Happy Easter!

It has been far, far, far too long since I have had time to bake and time to update this blog. Luckily, I had my last day at Old Chicago last weekend and so now I have a little bit more free time. While I have a lot of school work to do, I took a mental break. Easter was a perfect excuse to get to baking again. My little sister, Nora, got me some adorable tulip cupcake liners for Christmas and Easter was the perfect reason to use them. I made a yellow cupcake filled with lemon curd and topped with a butter cream frosting. They were delicious and a perfect treat for a lovely Spring Easter Day!

I found a new white cake recipe, I'm always on the hunt for a good, moist white cake. This was a pretty good cake. However, it had a REALLY weird creaming method. It was delicious though. 

Vanilla Buttermilk Cake

from Sky High Triple Layer Cakes

For the cake:

4 whole large eggs

2 egg yolks

2 tsp of vanilla extract

1 1/4 cup of buttermilk

3 cups of cake flour

2 cups of sugar

4 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

8 ounces of butter at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 350F degrees. Butter the bottom and sides of three 8-inch cake pans. Line with parchment paper and grease the paper.Place the eggs and the yolks in a medium bowl. Add the vanilla and 1/4 cup of buttermilk and whisk all the ingredients well. Set Aside.Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in the bowl of a mixer; whisk to blend. Add the remaining buttermilk and butter to the dry ingredients and with the mixer on low speed, blend together. Raise the mixer to medium speed and beat until light fluffy; 2minutes.Add the egg mixture in three additions, scrapping down the sides of the bowl after each addition.

I then piped them full of lemon curd. I think lemon curd is so yummy and much easier to make than most people realize. I ended up making Ina Garten's lemon curd. It was different than most lemon curds as it used the entire egg and not just the yolk. It also used a lot of lemon peel. The lemon sugar smelled SO good. 

Ingredients

• 3 lemons
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/4 pound unsalted butter, room temperature
• 4 extra-large eggs
• 1/2 cup lemon juice (3 to 4 lemons)
• 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

Directions

Using a carrot peeler, remove the zest of 3 lemons, being careful to avoid the white pith. Put the zest in a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Add the sugar and pulse until the zest is very finely minced into the sugar.

Cream the butter and beat in the sugar and lemon mixture. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, and then add the lemon juice and salt. Mix until combined.

Pour the mixture into a 2 quart saucepan and cook over low heat until thickened (about 10 minutes), stirring constantly. The lemon curd will thicken at about 170 degrees F, or just below simmer. Remove from the heat and cool or refrigerate.

The curd was delicious, but a little sweet. It also didn't firm up as much as I would have wanted. I think I might go back to the curd I used for the Lemon Raspberry cake I made last year. It's always worth trying new things though! 

I brought these over to my parent's house for Easter dinner. They were a hit and everyone enjoyed them. Ignore my bright red face in the picture (I walked 10 miles outside yesterday and didn't think I would need sunscreen, boy was I wrong!)

The liners were adorable. They were even cute when opening them up and they were the cutest crumpled up after the cupcakes had been enjoyed!

How cute!

It still looks like a tulip!

I hope everyone enjoyed this lovely Spring Day, had a Happy Easter/Passover. I hope I get to bake more often! I miss it and I miss blogging. I should be back more in the next few months.