Domestic Week: Day Two

Last weekend we went up to Riverton to be treated to a delish dinner by our friends Alicia and Brad. I used to teach school with Alicia so we share a particular type of bond that is hard to explain but has to do with lots of things like sharing art lesson plans (we like to pat each others' backs because we teach Matisse while other teachers are teaching their kids how to color with crayons), complaining about recess duty, gabbing about what a great book Stargirl is, and rolling our eyes about the wicked-legislation-that-must-not-be-named. After a killer meal of Cafe Rio-esque chicken salads, we ate our weight in these cupcakes: The following recipes are taken from Cupcakes by Pamela Clark.

Cream Cheese Lemon Cake

6 tablespoons butter, softened

3 ounces cream cheese, softened

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel

2/3 cups sugar

2 eggs

1/3 cup self-rising flour

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 12-hole standard muffin pan with paper baking cups. Beat butter, cheese, lemon peel, sugar, and eggs in small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add flours to cheese mixture; beat on low speed until combined. Divide mixture amond baking cups; smooth surface. Bake about 30 minutes. Turn cakes onto wire rack to cool.

Cream Cheese Frosting

2 tablespoons butter, softened

3 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Beat butter and cheese in small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy; gradually beat in sifted powdered sugar.

Pretty simple. One trick I picked up on from this book is that you can make the presentation a little nicer if you bake the cupcakes in their paper cups and then put them in additional cups before serving them. This isn't the most frugal approach I suppose, but paper cups are pretty cheap to begin with, so I went with it.

We scarfed the dozen in roughly 8 minutes, so I think they were pretty tasty. Enjoy!