Sunday, August 24, 2008

Lemon-Up Cupcakes




Browsing the cookbooks at BJ's last week I came across one which looked to have lots of great ideas in it. So I bought it. It is called Ultimate Cake Mix Book from Publications Unlimited. I was going to put a link to it, but couldn't find it easily online. There is another book with the same name by Betty Crocker. But this one is different.
Anyway, one of the recipes is called Lemon Up Cake, but it was actually made as a cupcake. I sorta followed the recipe, and I used a different icing. The same icing was used recently by my buddy Bunny. It is a wonderful Lemon Cream Cheese Icing from Epicurious. I changed it up a bit by using lemon extract instead of lemon zest and adding a bit of yellow food coloring for effect. I topped some with crushed Lemonheads.
The cupcakes baked up very nicely. I finally used my square cupcake pan for half the recipe. These were so delicious (baked and unbaked!!). Bowl licking good!
Lemon Cupcakes
I box Butter Recipe Golden Cake Mix
1 box lemon instant pudding
1/4 c fresh lemon juice
zest from 1 lemon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare cake mix according to directions on box, adding the pudding and substituting the lemon juice for 1/4 c of the water. Beat according to the instructions on the box. Batter will be thick. Scoop into 24 cupcakes. (I use an ice cream scoop.)
Bake 18-23 minutes until light golden brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
Cool.
Ice as desired.

6 comments:

Bunny said...

Fran they're beasutiful! Where did you ever get a square cupcake tin??!!! That is sooo neat!! I love the lemon candy crushed on top that's a very pretty touch for decoration. I absolutely LOVE lemon!!

Fran Z said...

Hi Bunny- I found it at Kohls on sale of course! You can use regular cupcake liners and they conform to the square shape.

Ingrid_3Bs said...

Hi! Love the square cupcake! Too cool!
I have that cookbook. I found it in the bargain book section at Books-a-million. It has quite a few good recipes. I know a lot of bloggers are anti-cake mix. I'm not. I really like semi-homemade treats. I've never had anyone notice or comment that anything was not completely from scratch.
I believe this is the book. Here's the link http://www.biggerbooks.com/bk_detail.aspx?isbn=9781412793117
~ingrid

giz said...

Now you've done it. Everyone is going to want square cupcakes (me included ;). They look deeeeeelicious.

Anonymous said...

I love cup cakes but it increases the taste if lemons are added.Yummm delicious one.

Fran Z said...

Thanks to y'all! Yes, Ingrid that is the book!