Anniversary Celebration

A year ago today I signed up with Blogger and posted a photograph of a meyer lemon bar I made with lemons from our garden. I named my blog Alpineberry because my original intention was to blog about food with a bit of gardening thrown in. Fast forward 365 days later and I'm still blogging, but mostly about the food I bake.

To celebrate my blog's first anniversary I wanted to create a lemony treat. In my head I envisioned a simple moist cake bursting with lemon zest. I didn't want a pound cake or a filled and frosted layer cake. Maybe a cupcake infused with lemon, but not soaked in lemon syrup. I found a recipe for buttermilk cupcakes and gave it my own meyer lemon twist. The lemon combined perfectly with the buttermilk which made the cupcake doubly tangy. The resulting cupcake had a nice crumb and was tender and moist too.

As good as the cupcake was unadorned, the simple lemon icing elevated it to a whole other lemony level. My husband usually isn't overly excited by anything I bake, but he told me the cupcake was really, really, really good. He's my number one taste tester (well, he's my number one, period). This is now our favorite cupcake.



Iced Meyer Lemon Cupcakes
(yields 24 cupcakes)

Cupcakes:
3 cups cake flour (or 2 1/4 cup cake flour + 3/4 cup AP flour)
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
12 ounces (3 sticks / 1.5 cups) unsalted butter, softened at room temp
2 cups granulated sugar
1 tbsp finely grated meyer lemon zest
4 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups (12 fl. oz.) buttermilk
2 tbsp freshly squeezed meyer lemon juice

Icing:
2 cups powdered sugar (you may not need all 2 cups)
1/4 cup freshly squeezed meyer lemon juice

To make cupcakes:
Preheat the oven to 350F. Line 24 (4 fluid ounce capacity) cupcake wells with paper cupcake liners.

Sift together both flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside dry ingredients.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add lemon zest and beat for 1 minute. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally. Mix in vanilla.

Stir lemon juice into your measured buttermilk. Alternately add the flour mixture and buttermilk to your batter, beginning and ending with the flour.

Fill each well approximately 3/4 full. Bake until a skewer inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Cool in pan for 5 minutes then gently transfer cupcakes to a cooling rack. Cool completely before icing.

To make icing:
Combine 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar and lemon juice. Whisk until smooth. Add some or all of the remaining 1/2 cup powdered sugar for a stiffer icing.

PS: It's also our wedding anniversary. We've been officially married for 4 years but been together for almost 16 years. Happy Anniversary dear husband!