Let’s take back anything I’ve ever said about cupcakes before. Ignore the chocolate stout and peanut butter bacon cupcakes.
These are literally the best tasting cupcakes I’ve made thus far (in my few weeks of experimenting with non-traditional cupcake flavors and frostings).
Don’t worry, I didn’t eat the rosemary sprig on top… that was just for decorative purposes :) The cupcakes were ridiculously easy to make; all I did was add to a standard box of yellow cake and instantly transformed regular cake to really delicious cupcakes!
LEMON ROSEMARY CUPCAKES WITH LEMON BUTTER CREAM
(Makes 12 cupcakes and enough frosting for 14)
Cupcake Ingredients:
- 1/2 box of yellow cake mix
- 1/3 c water
- 1/3 c lemon juice
- 1 T lemon extract
- 1/6 c vegetable oil (I just filled a 1/3 measuring cup up halfway)
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 c chopped rosemary
Butter cream frosting ingredients:
- 4 T butter (1/2 stick), softened
- 8 oz cream or mascarpone cheese (I went with cream cheese)
- 2 1/3 c powdered sugar
- 1 t lemon juice
- 1 t lemon extract
- yellow food coloring, as desired
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. While waiting, chop the rosemary into fine pieces. Next add all of the cupcake ingredients and mix until smooth.
Bake for 23 minutes, or until the tops start to get golden yellow.
For the frosting (taken from the recipe site): With a mixer, cream butter and mascarpone/cream cheese together until well incorporated and fluffy. Add lemon juice and lemon extract and 1 cup of sugar. Gradually add more sugar - you will need more sugar for it to be pipeable (stiffer) and less if you are just going to spread it on the cake. If you want your frosting yellow, add a few drops of food coloring as desired.
Garnish with rosemary!
These cupcakes were inspired by really tasty cookies my mom made a few years back. They were basically lemon cookies with lemon and rosemary mascarpone frosting sandwiched inside. If it weren’t for my travels in France and eating lavender and rose flavored ice creams, I don’t think I’d so openly embrace rosemary in sweets. Thank God I did, because it’s a really great addition to lemon-flavored treats!
Stumped with what to do, I called my mom and asked her what she thought I should do to the box of yellow cake (left over from the bacon cupcakes – with those, I had to add bacon and bacon grease and altered the oil/egg/water ratio than suggested on the box). Her solution was easy: replace the water with lemon juice! I thought that maybe 2/3 c of lemon juice would be a bit much in this case, so I opted to split the water and juice half-and-half. As usual, I licked every spoon before washing… you know, taste testing for quality… That’s when I figured to add a bit of the lemon extract I already had on had.
So look at that… one of my weekly goals this year was to get creative and think outside the “box” of cupcake mix. And I’ve done so THREE times already in two months! I’m way addicted to cupcakes and am thinking up at least three other flavor combinations to try next…
