Duelling Lemon Cupcakes

My son always requests lemon cake with lemon frosting for his birthday cake, so of course, one of the wedding cupcake flavors will be lemon on lemon.

Now, I know I could take the easy way out and just use cake mix and pre-made frosting but where's the fun in that?   More than that, I want newlyweds to have "special" cupcakes.  I'm satisfied with the white wedding cake cupcakes.  I'm satisfied with the carrot cupcakes, but need to work on a good cream cheese frosting for it.  I'm ok with the "funfetti" cupcakes using the wedding colors.   But I haven't even started checking out chocolate cupcakes yet.  Yikes!

So I've been wandering around online and in my cupcake books and even my regular cookbooks, looking for THE lemon cupcake recipe and I've narrowed it down to 3.  Once I decide  on which two I want to make both and try them side by side to see which is better.   Actually, I have been working on these cupcakes off and on all week.  I thought it would be easier if I made the frostings first and bake them  another day and finally made them last night.

The first is a lemon cupcake I found online  ………  so far, it's winning the race.  The frosting is ... O M G … it's amazing!  I think you could put this stuff on liver and onions (sorry, liver lovers of the world) and it would be delicious.   It's from MyBakingAddiction  http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/lemon-cupcakes/

So, I made the frosting from the second recipe - also found online.  It's just a tiny bowl full!  I'm a bit disappointed .  Maybe it's because the recipe instructions used mini cupcake pans - maybe you don't  need so much frosting.

First Recipe -   Looks pretty good

The oven preheated and I got the first recipe finished.  It's pretty easy and straight forward.  This is a huge plus because I know that no matter how well I plan and prepare, the 2 days before the wedding will have me suicidal.  Since these are just test run cupcakes, I put them in the white papers that were between the foil papers.  I even got 30 cupcakes from the recipe.  (I'm not even sure if you're supposed to use the foil in direct contact, but I have in the past and no one has died so far.)  They baked nicely and I'm pleased with the look.  Unfortunately, the texture and taste was just .. meh.

By the time I got to the second recipe - the one from MyBakingAddiction - the kitchen was 80+ degrees and the butter sticks were REALLY soft.  I'd taken the two bowls of different frostings out of the fridge so they wouldn't be so hardened that it would be difficult to pipe.

Second Recipe - Not quite a pretty

This recipe reminds me a lot of the white wedding cake batter but not as thick.  The recipe uses 4 egg whites, so that makes sense.  It also uses cake flour, which I don't mind because I do have plenty of it.  It also calls for lemon zest, so I ended up with 2 lemons worth of juice that I didn't use - I put each lemon's juice in a separate keeper cup.  That way the next time a recipe calls for "the juice of one lemon" - I've got that (so there!)

These cupcakes came out beautifully, as well.  I was only able to squeeze out  23 cupcakes so it made a few of the papers not as full as the should have been.  That's ok - I'm EXPERIMENTING!

The kitchen was so hot by this time that my brain may have melted.  I removed these cupcakes from the pans right away.  Honestly, I don't know why.  I usually let them cool about 5 minutes in the pans so I can touch them with my hands when taking them out.

Both recipes together

I'm saying this because …..  Wait for it … tomorrow I'll tell you.  Leave a comment if you think you've guessed.