When life gives you lemons, try to make a pregnant person go into labor!

Today because I'm on spring break, had some time on my hands, and since I love my sister, I made these labor-inducing lemon cupcakes to try to encourage my little niece/nephew to make her/his arrival ASAP!



I figured since Beth is about to go through labor (which I hear is a painful adventure), I would at least give her one more treat. Apparently in Detroit, 19 women who were past-due ate lemon drop cupcakes from a shop in town and went into labor. You can read that story here. My sis is technically not past-due since the real date is April 25th, but wouldn't it be great to have an Easter baby!? I'm working on it! (And if this works, I'm really going to call the local news station and tell them to put me on TV. Maybe.)

I figured out my own lemon cupcake recipe using a couple of different cupcake books, and this is what I came up with.

Bring-on-the-Labor Lemon Cupcakes

1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1 Tbs lemon zest
1 Tbs lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon extract

Cream sugar and butter. Add eggs one at a time. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking soda, and salt. Add dry ingredients to the batter, alternating with milk. Start and finish with the dry ingredients. Add zest, juice, and extracts. Bake 'em!

Bake at 325 for 20-22 minutes; makes a dozen regular cupcakes and 6 mini cupcakes.

Lemony Icing (Okay, I confess. I didn't actually measure anything when I made this icing, but this is my best guess. Just do this and then add more sugar if it's not thick enough.)

4 cups confectioners sugar
2 sticks of butter
1 1/2 Tbs lemon zest
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon extract (You can add more of this if you want it super lemony!)

Mix sugar and butter until smooth. Mix in everything else. (Complicated, huh?)

After you ice them, you should probably put some type of berry (I used blueberries) or SPRINKLES on top. Can't see it in my photo, but I did break out the yellow sprinkles. You could also put yellow food coloring in the icing.


And finally, new (to me) cupcake baking info that most people have probably thought of before, but just in case you haven't, I'll share:

1. Use a mini muffin tin to do something with extra batter. The little cakes are the best when you really don't want need to eat a whole cupcake.

2. You can freeze cake batter and icing. Never knew this, but really, duh! Why hadn't I thought of that? Most times recipes make a dozen or more cupcakes. I usually only need a dozen because I'm usually taking them somewhere, and it can actually overwhelm people when you show up with two boxes of cupcakes. I've seen it happen. So make the batter, bake half, and put the other half in the freezer.

3. If you freeze batter or icing, put the batter/icing in a big ziploc to freeze. After you thaw it, snip the corner and just squeeze the goodness into the cupcake tin or directly onto cupcakes. Yep, that's easy!