Gromit and I typically walk to a nearby park in the mornings. This takes us past a small real estate agent's office, which is a converted house with a fenced backyard. Apparently their backyard has at least one lemon tree in it, because when Gromit and I were walking back from the park, there was a large box of lemons on the front stoop. "Free lemons!" said the box. "What the hell," said I. And I took home three free lemons. I don't know these real estate agent people, but I doubt they're in the line of poisoning people. It'd be bad for business. Plus, they have two big, old, fluffy collies in the backyard on the days when it isn't ungodly hot. People who bring their adorable big old fluffy collies to work can't be bad, even if the collies do try to eat Gromit through the fence.
I asked Facebook what I should do with the lemons, and then I went to campus, where our department's office manager accused me of baking too much. When I got home, I decided to take up my friend Mary on her suggestion of vanilla cupcakes filled with lemon curd and topped with a cream cheese frosting.
What you should know is that Mary has been a bad influence on me for many years now. Mary is the reason I own a single giant plastic sperm with a unibrow, purchased in Prague. It once held a milky alcoholic substance, which I was not brave enough to drink. There have probably been other incidents. Still, I trust Mary. We survived Pony Club together, including the rather memorable experience of sweeping national championships one year, the equally memorable experience of volunteering to be demonstration riders at the National Examiners' Clinic, thus giving us the pleasure of being roundly critiqued for several hours by several dozen people who pretended we were not there although they frequently pointed at us, and the still more memorable experience of being suddenly and inexplicably presented with a pile of disemboweled horse intestines in a five-star hotel in Toronto, along with a pair of surgical gloves and the directive to manually manipulate each part of the pile of intestines for the purposes of identifying exactly which sections of intestine we were dealing with, here.
Oh, I'm sorry. This is a food blog and I'm supposed to make you want to eat. Here I am dressed as a zombie! My ear fell off!
Oh. Right. Here's an angry rooster!
No? Fine. Here's an adorable pony.
His name is Dennis and he's only a little bit evil.
Vanilla Almond Cupcakes with Lemon Curd Filling
First, make your lemon curd. I followed Ina Garten's recipe. It's very easy and very good. It also gives you quite a lot of lemon curd.
I only ended up using about a third of it. (There might be a lemon pie post tomorrow.) While it's cooling off, make the cake.
This makes a 9x9 layer or about twelve cupcakes, so double it if you want more than that. I used this cake as an excuse to play with my almond flour, and let me tell you, it worked.
Have all ingredients at room temperature, oven at 350, grease and flour pans or use cupcake papers. Did I mention I didn't know that I was out of cupcake papers, so I wound up having to grease and flour my silicone cupcake pans, which was a giant freaking mess? Also that the silicone pan flopped itself partway off the oven rack somehow, so the cupcakes baked sideways and dripped batter on the bottom of the oven, so now I have burnt cake batter stuck to the bottom of my oven? I am pathologically messy, but today was bad even by my standards.
Anyway, the cake.
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup almond flour
1 3/4 tsp. baking powder
3/4 cup milk
1. Cream butter and sugar well.
2. Beat in eggs, one at a time, and then vanilla.
3. Mix together flour, almond flour, and baking powder in a bowl, then slowly add to butter mixture.
4. Add milk.
5. Mix on medium speed for 2-3 minutes.
6. Pour in pans. Bake 20-25 minutes for cupcakes, probably 30 or 40 for a layer cake. Let cool.
For instructions on filling cupcakes, I'd recommend this tutorial from Baking Bites. I did the cone method.
Here's a finished cupcake, frosted with cream cheese frosting. I don't really have a recipe for cream cheese frosting - I'm a freewheeler on that - but if you need a recipe, the one in The Joy of Cooking is good.
Since the tops of filled cupcakes are...precarious, I deliberately made the icing a bit runny, and applied it using the tried-and-true hole-in-the-corner-of-a-Ziploc-baggie method, then smoothed with a butter knife dipped in cold water.
Mary suggested that there should be lemon zest in the icing as well. I didn't have any left over, but I think she might have been right. So maybe you really want four lemons for this recipe. I also left several unfilled for the boyfriend unit, who dislikes lemon (but admitted "If I liked lemon as a flavor, I would like this lemon curd.")
One day, I will learn to make pretty cupcakes. One day.
It kind of looks like it's vomiting.
...oh, right. Food blog. Not disgusting things blog. Here's Gromit!
By the way, the cupcakes were pretty delicious.
Edited to add media pairing: Inspired by the time Mary complained heartily about this movie being on TV in our hotel at some horse show or other, because, in her words, "I don't want to see two ugly people in love! Movies are for pretty people!"
Atta girl!
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