Lemon Cupcakes to die for~

So. Today I was in charge of lunch for my church small group. This taking-turns-to-make-lunch tradition had started before I joined the group so I was thrown into the deep end with my non-cooking self...nonetheless, I've decided to take full advantage of this chance to cook for about 18 people and practise my baking. So I tried out my slight variant of Martha Stewart's Lemon Cupcake recipe...the result? Amazing! I know I should be more modest about my cupcakes but they really were really yummy!! Yum~ Yum~
So without further ado, here's my beautiful recipe:

Ingredients:

3 Cups of self-rising flour
230g softened unsalted butter (room temperature)
2 Cups of caster sugar
4 eggs (room temperature)
1 Cup of whole milk (close to room temperature)
2-3 Tablespoons of lemon zest
2 1/2 Tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to about 190 degrees Celsius. Line your pan with paper cupcake liners. Sift flour and salt.
2. With an electric mixer cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Add eggs one at a time. (Crack the eggs on a separate bowl first so that you can fish out any shells) Beat each egg until fully incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.
4. Beat in zest and vanilla.
5. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of milk and lemon juice. Mix until the mixtures are just combined. Do not overmix as that will create very tough cupcakes.
6. Fill the cupcake liners only three-quarters full.
7. My oven baked for about 17 minutes. To test if the cupcakes are ready, insert a toothpick in the centre of a cupcake and the toothpick should come out clean. Or push down on the cupcake - if the bread springs back up right away, they are ready.
8. Let the cupcakes cool in the pan before taking them out to put on a cooling rack.

**Use the upper part of the oven
**Turn the pan around half way through the baking to ensure even baking
**If baking with one pan, ensure that the pan has cooled down before putting it back in. I used two baking pans and put the remaining one in the fridge for it to cool down faster.

Frosting:
Ideally, you should use buttercream frosting or cream cheese frosting. But I didn't think buttercream frosting would have done well with a Korean crowd, so I decided to improvise and create a lemon whipped cream. They went very well with the lemon cupcakes and I think it was quite well received by my Koren friends.

Lemon Whipped Cream Icing

Ingredients:

2 Cups Heavy Cream (I used fresh cream which I found is virtually the same thing) - make sure the cream is cold
3/4 icing sugar (confectioner's sugar)
1 1/2Tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

1. At low speed, beat cream in a chilled bowl until it begins to thicken
2. Gradually add the icing sugar and lemon juice
3. On high speed beat until soft peaks form.

*If the cupcake is to be served hours later, they must be refrigerated because of the frosting...or did everybody know that already? Apparently, the whipped cream does not do well being out for too long
**For baking novices (like moi) 'beat until soft peaks form' means beat until you can create a soft, stable peak when scooping the cream - (I had to look up what this meant. :P)

Enjoy Enjoy Enjoy~ Ahhhhhhhhhh..............