Lemon Butterfly Cupcakes

Light lemon cupcakes filled with lemon curd and buttercream.

Lemon Curd Butterfly Cupcakes

Pretty as a picture, aren’t they? Tasted good too. My Seniors Lunch Club group were very appreciative. They always are, which is nice, but I have noticed that people as they get a little older seem to enjoy a strong clear taste – and lemon is always popular.

We had a game of “Who Am I?” this week – members pick a character’s name out of a bag without looking. This name is then worn on a headband (made out of newspaper stapled together, we aren’t high tech) so the member can’t see it, but everyone else can. The member then has to guess who their character is by asking only Yes/No questions. I usually choose a theme for the “Who Am I?”, and this time the theme was British Royals.  Easy you might think, but of course the British royal line goes a long way back and even wanders into legend.  Henry VIII was relatively easy to get, as was the late Queen Mother, but King Arthur took 9 guesses, and Anne Boleyn stumped us until a very heavy hint from the member who had played Henry VIII got us over the line. I don’t think anyone would have guessed John of Gaunt so I took his name out of the bag. We had a lot of fun.  This is a game you can play at home and it’s also a good game for remote interaction – we played it several times in lockdown on our audio conference calls and it works well. We’ve played it with the themes of “Film Stars”, “Animals”, “Spooky Halloween Characters,” and enjoyed them all.
 
Makes 18 cakes                Timing: 60 minutes to make one batch, then cooling time and 30 minutes                                                                                                                                                               icing.

• 200g caster sugar
• 200g butter
• 4 medium eggs
• 200g self raising flour
• Zest of one unwaxed lemon
• For the icing and filling:  about ½ jar of lemon curd, 200g butter, 250g icing sugar, the juice and zest of 1 unwaxed lemon

Pre heat your oven to 180°C.

Beat the sugar and butter together until fluffy, add the eggs in one at a time, adding a spoonful of flour with each one. Turn the mixer to a lower speed and add in the rest of the flour and the lemon zest.
Spoon the batter into paper cupcake cups – you want them reasonably filled as you are going to cut the tops off the buns to make the butterflies. I measured one, and I used 45g of batter to make a well filled cup cake.

Bake for about 20 minutes until golden and cooked through. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. I prefer to make 2 batches one after the other if you are making more than the 12 in a standard cup-cake tin, as I think they rise better when there’s only one tray in the oven at a time. The batter stands perfectly well as the first batch is cooked.

For the icing:  beat the butter with the icing sugar, lemon zest and juice until creamy and fluffy. You will need to cover your mixer with a tea towel to stop the icing sugar rising up and dusting the whole kitchen. Scoop the buttercream into a piping bag with a big star nozzle. That of course is optional, you can just dollop spoonfuls of the buttercream onto the cupcakes if you want.

Using a sharp knife, cut a pyramid shape from the centre of each cake. Fill the centre of the cake with a teaspoonful of lemon curd, then pipe a curl of buttercream. Cut the piece of cake you removed in half and place it back onto the top of the buttercream to form “wings”. Add a few sprinkles if you like.  This process goes quite quickly if you do them all at once.

Keep in a cool place until serving and eat within 2 days.