Every time one of our friends has a birthday, Corey goes to great lengths to throw a party. She plans it, reminds everyone to go (no small feat), collects money for dinner (pizza or going out to one of those cheap restaurants we frequent), finds weird little gifts, and more often than not, baking the cake. This last year she & dmitry threw me a very sweet surprise party.
the cakes of birthdays past
Of course, the rest of us help her (I am often involved in the cake baking) but she is really the driving force behind these parties – and there are quite a few of them. Her birthday happens to be in June, so we aren’t at school, and can’t celebrate it.
So a few weeks ago, a friend of ours decided we should throw her a surprise party. (she was very surprised)
Matt and I made the cake.
Well, cupcakes. Coco likes to read Joy the Baker (link here) and had recently commented on how good the cupcakes looked. Matt and I agreed that these spring cupcakes would be perfect.
A week later, I dragged myself awake at 10:30 am on Sunday morning about five hours after I had gone to bed and went to the kitchen to bake these suckers. (to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have made it if Matt hadn’t called me around then.) We had an hour and a half to bake the cupcakes before we were supposed to meet everyone for lunch.
Despite a pounding headache and the lack of any labor saving technology like mixers, these were still pretty easy to pull off.
Key Lime Cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (closely Adapted from Joy the Baker)
- 1 cup flour
- a scant 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- pinch of salt
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- juice of 2-3 small key limes
Prep 10-20 minutes, bake time 20-25 minutes
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda together. Add the butter (which seriously needs to be softish if you don’t have a mixer. Put it in the microwave for a few seconds if it’s too cold. But let it sit out if you can). Mix it up until it has a “sandy consistency.” You can use a spoon to do this, or even your fingers. Gradually pour in half of the milk.
Whisk the rest of the milk, the egg, the vanilla, and the lime juice together, and then mix it in to the dry ingredients.
Line your cupcake pan, then spoon the mixture in evenly. (it will be a little more than halfway). Pop them in the oven. Her recipe says 20-25 minutes, but ours were done in just under 20, so play it by ear depending on your oven.
Meanwhile, make the frosting
Cream Cheese Frosting
- 1 package of cream cheese (8oz), room temperature
- 1/2 stick of butter (this is 1/4 cup or 4tbs), room temperature
- 3/4 – 1 cup of powdered sugar
- 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
- juice of 2 small key limes, to taste
Sorry college students, you really do need powdered sugar. Frosting turns out kind of weird if you use the granulated kind. It’s not very expensive though, and you can make quite a lot of frosting with one bag.
Anyway, mix the butter and the cream cheese together. If they are not at room temperature they will not mix very well (and you will end up with something lumpy and weird.) Let them come up to temperature, or put them in the microwave for 10-15 seconds – you don’t want them to melt, just to be soft. Once they are reasonably mixed together add the vanilla and lime juice and add the sugar a little at a time. Mix it up! It will get shiny as the sugar is mixed in.
You can make this as sweet or tangy as you want. We settled on about 3/4 c sugar and 2 limes, and it was pleasantly tangy and not too sweet. This recipe makes a ton of icing, so half it or be prepared to have leftovers.
Ice the cupcakes! Ideally, you should wait for them to cool. They’ll look prettier but sometimes you don’t have the time (or patience!). There are tons of fancy ways to ice – but I haven’t mastered any of them yet. (Share any tips you have!) I decorated the top with a small slice of lime.
result of 15 minutes decorating time!
And away we went!
A few hours later, we returned to eat the cupcakes.
VERDICT: AWESOME, reminiscent of key lime pie
I thought so and I totally hate cupcakes most of the time!
They were denser than your average cupcake, and the outside had that delicious carmel-y texture that muffins sometimes get. The cupcake itself was pretty sweet, but this was nicely offset by the tangy frosting. Squeezing the slice of lime on top turned out to be pretty tasty.
They garnered high praise. I wish I had had more time to take photos but my friends were getting pretty impatiant waiting for their dessert
It didn’t take them long to polish these off, and the party drifted apart (it was ~3:30pm after all)
At which point I promptly fell asleep for the rest of the afternoon
If you want a good cupcake recipe, try this one – I know I’ll be making it again. it’s easy, delicious, cute. GO FOR IT
collegekitschin 