It’s Autumn in Melbourne and it’s starting to get oh-so-cold… but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a nostalgic taste of summer half way through! Enter lemon-strawberry cupcakes!

I made these for my fiancee and friends “dude” brunch but they didn’t turn out very “manly”, at least they ate them all!

Recipe – Lemon cupcakes with strawberries

• 100ml milk
• 150 g caster sugar
• 175 g self-­raising flour
• 3 medium eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 lemon rind, grated finely
• 1 can of strawberries in syrup

For the frosting

• 150 g unsalted butter, softened
• 250 g icing sugar
• 2 teaspoons hot water
• Half a teaspoon of lemon essence or more lemon rind (about 2 table spoons, but then the frosting will have a texture to it)

Preheat the oven to 180°C and prepare your baking tray with the liners. Mix all the ingredients except the strawberries in a food mixer and beat until creamy. Open the strawberry can and drain the liquid from the strawberries, then add the whole strawberries to the mix, don’t beat afterwards.

Pour the mixture up to 2/3 of each cupcake liner and bake for 20mins or until they have risen and are firm (you can poke them with a toothpick and if the toothpick comes clean of dough then they are done.)

While the cupcakes are cooling, Mix all the ingredients for the frosting together and beat well until the frosting is consistent and smooth. Once the cupcakes are cold, pipe the icing and even out the surface with a spatula.

Stencilling

I used stencils to decorate the cupcakes. I laid it on top of the cupcake and then with a palette spread some green icing on top of it, making sure it’s spread even. Then you lift up the stencil and all done! I’ll do a step by step tutorial next time.