#3: Lemon/Ginger & Mint/Chocolate

I've been unwell this week so I cheated a little bit on the cupcake thing. My icing comes from a jar. Wait! Don't
stone me! I added my own junk to it as well, so it's not just gross too sweet icing.

This unwellness also made it a real chore to make 36 cupcakes, so I made 12. And I had some left in my freezer from Christmas, so I brought those to the office as well. I did make the cake on the lemon ones though! Not a total loss!

For the lemony cake bit, I re-used the Nigella Clementine recipe, but I wanted it to be lighter and more cakey, less dense, so I dropped 3 eggs, upped the fruit, dropped the almond and added some flour. Which makes them not-gluten-free, but I'm not gluten free and no one I bake for is, either.





Lemon & Ginger Cakes
makes 12 cupcakes

4 meyer lemons, boiled for 2 hours (skins on, whole)
3 eggs
200g ground almonds
2/3 cup cake flour (a bit more if it looks wet)
1/4 c. oil
2/3 c. sugar
splash lemon juice
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 c. finely chopped crystallized ginger

Whizz up lemons in food processor. These didn't break down for me as much as the clementines did, so I also pressed them through a sieve into the bowl of my mixer.

Add almongs, ginger, flour, eggs, oil, sugar, lemon juice and baking soda. Mix in mixer until mixed.

I let it stand for about an hour while I made supper, which made the batter rise quite a lot.

Pour into baking cups (3/4 full) and bake at 350F for 20 minutes.

Icing
1/2 jar of No-Name vanilla icing
2-3 tbsp lemon juice.
More finely chopped ginger

Combine. Spread over cupcakes.
Sprinkle with ginger chunkies.

All in all the cake was lighter and fluffier on the lemon ones, I'm very pleased with the result. The batter tasted really bitter and I was concerned, but they baked up perfectly.




Mint Chocolate Cupcakes : Cake recipe here
Remove cupcakes from freezer.

Icing
1/2 jar of No-Name vanilla icing
a few drops of peppermint extract
3 drops of green colour

Mix together, spread over cupcakes. Stupid cupcakes made bits into the icing. Hate you, chocolate cupcakes and non-chocolate icing. I should have iced these while they were still frozen, but I did not. Oh well.

I've had the cake before, obviously, and they were very nice. Moist and light, minty and chocolatey. The fake icing I actually prefer to the chocolate - it's far sweeter, less grown-up, more fun.