Berry Cupcakes with Buttercream Icing and Caramelized Toasted Lemon Zest
Yields 18 Jumbo Cupcakes
Ingredients:
2 boxes Duncan Hines White Cake Mix
4 eggs
2/3 cup cooking oil
3 cups raspberry juice
1 Tbsp. strawberry extract
Food coloring (Optional)
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 325oF and line jumbo cupcakes tins (you don't have to line if you don't want to).
2. Pour 2 boxes of Duncan Hines White Cake mix into a large mixing bowl.
3. Add the eggs, cooking oil, juice, and extract.
4. If desired, add food coloring to intensify the color of the cupcakes. The white cake mix will pick up color from the juice, but you can always add more if you want.
5. Using an electric mixer, mix on low for 30 seconds, then mix on high for 2 minutes.
6. Pour (or ladle) into cupcake tins.
7. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
These smelled absolutely delicious while they were baking and they were amazingly moist.
On a side note: I lined my tins with these Paper Chef parchment paper liners, and I HATED them! They were the only jumbo liners I could find, and they were just terrible. They are squared off, so they don't sit nicely in the tins and, because of this, they slide out of place as soon as you start filling them with batter. Luckily, I happened to peek in the box when I bought these and had enough time to attempt to reshape them for baking. I lined my tins ahead of time, and then placed clean, unused mason jars inside the liners to round them out a bit. I had the jars in for a week, and these liners were still a bit difficult. I would not recommend these, nor will I repurchase them.
Back to the baking! This is really quite a simple recipe, and takes no time at all to whip up.
Look at the delicious pink batter! It smelled amazing even during the mixing stage.
From pink cupcakes to fluffy buttercream icing treats, topped with toasted caramelized lemon zest.
There are a ton of buttercream icing recipes out there, so I won't type mine out here, but I will say this: buttercream icing should melt in your mouth! Use enough milk so that the sugar is blended and smooooooooth! Even though powdered sugar is much finer than granulated, it still needs to be blended properly to get the right texture.
As these cupcakes were for a party, I decided to really get creative and add a nice little topper to each one. I decided to go for caramelized toasted lemon zest. Say what? That's right. Toasted lemon zest. Caramelized. There were two reasons I did this. One: I have never had, nor heard of, toasted lemon zest. Two: I wanted to see if I could do it.
Since the toppers are just tiny little accents on the cupcakes, I only used the zest from about 3 lemons. As you can see in the picture, my lemon zest is stored in a little baggy. When you buy lemons or limes and are just planning on using them for the juice, don't let the zest go to waste! Zest those babies first, put the zest in a freezer safe container or bag, and throw it in the freezer. Then you have some on hand whenever you want to add a little kick to something.
I heated the pan on high, threw in the lemon zest and let it toast, tossing it often. It smelled wonderfully lemony while toasting! Once some of the zest began to brown, I placed it in a bowl and threw my sugar directly into the hot pan. It began melting quite quickly, so I added the zest back in and made sure it was all coated. Once the sugar was all melted and browning, I poured the mixture out onto wax paper to cool.
When it was time to garnish the cupcakes, I simply broke the caramelized zest into little pieces and tossed it on top of the cupcakes. Delicious!
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