Limoncello Coconut Cupcakes

If there are two things that go over well in this household its lemon and coconut. We bought a bottle of limoncello for a delicious limoncello tiramisu for my birthday. However, it needs to be used in more than just the occasional martini! I've been itching to bake and what else to do but use some of those delicious ingredients for a tart, delicious summertime cupcake. It's time for some Limoncello Cupcakes!!

Lemon Cupcakes

1 1/2 Cups Flour
1 Cup Sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter
1/2 cup sour cream (I used 1/4 C Sour cream 1/4 C buttermilk)
1 large egg
2 egg yolks
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 Tablespoons of lemon zest

1) Add flour, sugar, baking powder and salt to your mixer. Use paddle attachment and beat until combined. 2) Add butter, sour cream, buttermilk (if using it, eggs and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Add in lemon zest.
3) Divide into cupcake liners and bake at 350 for 18-20 minutes










Limoncello Curd

1 cup lemon juice (preferably fresh squeezed)
1 cup sugar
Zest from about 2 lemons
7 egg yolks
10 Tablespoons of butter
1/2 C Limoncello

1) Whisk egg yolks and set aside in a medium sized sauce pan.
2) Please lemon juice, zest and sugar in another sauce pan. Heat until sugar is dissolved. Add butter until melted.
3) Temper the eggs with the sugar/lemon mixture by slowly adding hot mixture to eggs while whisking quickly to avoid cooking the eggs before incorporated. Continue to mix until fully combined.
4) But mixture back to heat until reaches 160 Degrees.
5) Take off heat and add limoncello.
6) Cool













Coconut Frosting
2 Sticks of Butter
1/2 Cup cream of coconut
1 teaspoon coconut extract
4-5 Cups of Powdered sugar

1) Cream butter in mixer.
2) Alternate cream of coconut with powdered sugar until desired consistency is achieved.

*Side Note*
If you can keep yourself from thinking inappropriate things whole using cream of coconut you get bonus points!
I'm fairly certain its impossible.









Assembly:

Cut holes in your cupcakes using a large piping tip or a paring knife.

Fill with delicious lemon curd.

Frost cupcakes and top with toasted coconut. 

Enjoy!!

If this doesn't look absolutely delicious than you are absolutely crazy!!

Super, Super Yum. 

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. 

Lemon Raspberry Delight

My friend Shari, who is braving grad school with me, had her birthday this week. I figured in order to celebrate properly I thought she needed a cake! I asked her what she would like and she wanted something with either lemon and/ or raspberry so I gave her both all in one cake. I made a lemon raspberry cake with homemade lemon curd in between each layer. The cake was super yummy. It was originally from Epicurious and I found it on another blog but I changed it just a bit by not using blueberries and not making it a 3 layer cake. Instead I made two square 9 inch cakes and cut them in half layering them with lemon curd.

Ingredients

2 cups plus 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

3 cups fresh blueberries ( in my case I used raspberries)

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 cup whole milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3/4 teaspoon pure lemon extract

1 teaspoon lemon zest

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened about 20 minutes out of refrigerator

1 1/2 cups white sugar

4 large eggs

Method

Preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare three 8″ round cake pans with parchment paper, butter and flour. Sift dry ingredients into medium bowl. Transfer 1 tablespoon flour mixture to larger bowl. Add fresh raspberries and toss to coat them with flour. Set remaining flour mixture and raspberries aside.

Stir whole milk, sour cream, vanilla extract, lemon extract and lemon zest in small bowl. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar, until pale yellow and very fluffy, about 5 minutes. Beat in eggs one at a time, until well combined. Mix in flour mixture alternately with milk mixture, starting and ending with flour mixture. Stir until just combined. Gently fold in raspberries. Divide batter equally among 8″ round pans (or in my case two 9" square pans)

Bake cakes until toothpick inserted into centre comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Cool cakes in pans on racks for about 10 minutes, then invert onto racks until completely cool.

Zesty Lemon Frosting 

Ingredients

1 cup soft unsalted butter

2 teaspoons lemon zest

6 cups icing sugar

60 ml fresh lemon juice

6 tablespoons whipping cream

1/2 teaspoon pure lemon extract

2 tablespoons water

pinch salt

Method
Cream butter and lemon zest in bowl of electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment, about 3 minutes. Slowly add icing sugar, mixing on low speed for about 2 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and beat on med-high for 3-4 minutes until very fluffy. If using color gel, add a drop or two so that it isn't too bright.

In between each layer I made lemon curd. I used a recipe from Martha Stewart (Good ol' Martha, who doesn't love her). 

Ingredients

• 3 large egg yolks, strained
• Zest of 1/2 lemon
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 6 tablespoons sugar
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces

Directions

1. Combine yolks, lemon zest, lemon juice, and sugar in a small saucepan. Whisk to combine. Set over medium heat, and stir constantly with a wooden spoon, making sure to stir sides and bottom of pan. Cook until mixture is thick enough to coat back of wooden spoon, 5 to 7 minutes.
2. Remove saucepan from heat. Add butter, one piece at a time, stirring with the wooden spoon until consistency is smooth.
   
   
   
3. Transfer mixture to a medium bowl. Lay a sheet of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the curd to avoid a skin from forming; wrap tightly. Let cool; refrigerate until firm and chilled, at least 1 hour.
   
   
   
   This recipe only makes about 1.5 cups per batch, if that, so I doubled the recipe. I probably could have tripled it without having much extra left over. It was very tart and delicious and added a lot to the cake. It was delicious. I just hope that Shari liked it!