It’s our 10 year anniversary. Mine and Tylers. How crazy is that? We’ve been dating for 10 years. Nuts.

To celebrate, here’s some cake! Lemon cupcakes. I made these hoping to bring on true spring. Not ice storm spring.

It’s been a wild ride in as an Intern thus far. Nights, the Newt, so many admissions, but I love it. I won’t lie though, I’m excited to move to California. The land of…less ice. Sunshine.

But for now, a long overdue recipe post. Lemon ‘spring please come soon’ cupcakes

Lemon Cupcakes 

1.5 cups of All Purpose Flour
1 tsp of Baking Powder
0.25 tsp of Salt
0.5 cup of Granulated Sugar
0.5 cup of Unsalted Butter at room temperature
2 Eggs
0.25 cup of Ricotta
0.25 cup of Full-fat yogurt or sour cream
4 tsp of Freshly Grated Lemon Zest (2 lemons)
2 Tbsp of Fresh Lemon Juice
0.5 tsp of Vanilla Extract

Lemon-basil curd

3 eggs
0.5 cups sugar
4 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon lemon zest
0.33 cup lemon juice
4 leaves of basil, chopped up

Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

2 Tbsp of Unsalted Butter at room temperature
0.5 cup of Cream Cheese, at room temperature
1 tsp of Lemon Zest
1 ½ tsp of Lemon Juice
½ tsp of Vanilla Extract or lemon extract
1 cups of Confectioner Sugar

Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a cupcake tin with cupcake liners or spray it with non-stick spray. Beat sugar and butter together. Add in the vanilla, lemon juice, and zest. Scrape down the sides of butter mixture, and beat the eggs in one at a time. Then add in the ricotta and yogurt/sour cream. In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients.

Then slowly mix in the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, it’s critical to not overmix otherwise you’ll get tough cupcakes.

Split the cupcake batter into the various tins of the cupcake tin, pop it in the oven for about 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

While it’s baking, make the curd!

Create a double boiler, and put all the ingredients into the bowl on top and whisk together, continue to whisk until it forms a curd. When the curd is formed, pass it through a sieve, so the curd is super smooth. Set it aside to cool.

Then make the cream cheese frosting! Just beat all the ingredients together until a stiff-ish frosting forms.

Then put it together. Pull out the cupcakes to cool on a rack. When they are cool, “core them,” basically scoop out of the center. Fill the center with the curd, then top with the frosting. For decoration you can take some lemon slices, toss them in sugar, and just lay them on top.

Enjoy!