Summertime Lemon Cupcakes

I created these darlings for 4th of July, but I am calling them a Summertime cupcake, because it sounds right to me. These are amazing. I took a recipe from Martha’s Cupcake book, for the cake part and added lemon whipped cream cheese frosting, its much lighter than a traditional cream cheese frosting.

Ingredients for the cupcake:

- 3 cups all purpose flour

- 1 tbsp. baking powder

- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp

- 2 cups sugar

- 4 large eggs

- finely grated zest of 3 lemons (about 3 tbsp.) plus 2 tbsp. lemon juice

- 1 tsp. vanilla extract

- 1 cup buttermilk

Directions:

1.Preheat oven to 325 f. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.

2. With an electric mixer on medium high speed, cream butter and sugar till pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time. Beat in zest and vanilla. Add flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with buttermilk and lemon juice.

3. Fill liner 3/4 cup full. Bake, rotate half way through, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 25 minutes.

Ingredients for the frosting:

- 1 80z pkg. cream cheese

- 1 cup white sugar

- 1/8 tsp salt

- 1 tsp vanilla extract

- 3/4 tsp lemon extract

- 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

Directions:

1. With electric mixer beat whipping cream until stiff peaks form, set aside.

2. Combine cream cheese, sugar, salt, vanilla, lemon extract, beat until smooth. Fold in whipped cream.

3. Pipe onto cupcakes, and garnish if you like. Store in the fridge, because of the cream cheese in the frosting. These are great straight from the fridge.