Lemon and Poppy-seed Cupcakes – with Lemon Buttercream Topping

Here is my first attempt at blog, i decided to go simple with lemon and poppy-seed cupcakes, these cupcakes are beautifully tangy and sweet which makes them the perfect treat.

First things first here are the ingredients for the Cupcakes:

• 150g Butter (Spread that says “suitable for baking” can also be used for the cake mixture but not the topping)
• 150g Golden Caster Sugar
• 3 medium eggs
• 150g Self-Raising Flour
• 2 Heaped Teaspoons Plain Natural Yogurt
• 40g Poppyseeds
• Zest of 2 Small lemons (Juice will be used later)
• 1 level teaspoon Baking Powder

Tip: Always prepare your ingredients beforehand, because it prevents undue stress whilst cooking and therefore less error and panic.

Method:

1. Preheat you oven 180°C/160°C Fan/ Gas Mark 4
2. Place all your sugar into a large mixing bowl and beat in the butter to produce a pale and fluffy texture.
3. In a separate bowl beat the eggs together.
4. Bit by bit add the egg mixture to the Butter/Sugar combo, if it begins to curdle just add some of the flour early.
5. Now add all other ingredients (Flour, Yogurt, Poppyseeds, Lemon Zest and Baking Powder) and mix it all together and you should get a nice smooth mixture

6. Spread the mixture across 12 cupcake / muffin cases on a muffin tray and put into the oven

7. Cook for about 20 mins until slightly golden and a skewer inserted into a cupcake will come out clean, then cool on a wire rack.

DONE!

Now here are the Ingredients for the Buttercream Topping.

• 200g Butter
• 325g Icing Sugar
• Juice of 2 Lemons (The two we used the zest of earlier)

Method:

1. Beat the Butter in a bowl to make it very smooth and then add the icing sugar and beat until combined.
2. Once all the Icing Sugar is combined add the lemon juice slowly while stirring the mixture.
3. Cool in the fridge until ready to use.

Finishing touches:

Once the cupcakes have completley cooled you can ice them. There a few ways to add the icing here all are up to you. As are the little fruits I added on top.

1. This is simply spreading the icing over, for those of you who don’t want to do  piping or just don’t have a piping bag.

2. Here is my choice of decoration though:

3. Enjoy!