Easy Lemon Cupcakes Recipe

Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making some luscious, melt-in-your-mouth lemon cupcakes. So let's get started. First off, set your oven to 375 so it's nice and hot, and now in a medium bowl, we're gonna combine one cup of sugar, that's 200 grams, with some delicious lemon zest. Scale's done. To the sugar, I'm gonna add the zest of two to three lemons, that's two tablespoons. I want maximum zingy lemon flavor, and for that, I cannot just use the juice, in part because the juice is really acidic. If you add a little bit of acid to a baked good, it's great. It makes them more melt-in-your-mouth and soft and tender. But if you add too much, the recipe won't work out. Luckily, the skin of the lemon has tons of lemon oil in it, which gives you a lovely flavor. So I can add as much of this as I'd like. One, two medium to large lemons, or three small ones. Here, you have a choice. You could either pop this into a food processor and pulse it up. That's going to really extract the oils from the zest and infuse the sugar with tons of flavor. Or you can just use your clean hands and rub this together. In either case, you're gonna get a light yellow or pastel-colored sugar that looks like wet sand and it is chock-full of lemon flavor. You can use this same hack for any orange recipe as well. Or any lime recipe. Any citrus, zest, work it into the sugar, your baked good will be that much better. By the way, if you like my recipes, hit that subscribe button. There's two new videos every single week. Just a little bit of rubbing later, you can see I have what looks more like wet sand than sugar and it's a light yellow color and it smells so nice. Once your lemons are zested, you can get the juice from them. Give them a roll and then slice and juice. I want a quarter of a cup. Lemon juice can go right over the sugar. I'm also adding in three quarters of a cup or 170 grams of melted unsalted butter. If you wanted to, completely optional, you could have browned the butter as well. That would give you a nutty depth of flavor that would complement the lemon. But then again, totally optional. One quarter cup of whole milk. For example, if I had said, hmm, what if I just subbed out the milk for lemon juice? That would have been too much. Quarter cup is all you need. I'm also adding in half a cup or 120 grams of sour cream. This is gonna make the cupcakes so moist. Now it's time for two large room temperature eggs with no shells, please. One, see? Little shell fragment, not on my watch. And two. Grab a whisk and we're gonna give this a mix. Just mix so everything is nice and homogenous. And once that's the case, set this aside and it's time for the dry ingredients. Into a large bowl we're gonna add one and three quarter cups or 210 grams of all purpose flour. I'm using a scale because I want these cupcakes to be melt in your mouth amazing. If you scoop the flour up with a measuring cup, you're adding in like 30, 40% more flour than the recipe calls for. That gives you a denser, bready, unsatisfying baked good. So if you are using a measuring cup, that's fine. Fluff the flour up like that in your canister and then sprinkle it in to your measuring cup. Level it off and you'll have about 120 grams per cup. To puff things up, a quarter teaspoon of baking soda that has lots of acid from the lemon juice and the sour cream to react with. And one and a half teaspoons of baking powder. One and a half. For some contrast, a quarter teaspoon of salt. One more whisk. Maybe a copy of my book, Everyday Baking. Give it a mix. And now we can combine. Pour the wet into the dry. Now just fold this together until it's just combined. We don't wanna overmix it. I was just thinking of like possible mix-ins you might wanna add. For me, there aren't really any, but I was just imagining some raisins in here. It's so horrible. Here's your lemon cupcake with the raisins. I could see little bits of candied lemon peel. That'd be nice. My flour has just disappeared, which means I can transfer the batter into my cupcake papers. Papers into the wells. These cupcakes go pretty quick, especially in my household, but you can refrigerate any spare cupcakes for up to three days. Just let them come to room temperature before you enjoy them. Or you can freeze the unfrosted cupcakes for up to two months. Distribute the batter evenly between your 12 papers. Now, when these come out of the oven, before you frost them, you have a choice. If you wanted extra lemon flavor, maybe a bit of a surprise, you can core the inside and add a dollop of lemon curd. That's lovely. You could also do a strawberry jam, or you could even add some custard inside. That'd be nice, too. No raisin puree, though. Not today. My lemon cupcakes are ready to go into the oven. 375 for five minutes. Reduce to 350. Bake an additional 10 to 12. They'll be puffed and golden. You can insert a skewer into the center of one of them if you wanna double check. These are going into the oven, and then we're gonna make our frosting. In you go. You're gonna have a little bit of extra batter for this. You could either throw it away, or make your final two cupcakes. There is one thing I should tell you. Your cupcakes will burn if these are empty, but that won't happen if you fill the wells halfway or so with some water. The water will absorb the heat, and your cupcakes will bake as normal. You can bake this all together, or this can bake right after your first batch. My cupcakes have baked, and they're just about cool, so let's make a luscious, lovely lemon buttercream. One cup of room temperature butter. That's 226 grams. You can see this butter is nice and fairly soft. I also want two tablespoons of lemon zest. The zest is gonna give us tons of lemon flavor, just like it did in the cupcakes. If I could, I would use a cup and a half of lemon juice, but that's too much liquid, so we've gotta really rely on the zest here. All the lemon zest goes in, along with a quarter teaspoon of salt, and if you wanted to, of course, you could just use salted butter for this, and omit the added salt. Pop your paddle attachments on. We're gonna mix this on medium high for two to three minutes until it is nice and creamy and fluffy. While that mixes, I'm gonna get just a little bit more lemon juice to use, so it's ready. My butter is nice and creamy, so I'm gonna scrape the bowl down, and then it's time to add some sugar in. I have four and a half cups. That's about 540 grams of powdered sugar that I sifted already. If you're using a piping tip, it's a great idea to sift your powdered sugar, because any lumps can get stuck there and really annoy you when you're trying to pipe a nice shape. Gather about a cup, sprinkle that in, and then mix on medium low while the sugar is added. Once the first cup's incorporated, we can add the next in. I really just don't wanna have a mess, and adding the sugar in gradually also helps it incorporate more easily. In this recipe, you could use two to four tablespoons of fresh lemon juice for that added zing, and some liquid to help make this more slack. If you use the full four tablespoons, your buttercream will be very soft, which is fine if you're just doing a little swirl, but if you wanna pipe a shape on top, then you're gonna wanna have a little bit less, so closer to two tablespoons. That was a bad idea. But did that even happen? Continue adding in batches. If you want, you can add a little bit of lemon juice, alternating with the powdered sugar, or add it all in at the end. Last bit of powdered sugar. Gonna add a little bit more lemon juice now. Once everything's been incorporated, I'm gonna increase to medium high, and mix for one minute until it's more fluffy and has a nicer texture. However, I will take a little taste and see what it's like. That's nice, but I want a little bit more lemon, so I'm gonna add the remaining tablespoon for a total of three right now. I'm also gonna scrape the bowl down one last time before I fluff it up. While this fluffs up, grab your favorite piping tip, a piping bag, or just an offset spatula, and we'll be ready to decorate. After that minute of mixing, so light and fluffy. I have a big piping bag, a large closed star tip, but you could use open star or whatever you want. Don't fill your piping bag up all the way. Halfway is fine. You can refill it as you please, but if you overfill it, it's so annoying. It's hard to squeeze. It wants to come out the top. Is this a bad idea? And you'll notice that I went from turning the mixer off to filling the piping bag to piping my cupcake right away. This looks so pretty. It's almost like Swiss meringue buttercream. It's glossy and beautiful. If you pause and don't do this right away, your buttercream will become foamy and lose texture. It just happens on buttercreams when you're using it in acidic fruit. So go from A to B to C as quickly as possible. If you need to take a break, that's totally fine. Just re-whip your buttercream right before using it. Pipe your buttercream as you please. Once your cupcakes are piped, they are ready to enjoy. I think a cupcake sandwich is the best sandwich you could have. I don't know what I can say other than this is the perfect lemon cupcake. It is the fluffiest, zingiest, melt-in-your-mouth cupcake. And this buttercream was so creamy but full of lemon flavor. My mouth is watering and I only want more. I hope you had a chance to make this delicious recipe. And if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button and check out my cupcake playlist.