the perfect lemon cupcake?

[prasantrin]

I recently had the Lemon Drop cupcake from Cupcakes in Vancouver and thought, well, that it sucked. The cupcake was dry and heavy, and the frosting was like eating pure icing sugar. I thought I could surely do better, despite my lack of prowess in the kitchen.

I've settled on the lemon cream cheese frosting from Fine Cooking (which really go with a ginger cupcake I want to make, too). But what do I do about the cupcake? I'd like something light and airy, but with a lemony punch. I don't have any lemon extract or flavouring, so I'd like to use lemon juice. I've been searching and found some recipes, but most reviews said the cake was heavy and/or dry.

Any tried and true light lemony cupcakes out there?

[baroness]

For a 'lemony punch', use some finely grated lemon zest along wth fresh lemon juice. Lemon oil is great, too. I think lemon extract is horrid, but YMMV.

My favorite lemon cake is a poundcake style, which is pierced and doused with a fresh lemon juice-based syrup after baking...very moist and fruity but not terribly light!

[rooftop1000]

I used to make a lemon poppy muffin that was truly the fluffiest lightest cake ever...but I lost the recipe. It did have ricotta cheese, no butter, vegetable oil...once when I really thought about it I realized it was even pretty low fat.

I dont know squat about cake formula, maybe someone could work off the ricotta part though

"they" dont even make a good lemon mix anymore

tracey

[Tri2Cook]

I made a lemon cake by baking a basic yellow cake with some lemon zest added, punching a bunch of holes (like making a jello cake) and pouring still warm fresh made lemon curd over it. Afer some fridge time, I covered it with meringue and hit it with my torch to color it up a bit. Nothing fancy but it went over well. Not "light and airy" though. I don't have too many light and airy cake recipes, I'm not a huge cake fan and the ones I do like are usually dense and moist.

[gfron1]

Having looked at a bunch of previous posts on lemon cakes, it seems that RLB's Chiffon is the must have dessert:

Here are some other links:

Lemon Yogurt Cake

Lemon Glow Chiffon Cake

Lemon Chiffon Cake

A pic that may push you toward RLB's Lemon Chiffon Cake

[oli]

Having looked at a bunch of previous posts on lemon cakes, it seems that RLB's Chiffon is the must have dessert:

Here are some other links:

Lemon Yogurt Cake

Lemon Glow Chiffon Cake

Lemon Chiffon Cake

A pic that may push you toward RLB's Lemon Chiffon Cake

←

I would like to try RLB's recipe, but could not find it, even under Twin Cities.com. Does anybody have a working link?

Thanks

[merstar]

Having looked at a bunch of previous posts on lemon cakes, it seems that RLB's Chiffon is the must have dessert:

Here are some other links:

Lemon Yogurt Cake

Lemon Glow Chiffon Cake

Lemon Chiffon Cake

A pic that may push you toward RLB's Lemon Chiffon Cake

←

I would like to try RLB's recipe, but could not find it, even under Twin Cities.com. Does anybody have a working link?

Thanks

←

Oli,

I can PM the recipe to you if you'd like. Let me know.

[Patrick S]

RLB's lemon chiffon is still my favorite lemon cake. I double the zest and juice. If you try it as a cupcake, report back how it turns out.

[prasantrin]

Looks like lemon glow it is! I think I have that recipe somewhere on my computer, too! I will probably have to halve the recipe, since my oven is quite small and I don't want the batter to sit around too long while so many batches are baking.

Do you think it will stand up to a cream cheese frosting?