Here we are, Christmas is passed and new year not yet there, and it’s exactly the time for my birthday.
Almost as a tradition, A. went horse riding with me, which is a big challenge for him who feels a little uncomfortable on the back of a horse. And then he baked me a cake!
It’s the seasonal for citrus fruits and I love citrus cakes, and for a few months we have patiently and lovingly followed the growth of a single lemon on our tree. Our lemon tree, planted 5 years ago is struggling to adjust and we have very very little fruits if none, so one, wasn’t so bad. And on my birthday we picked it for a lemon cake recipe. As we have explored over the years many recipes with lemons for my birthday, it was hard to decide which recipe to choose (A. agrees to cook if there is a solid recipe to follow by the letter). With our rosemaries growing wildly and needing a trim, I decided that it would be rosemary and lemon cake, and we opted for a cupcake base. A long time ago my mother in law offered me a book about cupcakes and it’s been years I didn’t opened it, but I immediately thought about it to find a recipe for A..
I used the poppy and ginger recipe, replaced the ginger by lemon zest and poppy by rosemary, I also added a pinch of baking powder in the dough when A. was not looking, I was worried that the baking soda wouldn’t give fluff enough…
The result was damn good! I must admit that if I were to do the recipe I would have used a little less butter, but A. followed the recipe and it was great!! So here is our recipe. Oh… we didn’t do any glazing but lemon glazing could have worked well too.
Lemon and rosemary cupcakes (makes 6)
- 100g of flour
- 100g of sugar
- 100g of butter
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 tsp of baking soda
- 1/4 tsp of salt
- a pinch of baking powder
- 1 lemon (zest only, unless you do the glazing, for which you will want the juice)
- 1 branch of rosemary
Preheat the oven to 180deg.
In one bowl mix the flour, the salt, the baking soda and the baking powder. Add the lemon zest and chop the rosemary leaves. Stir well.
In another bowl mix together the butter and the sugar (using your hands is the best tool). Add one egg and stir well with a whisk, add the second egg and stir again to obtain a creamy mixture. Add in the flour mix through a sifter, little by little while stirring. The lemon zest and rosemary may get stuck, so don’t forget them in the sifter!!! Add them too to the mix and stir.
Prepare 6 medium size muffin or cupcake papers and fill to 2/3 with the mix. We added a little branch of rosemary and a tiny pieces of lemon on top but that is optional.
Bake in the oven until perfectly cooked (clean pick comes out when picked). It took 25min for us.
If you want to glaze them prepare a mix of lemon juice and icing sugar. Otherwise enjoy just as they are. I served them with hot lemon using up the rest of the lemon.
