was drool worthy! I made one change using a real vanilla bean instead of vanilla extract because I wanted the specks. I also adapted the language to read the way I read recipes when I cook, but this is really still her recipe.

Lemon Cupcakes (makes 28)

3 cups unbleached flour
2 cups sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 sticks unsalted butter at room temp.
1 cup reduced fat sour cream
3 eggs plus 2 egg yolks
Scrapings of half a vanilla bean
Zest and juice from two lemons

 Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In an electric mixer combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Gently add butter, sour cream, eggs vanilla beans and lemon and mix until combined. Fill lined muffin tins half way full and bake 20-22 minutes turning once throughout.

Lemon curd- If licking the bowl is wrong, I don't want to be right!

First of all I have to report lemon curd is REALLY simple to make! I was really intimidated by it my first time around, but it's so simple you'll be amazed how quickly you say "wow that's it?"

The first recipe I made was out of a cookbook called, Let's Do Tea by Nada Lou and Verna Maire.

Mrs. Burn's Lemon Curd
Into a double boiler over simmering water:
3 beaten eggs
Grated rind of 2 large lemons and the juice
1 cup of sugar
Beat in gradually 1/2 cup real butter, softened.
Stir until thick and the curd coats the back of the stirring spoon. Store in the fridge.

This recipe is great, and simple- but it's really sweet! REALLY SWEET! and I don't know about you, but I really don't want super sweet lemon curd, I want lemony lemon curd. So I cut the sugar down to 2/3 a cup. But it still wasn't right. After making it about 5 times I've ended up with my own recipe below.

5 large eggs beaten
3 Large lemons, zested and juiced
1/3 cup of sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt (this helps bring out the flavor so you need less sugar)
1/2 cup butter cubbed and added in gradually

Cook in a double boiler (a fancy name for a bowl over a pan of boiling water) until the mixture becomes thick and coats the spoon. Store in clean jars, or tupperware in the fridge.

This was so good I have to admit that I licked the bowl  after I got all of this jarred and stored.