Astronomical Citrus Cupcakes

Sparkly citrus flavoured cupcakes iced with lemon curd buttercream

Sparkly Citrus Cup Cakes

Lemon is always a popular flavour for baking; I added a bit of lime for some additional tingle and baked some lemon curd in with the cake mixture for that extra softness.  The lemon curd slightly inhibited the rise, I think, which made the cakes come out flatter than they sometimes do which made them easier to ice, so winner all round! They were still very spongy and delicious.

At our Seniors Lunch Club this week we had a very exciting event – the West Didsbury Astronomical Society came in to give us a talk. They were great, each of the three speakers had a demonstration to make and told us some facts about a) our galaxy b) our solar system c) our moon – so progressing inwards to our world from the vast distances of the Universe. We made some lovely mess:  we drew a representation of the galaxy in salt on a black cloth on the floor and made moon craters by throwing marbles into a tray of flour and cocoa powder. It brought it all very much alive. Our members enjoyed, took it all in and will now be looking up at the skies and identifying constellations, planets and moon craters with expert eyes. It’s so nice to be getting back to being able to have people in to talk to us again; we used to have a speaker about once a month to give the Lunch Club members a stimulating boost of something local, personal or new and give them a change from my  quizzes and worksheets.

The Citrus Cup Cakes added to the jollity – of course I should have tried to do galaxy swirl mirror icing on something – I will have to give that a try for the next visit of the Astronomical Society.
 
Makes 20 cup cakes        Timings:  1 hour, then time to cool, and 30 minutes to ice

• 200g butter
  
• 200g sugar - including about 20g vanilla sugar
  
• 4 eggs
  
• 200g self raising flour
  
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
  
• 2 tablespoons lemon curd
  
• The zest of 1 large lemon and 1 lime

For the icing:  200g softened butter, 2 tablespoons lemon curd, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 300g icing sugar. Food colouring as required – optional.
 
Pre heat the oven to 180°C and lay out cupcake cases in the bun tins.

Whisk the butter and sugar together until combined and quite fluffy. Whisk in the lemon curd and add the eggs in one by one with a spoonful of flour each time. Add the rest of the flour and the zest and combine well.

Spoon the mixture into the bun tins and bake each tray for about 20 minutes until cooked. Cool on a wire rack.

For the icing, beat the butter and lemon curd until soft and add the icing sugar a spoonful at a time (putting a tea towel over your mixer to avoid the icing sugar covering your kitchen) and add the lemon juice as you go.  I then divided the mixture into two, adding yellow colouring to one part and green colouring to the other. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag and ice the cup cakes. I tried to fill the bag half with green and half with yellow, going for a swirl sort of pattern but it didn’t really work, although it looks nice anyway!  Decorate with starry sprinkles and edible glitter if you like.