Decorated Lemon Cupcakes

Its my Mum's birthday on Monday and since getting into baking a few years ago I always bake her something. This year I thought I'd make her her favourite..lemon cupcakes which I decorated with pretty purple, gold and white sugar flowers.

My parents came up for the day yesterday. Originally myself and the boyfriend were going to go and visit them for a long weekend buuutttt I ended up treating myself to a car!! Yep I couldn't cope with the Honda any longer..I tried for three horrendous months to get to grips with it but I just didnt feel happy driving it..so I sold it and have now bought a lovely brand new shiny white c1...I love it! The car garage was quite a way from our house so my parents offered to come to see us and to drop us off at the car garage to pick the new car up...very helpful indeed! Well I survived the drive back home...it was nerve wracking driving a brand new car down the motor way for the first time..I'd been worrying all week! But I've been out in it a couple of times since and am really enjoying driving it...hooray!

Anyway back to cupcakes! I normally use Rachel Allen's recipe for lemon cupcakes but as I was so impressed with the vanilla cupcake recipe from the Love Bakery book, I thought I would try their lemon cupcake recipe as well..I think the quantities are quite similar anyway. It produced lovely fluffy and moist cupcakes which I then decorated with the Rachel Allen recipe for lemon butter cream. I spent most of my evenings last week making all the little flowers and butterflies and had many occasions where I had to explain to people why my hands were bright purple in colour! I love the finished cakes though and think the purple works really well. My Mum was very impressed and insisted my Dad took lots of pics for her before she ate any!

Lemon Layer Cake

My blogging has been terrible recently. I've logged on just now and my last post was the 11th September....aaages ago! There has been good reason for it however...it was my Mum's birthday, Karls birthday (more on that later!), I've been off work, I've been ill and I've been away for a few nights too...so all in all I've been quite a busy girly!

Back to my Mum's birthday though...I had been thinking for awhile about what I could bake my Mum for her birthday and in the end, knowing how much she loves Lemon Cupcakes, I thought I would attempt a Lemon Layer Cake for her.

I used the recipe in the Primrose Bakery book for the cake and butter cream, however I decided it needed something more so I made a batch of Lemon Curd from the Rachel Allen book Bake and put that along with the butter cream in the cake. I have never made Lemon Curd before but the fresh home made version was so much better than any of the stuff I've bought from the supermarket before!

The last few recipes I have attempted from the Primrose Bakery, although weren't huge disasters, didn't quite go to plan, so I was really nervous about making this cake for my mum. I had visions of her cutting into it and it being as solid as a brick or not cooked! Luckily, the recipe worked...the cake rose perfectly and was really moist. The butter cream was sweet and lemony and the lemon curd gave that little extra lemony flavour to the cake. This is a recipe I will most definitely be making again.

Lemon Layer Cake

Makes two 20cm cakes which can be sandwiched together

225g golden caster sugar

225g self raising flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

25g cornflour

225g unsalted butter at room temperature

4 large eggs

Grated zest and juice of 2 large lemons (otherwise use 3 lemons)

Preheat the over to 170C. Grease and baseline the two tins.

Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl until the mixture is pale and smooth.

Combine the dry ingredients in a seperate bowl.

Add the eggs to the creamed mixture one at a time mixing for a few minutes after each addition, alternating with the dry ingredients, and finally the grated lemon zest and lemon juice. Beat well after each addition but do not over beat.

Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes until raised and golden brown. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

Once cool, sandwich the layers together with lemon butter cream icing and lemon curd and ice the top with more lemon butter cream.

Lemon Butter Cream

110g unsalted butter

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Grated zest of 1-2 unwaxed lemons

500g icing sugar

In a large mixing bowl beat the butter, lemon juice, lemon zest and half the icing sugar until smooth. Gradually add the remainder of the icing sugar and beat again until smooth and creamy.

Lemon Curd

75g butter

150g caster sugar

Finely grated zest and juice of 3 lemons

2 eggs

1 egg yolk

Place the butter, sugar, lemon zest and juice in a saucepan and heat very gently until the butter is melted.

Put the eggs and egg yolk in a bowl and beat thoroughly.

Pour the beaten eggs into the melted butter mixture and stir carefully over a low heat until the mixture has thickened and will coat the back of a spoon.

If the heat is too high the mixture will scramble. If this happens quickly push it through a sive.

Remove the pan from the heat and pour into a bowl.