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Tuesday, 14 February 2012

Lemon Love Cakes!

Happy Valentine's Day!

As a special treat, I am offering you a little 'Lemon Love Cake'  which I hope you enjoy.

I'm entering this in the February Tea Time Treats Challenge run by Karen at Lavender and Lovage  and Kate at What Kate Baked, Kate is hosting this month and has gone all 'Romantic'




I'm also entering it for the new Alphabakes challenge run by Ros at 'The more than occasional baker' and Caroline Makes the letter is 'L' and that means Luuuurrrve!


Lemon Love Cakes
125g (4 1/2 oz) butter
125g (4 1/2 oz) caster sugar
Finely grated zest of 1/2 large lemon (keeping the zest of the remaining 1/2 lemon for the lemon icing)
2 eggs, beaten
150g (5oz) s-r flour 
1/4 tsp baking powder

 1. Preheat the oven to 180C, line a fairy cake tin or muffin tin with paper cases (you will get more cakes if you use the fairy cake tin, but they will be smaller)
2. Cream the butter in a bowl until soft.  Add the sugar and lemon zest and beat until fluffy. Add the beaten eggs a bit at at time, then add the sifted flour and baking powder into the mixture.
3. Divide the mixture between the paper cases and bake for 7-10 minutes, until risen and golden.  Remove cakes to a baking tray and let them cool completely before icing.


75g (3oz) butter
175g (6oz) icing sugar, sifted
finely grated zest of 1/2 lemon
2-3 tsp squeezed lemon juice
heart sprinkles


1. Cream the butter until soft, sift the icing sugar into the butter with the lemon zest and enough lemon juice to get the right consistency for piping or spreading.
2. When the cupcakes have cooled completely, put the butter icing into a piping bag with a large star nozzle an pipe swirls onto the cupcakes.  Alternately, spread a large teaspoonful over the top with a palette knife.
3.  Sprinkle some love over the cupcakes in the form of some little pink hearts!



As an aside, I went to get my camera to take my blog photos and my husband nearly took off with one of these cupcakes, so they obviously work!

12 comments:

  1. Janice, I think that it's Kate's turn to organise the tea time treats this month (at What Kate Baked).

    I just love your icing I can just imagine the sweetness mixed with the lovely tang of the lemon - delicious and beautiful.

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  2. Thanks for that, I've changed the link to What Kate Baked!

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  3. LOL! It is the ROMANTIC Kate that is hosting this month Janice! LOVELY wee cakes and PERFECT for tea time treats too!
    Karen
    xxx

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  4. Those look great. With all those fancy flavoured cupcakes around, it just shows that oven the old-fashioned flavours are still the best.

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  5. Lemon is one of my fav cake flavours and your icing is perfect! I've got a long list of things I want to bake and this recipe is also now on that list!

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  6. These look lovely, especially the little sprinkles! There's something about the sharpness of lemon and the sweetness of buttercream that I just love :-)

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  7. Thank you so much for entering these to AlphaBakes. They look LOVELY indeed. I LOVE Lemon cakes and I'm not surprised these were disappearing quickly. PS i've baked something similar for alphabakes and TTT - clearly, great minds think alike! :) Will post tomorrow hopefully.

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  8. What lovely, lovely cupcakes Janice- the icing looks so lush and professional. Sorry its taken me a couple of days to come over and admire them- and thank you very very much for entering them into Tea Time Treats!

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  9. How completely yummy! I do love lemon in cakes :-) Jude x

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  10. Those are so pretty! I just love them :)

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  11. Love lemon! Comes a close second to chocolate I think!

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  12. These look perfect! Lemon cupcakes are always a nice change from vanilla...although any flavour is good when cupcakes are concerned! :-)

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I love to read your comments and try to reply when I can. I have had to enable comment moderation due to high levels of spam, so it may take a little time before your comment is visible. Please let me know if you make one of my recipes or if you have any questions I will try to answer them. Janice