Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

My friends Erin and Natalie gave me these sweet little cupcake wrappers for my birthday, and I had three mini jars of lemon curd in the fridge, so what better to do than bake cupcakes?

Like I need a reason.

I got the Old Fashioned Vanilla Cupcake recipe AND the Meringue recipe from one of my favourite cookbooks - The Back In The Day Bakery Cookbook. I've made a number of treats from this book and have been pleased with all of the results, including these cupcakes. In fact, I think this could be the perfect vanilla cupcake recipe.

And the meringue? Luscious.

You can get the recipe for the cupcakes at the end of the post, the recipe for the lemon curd here and the recipe for the meringue here. I omit the cream of tartar from the meringue because I really don't like the taste of it.

The cupcake batter was really thick so I used an ice cream scoop to plop a dollop of batter into my cupcake wrappers, then, I fitted a piping bag with a round tip and filled it with lemon curd. I stuck the tip of the piping bag just under the top of the cupcake batter and squeezed some curd into the center of the raw batter. You can see what it looks like after it's baked below.

The piping tip left a small hole in the top of the batter so I added about a half teaspoon more batter to fill it in. 

My wrappers were fairly large so my cupcakes took about 25 minutes in the oven. I let them cool, in the tin, on a rack, about 20 minutes before I piped the meringue because a) I figured the meringue would 'melt' if the cupcakes were still warm and b) the lemon curd inside the hot cupcakes was like molten lava. 

Preheat the high setting of the broiler in your oven and keep the rack in the lower third. Once the broiler is ready to go, pop the tin of cupcakes in and keep a close eye on them, because once they start to turn golden, they'll brown fairly quickly. Mine took about 4 minutes and I rotated the tin a couple of times during those four minutes.

I think next time I may try a different filling - maybe some Dulce de Leche, Nutella or some of the Biscoff Spread I just ordered?

The Back In The Day Bakery's Old Fashioned Cupcakes are truly a perfect blank canvas for any creative flavour combinations you can dream of!!

Back In The Day Bakery's Old Fashioned Cupcakes (18 large or 24 medium cupcakes)

1 C milk (I used 35% heavy cream)

1 tsp vanilla

1 3/4 C cake flour

1 1/4 C all purpose flour

2 C sugar

1 Tbsp baking powder

3/4 tsp fine sea salt

2 sticks butter (227g) , cubed, room temp

4 eggs, room temp

• Preheat 350 - rack in lower third of oven
• combine cream and vanilla - set aside
• combine flours, sugar, baking powder and sea salt in stand mixer - mix with paddle on low 2 minutes
• add butter, a few pieces at a time, until all butter is added and mixture resembles coarse sand
• add eggs, one at a time, mixing after each until well combined
• add cream/vanilla mix slowly - mix 1-2 minutes more to combine
• scoop into cupcake wrappers set in a muffin tin and bake 20-25 minutes

Lemon Polenta Cake with Lemon Ice Cream

Pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin. It's Thanksgiving weekend and pumpkin is EVERYWHERE. 

Well, I'm bucking the trend.

This weekend it's going to be lemon all the way at our house.

You see, when Sean takes a bite of something, looks me square in the eye and says, 'This is my favourite thing yet - EVER', I know it's a keeper (mostly because he's never said that to me, not once in five years, until today).

I used Nigella Lawson's recipe for Lemon Polenta Cake and followed it exactly. I used the recipe for Lemon Ice Cream from Epicurious and also followed it exactly. I don't know what's gotten into me - following recipes without making modifications really isn't my style.

If you love lemon as much as I do, just try even ONE of the recipes - your lemon lust will be sated I promise. Nigella refers to her recipe as 'what lemon curd would taste like in cake form'. Personally, I'm partial to the ice cream but Sean loved both.

I find recipes in magazines, books and online use too many filler words - why can't they just get to the point? It's amazing how, when you remove all of the useless lingo, a recipe can be whittled down into the most simple sounding instructions. Below, I've done just that to make your life easier.

Lemon Ice Cream

Zest of half a lemon

1/2 C lemon juice (about 1.5 lemons)

1 C sugar

3 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 C 35% heavy cream

1 C milk

• In a pot, over medium heat, whisk lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar, eggs, vanilla and heavy cream.
• When it starts to simmer, strain twice into a bowl, cover and chill (I always strain twice to catch all the little bits of cooked egg).
• Whisk in milk then process in your ice cream maker.

Lemon Polenta Cake

200g butter, soft

200g sugar

200g ground almonds

100g polenta

1.5 tsp baking powder

3 eggs

2 medium lemons, zested (for cake) and juiced (for syrup)

125g icing sugar (for syrup - also called confectioner's sugar or powdered sugar)

• Preheat 350 - butter an 8-inch cake tin and line with parchment
• Beat butter and sugar until whipped and fluffy
• In a separate bowl, mix ground almonds, polenta and baking powder
• Add 1/3 of polenta mix to butter - mix thoroughly - add an egg - mix thoroughly - do this two more times - add zest
• bake 35-40 min - leave in pan on rack to cool

Lemon Syrup for Cake

• Boil juice from your two lemons with icing sugar until suagr dissolves
• Poke holes over top of cake (I used a long needle because cake is quite moist and delicate), pour syrup over cake, cool in pan then turn out onto plate

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Oxford Blueberry Scones with Lemon Curd

Ok, ok, I know - enough of the rain already!! We've had over 30 days of straight rain here in Nova Scotia. After this amount of time without even a glimpse of the sun you can do one of two things - you can mope and complain about it, or you can make the best of it. I choose option number two. I mean, is there really any better way to spend a drizzly afternoon than with a freshly baked homemade treat, a hot cup of tea and a good book? This past Sunday I did just that - I made Oxford Blueberry Scones (Oxford, Nova Scotia is the blueberry capital of the WORLD!!), a small batch of tart Lemon Curd then I curled up with Earl Grey and my favourite book of all time - Wuthering Heights.

Usually I avoid scones because I find they're almost always too dry - too crumbly. These scones are anything but with the addition of full-fat sour cream. Combined with the super-easy-to-make lemon curd, they're almost more of a dessert than a snack but who really cares anyway?!?

Blueberry Scones (from All Recipes)

4 C Flour + 2 tsp Baking Powder + 1 tsp Salt - whisk in large bowl

1 C (one 250 mL tub) Sour Cream + 1 tsp Baking Soda - mix together in smaller separate bowl - it will puff up and become somewhat frothy

1 C Butter, room temp + 1.5 C Sugar - Beat until light and fluffy

Add 1 egg + 1 tsp Vanilla to Butter and Sugar - beat until well mixed

Gradually add Flour mixture to Butter mixture until just combined

Add sour cream mixture until just combined - add 1 C Fruit/Nuts/Chocolate Chips etc - whatever you want

**I divided my dough in half - I added 1/2 C Oxford Blueberries to half of the dough and left the other half plain (see below) - you have to be gentle with the blueberries because they have a tendency to run and pop if handled roughly

On a floured surface, form the dough into a circular patty - cut into wedges (I cut mine into 12 - they were the perfect size)

Bake on a well-buttered baking sheet at 350 degrees until golden - about 25 minutes

**Do not crowd these onto your baking sheet - they puff up and spread quite a bit - I would suggest baking 6 at a time

Lemon Curd (recipe from Chow - technique from Fine Cooking)

6 Tbsp Butter, room temp + 1/2 C Sugar - beat until fluffy

Add 4 Egg Yolks, 1/3 C Fresh Lemon Juice, 1/4 C Lemon Zest, 1/8 tsp Salt - Beat - It will look kind of curdled - this is ok

Put mixture in saucepan - heat on low until sugar dissolves - turn heat up to medium and stir constantly for 15 minutes

Pour into container to cool, covering the entire top with plastic wrap so a nasty skin doesn't form

Eat (with a spoon or with a scone - it's pretty hard to resist)

Alright, enough already - back to Cathy and Heathcliff...