- Do you love lemons?
Do you love cupcakes?
Well, have I got the video for you.
These moist, fluffy, zingy delicious lemon cupcakes
are gonna blow your mind.
And watching Preppy Kitchen,
where I John Kanell teach you how to make delicious homemade
dishes to share with your family and friends.
These lemon cupcakes will whip up in a snap.
So let's get started.
First off, we're gonna begin infusing so much lemon flavor
into these cupcakes with my favorite trick
and I'll show you a workaround
if you don't have a food processor.
One cup of granulated sugar right into the bowl.
And now we're gonna zest two lemons, which I washed.
And for this, whenever you're using lemon zest,
I do suggest you find organic lemons,
surfaces all non-treated and nice and clean.
Zest that lemon right into the bowl.
This smells amazing.
Little bit here, a little bit of here.
I live for lemon.
Okay, right into the bowl.
That's one out of two.
We're gonna do two whole lemons into here.
It's going to make all the difference.
All that lemon zest off of here.
And if you don't have a nice microplane in your kitchen,
you need to get one.
It's such a handy tool.
Into the bowl full of lemon oil
and it's like all the lemon flavor concentrated
into a tiny little bit.
Okay, off that top on.
Close it up and we're gonna whiz whiz whiz.
Whiz it up until it's completely incorporated
and it's sugar is a beautiful sunny light, yellow color.
Where is it.
A little whizzing later and it's like a dessert
in and of itself but we're gonna save this as an ingredient.
So take the sugar, set it aside.
And now we're onto our wet ingredients.
For the wet ingredients, we're using 3/4 of a cup
of unsalted butter at room temperature
plus some extra cause it's melted right
into a large ish bowl.
It melt in the microwave on low.
Careful of that exploding butter.
One 1/4 cup of whole milk also at room temperature please.
One 1/4 cup of fresh lemon juice.
Of course you have those lemons hanging around
until you use fresh lemon juice, never the stuff
from concentrate please.
Two eggs, also room temperature, large ish.
I love these colored eggs by the way, I can't help it.
I already think it's more delicious than the regular
brown or white one regardless.
In you go.
One 1/2 of a cup of sour cream.
If you don't have it, whole milk yogurt will be fine.
It makes a big difference.
It just gives you this like pillowy soft
really moist, delicious cupcake.
There's a little bit of acid in there too,
which helps the leavening agent as well.
Then you go and finally that sugar is gonna
get added right in there as well.
Get it all out.
We're gonna give it a nice whisk.
Oh, those yolks are such a beautiful, deep orange color.
They're gonna make the whole cupcake just like this bright,
sunny, naturally yellow lemony color.
And by the by this smells beyond delicious.
It's gonna be like delicious soup for me.
Whisk, whisk, whisk, whisk.
You could do this with an electric hand mixer
if you want to, but it's not that much whisking.
Okay, once you have a nice, beautiful,
delicious homogenous mixture, you can set it aside
and run to the last part of the butter,
which is of course the dry ingredients.
One more bowl please.
For the dry ingredients, we're gonna be adding
this into a large bowl that is overscale,
but under a sifter and a scale is as usual.
The best way to measure dry ingredients of this bag,
I will only be using one and 2/3 cups
or 213 grams, ton of flour.
We're adding a quarter teaspoon of salt
and a couple of bits of leavening agents,
so one and 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder,
one 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda, and that's it.
Sieve that out and what are we gonna do?
Whisk, whisk, whisk, whisk, whisk.
Let's whisk it together.
All done.
Scale is no longer needed.
This simple, delicious cake butter is almost complete.
We can pop these babies into the oven
and make some buttercream, pour it right in there.
I saw an episode of Martha Stewart once where she told
you if like if you have something really heavy
and you're inverting it, use a tool like a whisk
to support the weight
and I always think of her when I do that.
I love her.
That's all done.
We're just gonna whisk to combine now.
Whisk, whisk, whisk.
So sometimes if you make a recipe and you do it to the T
and you find out like things are either like less fluffy
or more dense, chances are you either mismeasured
some dry ingredients or, and or you over whisked things
because you're just whisking this to combine.
You don't wanna build up too much gluten.
If you do that, the cake will expand in the oven
and then contract when it cools down
and become kind of defensed and just not so pleasant.
So really just work out any lumps of flour you see.
You see, found a lump.
And then once it's like
a nice cookie sieve, homogenous mixture.
It's ready for a cupcake papers.
So choose whichever cupcake paper you like
for these lemon cupcakes.
I'm choosing a nice bright yellow lemon color,
in you go.
White is also a classic choice though.
I find that like for a cupcake papers,
if you're using the ones with patterns,
they can kind of just fade to nothing after the bake,
which can be disappointing.
The easiest way I've found to transfer cupcake batter
into the papers is with an ice cream scoop with a trigger.
So fill it up and scoop it up.
And these ones were filling almost all way up.
So a generous scoop, you can fill it basically up to the top
and already all of that acid from the lemon is really
just like fluffing up the batter.
You can see it's like...
It's so foamy, but it's gonna be great when it's baked.
For me, this recipe normally makes about
14 generous cupcakes.
So if you're a little bit stingier with your batter
for kind of more petite ones it'll go but longer.
And if you really load them up all the way to the top,
you can get 12 so today I'm gonna load them up to the top
because I don't feel like doing a second bake.
If you think I'm wasting a drop of this batter
you've lost your mind, this is like liquid gold over here.
If there are any lemon recipes you'd like me to do.
Let me know in the comments and I'm all yours.
Okay, this is ready to go into the oven at 375
for five minutes and then we're gonna lower it to 350
and bake for an additional 10 to 12 minutes.
Keep an eye on it, everyone's oven and the tins
are different, so just nice, almost a golden edge,
fluffy and of course they're baked through
so there'll be springing to the touch.
Okay into the oven.
This buttercream is so easy but beyond delicious.
You know I normally like a Marine based frosting,
but when you have all the zing we're gonna pack
into here and American buttercream will be amazing.
So, two sticks, one cup, 226 grams of unsalted butter
at room temperature, however you count it.
I'm using a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment,
but you could totally use a hand mixer instead as well.
Okay, down.
Let's just cream it for a sec.
After we plug it in.
Now, butter's nice and creamy.
It's time for 1/4 teaspoon of salt.
A little bit of contrast.
And in here once more, we're gonna add the zest of a lemon.
So zest it up.
I love seeing the little specks of vanilla bean
and vanilla frosting.
But here you can watch all these glorious little shreds
of zest, kind of get mixed into the buttercream
and it is fantastic.
It's a beautiful and delicious.
Lemon has been stripped naked.
Let's give it a mix once more.
Set that paddle mixer aside at least
four cups of confectioner's sugar.
And if you're planning on doing any extra fancy piping,
don't have the zest in first of all,
cause that'll clog your piping tip.
I'm just gonna use a star tip
and I already have the zest in here, so I'm not gonna
worry about it.
We have four cups of confectioner's
sugar in here, plus one 1/2 so four and 1/2 cup.
And I'll do it in a couple of batches
because I want this to not be a giant cloud of sugar.
I've learned my lesson over the years.
While this mixes up, I'm going to start
pouring in 1/4 cup of fresh lemon juice,
and you can do it a little bit at a time,
but it's a full 1/4 cup.
It's gonna be amazing.
It's one of the few recipes where I'm not using vanilla.
Can you believe it?
Let it go for a minute.
Let it incorporate slowly.
You don't wanna beat too much errand
this buttercream to just go slow and steady.
Okay, once you get to some level of incorporation,
scrape the bowl down and we're gonna add
the other two cups of confectioner's sugar.
A quicker supplement.
But first, let's mix it in slowly, slowly.
Good job.
Now once it's incorporated increases speed
and they'll go crazy, but you do wanna whip it up
and I'm gonna add the rest of lemon juice to it right now.
This smells so good.
It's like wafting into the air.
I can smell the sugar is delicious, of course.
But also that lemon, the lemon zest, lemon juice.
This is amazing.
Brian's a cameraman today and he actually liked
the recipe very much, which I enjoy.
So now we'll look at that consistency.
This is (murmurs) so good, nice and creamy.
It'll pipe up perfectly and you're gonna love
like the little bit of salt, a lot of bit of zing
with the nice butter and sugar down and the buttercream.
It's gonna be amazing.
So let's do a little editing and get to the decoration.
Look at this cupcake.
What? It is so..
Let me show you how fluffy it is.
Look at this.
It is like a lemon that God magically transformed
into a cupcake and it's delicious.
These cupcakes are out of the oven and cool.
They cannot be warm.
So look at that.
Do you see how nice and perfectly yellow that is?
It is delicious, right?
This goes onto whatever surface you'd like.
I'm using a turntable and we're going to transfer
some of this delicious buttercream into a piping bag
fitted with a an eight 46 attachment.
It's a closed star, but any startup is fine.
Any round tip is fine.
You can just spoon it on as well.
Just get that frosting on there.
Okay, hang on, just give it a nice decadent swirl.
I don't know what your optimal ratio of frosting
into cake is, but let me show you what looks best.
It's this soft serve realness.
(laughing)
How's that?
Now, this is done but what you would do is give it just
a little sprinkle of lemon zest right before serving lemons.
Lemon zest will dry out, so you can't do it too far
ahead of time, but if you want a little extra pizazz,
it gives you some contrast and just tells people,
"Hey, that's a lemon cupcake."
Amazing.
This is a nice classic decoration scheme,
but I wanna show you something fun too.
So use a large round tip to cover the top of the cupcake
starting in the center, moving to a circle on the outside.
Then use an offset spatula or a pallet knife or knife
and just smooth the top carefully.
You wanna nice disc of buttercream
to work on as your canvas.
Now use a large pedal tip with yellow
buttercream in just a little bit of food coloring
will go a long way.
It might be there a half circle or a full circle.
Once that's done, use a small round tip
like a number three or four tip
filled with some more of the white buttercream.
You can pipe along the edge for the rind.
Use a knife or whatever you want
and just smooth out that detail work
and blend it into a bit and pipe very little
just to delineate the little sections of lemon.
All right, that is so, I don't know if you could see it.
This is so simple to do, but I really love the effect.
It looks like a little lemon wedge on top.
If you wanna go real crazy, you can add a little bit
of honey on top or something for some shine.
But this looks great to me.
So the whole family is gonna have lemon cupcakes tonight.
It's gonna be delicious, but you know that I'm gonna
get most of them because this is my favorite recipe.
If you like this video, check out my cupcake playlist.
So many delicious cupcakes, free tryout,
and basically like every flavor imaginable.
And by the by, this is how you eat a cupcake.
Strip it off, plop it on, turn it upside down,
and you have an amazing sandwich that's ready to eat.
That crumb is perfect.
It like melts in your mouth, explodes with lemon flavor
and it's all mixing with that creamy zingy perfectly sweet.
Just a tiny little head of salt, lemon butter cream.
You've got to make this recipe.
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and I'll see you the next video.