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.

After the cupcakes are baked and cooled you take a butter knife and cut a circle in the middle of the cake and pop it out. I found it helpful to put six on a plate and always put the little cupcake cork to the left so I knew what cork went with what cupcake. I then scooped in about a teaspoon of it my own lemon curd.

Finally to the butter cream! The crowning glory of any cupcake, and also a horrible thing out to destroy my well-being. It started out so innocent, I took a basic butter cream recipe and added the lemon zest to hopefully make it taste like lemons

Lemon Butter Cream

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 cup milk

the other half of my vanilla bean

juice and zest of 1 lemon

Later I added:

 2 tsp corn starch

1/4 cup whole milk- heated together

Cream together butter and sugar, add milk, vanilla, and lemon and mix until light and fluffy….In theory.

In real life it separated! Slimy, and then chunky, and then
both of these combined. I spent three hours trying to fix this mess! Even Googling how to fix a broken butter cream. Steam baths, ice baths, in the freezer, out on the counter. I prayed over frosting! I have never prayed for frosting! Right when I was about to throw it away, I decided on a whim I would add about 2 tsp. of corn starch made with about 1/4 cup of milk. I cooked it until thick and poured it in. It was going to get thrown out anyway, and so I figured why not? But it worked! Right before my eyes it transformed into something light and fluffy and wonderful! I jumped up and down with joy, clapped my hands and piped it onto the cupcakes feeling like a champion.

At the end of the day these cupcakes did not look like something a professional would make, and I'm not opening up a bake shop for my famous butter cream frosting, but I enjoyed watching my family eat the cupcakes that I made from scratch, and took pride in the job I did knowing that it was a little bit of a challenge to get there.