Valentine's Cupcakes - Lemon Raspberry

I almost feel like I'm giving a nod to a character in the Mortal Instruments books.  If you've read, then you know what I mean! :)  But anyhow.........

I've been attempting to make new flavors.  There's no point in continuing this if it's always the same thing.  I made a Lemon Blackberry cupcake some time ago and lemon is one of my favorite flavors.  So for Valentine's Day this year, I decided to try a Lemon Raspberry.

Excuse the horrid photos - it suddenly became overcast when I wanted to get photos!  Grrrr!  

The cupcake is a light lemon vanilla cake filled with raspberry puree and topped with a dark chocolate frosting, dark chocolate drizzled on top and sugar cookie hearts that I made for the theme.

Here is the inside of the cupcake, filled with seedless raspberry puree.

And for the anti-valentine, a broken heart cookie.

I can't say it's my favorite.  Could very well be my allergies are interfering with my taste buds.  However, the lemon cake came out soooo nice and along with the chocolate was very good.  Next time I may try just folding the raspberry into the lemon cake.  Recipe and instructions below :)

Ingredients (makes 24)

1 box white cake mix

zest of 1.5 to 2 lemons

1/2 cup oil

1 cup milk or butter milk

3 eggs

1/2 tspn vanilla

1.5 cups seedless raspberry puree

Zest the lemons.  Place all ingredients in a mixing bowl with the zest and mix until well incorporated.  Fill cupcake liners and bake at 350 for 12 - 15 minutes.  Allow to cool.

Hand whisk puree.  Cut center out of cupcakes, fill with puree.

Dark Chocolate Frosting

2 dark chocolate candy bar, 7 oz

4 cups sifted confectioner's sugar

3 sticks butter, room temp

1/2 tspn vanilla

Break the candy bar up and melt.  Put butter in mixing bowl and cream.  Slowly add confectioner's sugar 1/2 cup at a time mixing on slow.  Once incorporated, mix on high for 10 seconds to give the frosting some air.  Add vanilla, mix well.  Add chocolate (reserve 1/4 cup for drizzle), mix well (scrape down sides of bowl).   Pipe onto cooled cupcakes.

Blackberry Vanilla Cupcake with Lemon Buttercream

This one was made for a friend of mine when I stated
"watch out or I'll name a cupcake after you!"

I'm still waiting for him to approve the name I gave it! So for now we'll just call it what it is.

This is a vanilla cake made with real blackberries. I chopped some of them up as well as put in whole berries. The buttercream....well I wasn't happy with it. In my quest to find a really good lemon buttercream I'm just not finding what I want. So...time to experiment a little.

Adding fresh lemon to buttercream is not working. And it's probably a citrus versus dairy thing. I wanted a light lemon flavor without it being sour or falling a part. So I took out a pack of lemon jello. Guess what? It works! It gives the buttercream a light lemon flavor AND it turns it a pale yellow. I may start doing this with other buttercreams that I want to turn color and add flavor too. Sometimes the food color liquid and paste makes it taste funny.

This is the first in 5 "Spring" cupcakes I want to make. One will have an apricot mousse! I can't wait to try that one! I'm planning a lavender one and a cherry one too! oooo maybe a cherry pie in a cupcake cupcake!!

Anywho, I will be recreating these as minis soon and shipping them Darren :)

Next Up: Girl Scout Cookies inspired cupcake "Tagalongs"

Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercreme

Doesn't that look yummy? For anyone who likes strawberries this is the cupcake bomb! Although with the recipe I don't taste a whole lot of lemon in it which is probably nice. It is slightly tart, however. I can't remember where I got this recipe from, but the buttercreme was a nightmare. No matter how much confectioner's sugar I put into the mix it would still be loose and runny. So I switched gears and pulled out a tub of vanilla buttercreme I had made last week (it turned out awesome) and added strawberry jam and some lemon juice. VIOLA! That worked. I believe from this point on I will not stray from my own buttercreme recipe and will just add to the vanilla base what I want. I thought it might be fun to try other people's recipes for buttercreme but it turned out to be a not so good idea. Not saying other people don't have good buttercreme / icing recipes, just the one I selected wasn't as good as some others. Plus the jam (I recommend jelly next time) has small pieces of strawberry in it that adds to the buttercreme. This one might be good with a straight lemon buttercreme but I was afraid it would be too sour.