For Sabrina’s birthday, the Dora cake was the main birthday cake, but I’m not a fan of how fondant tastes, so I also prepared cupcakes. It turns out, all the kids happily ate the Dora cake. Shows how much I know about kids, but I’m still glad we had these Lemon-Lime Cupcakes for the adults. It’s a lemon cake with lime curd cream cheese frosting, light and summery, perfect for the great weather we had today (finally!)

Lemon Lime Cupcakes with sprinkles 4

I used Dora cupcake liners, which are adorable, but oddly, the cupcake liners seemed to detach from the edges of the cake, which I’ve never seen before.

Dora the Explorer cupcake liners

Lemon Lime Cupcakes
~makes 26 to 28 cupcakes

Lemon Cake
~adapted from Nick Malgieri’s Golden Cake Layers

  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 1/3 cups sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 teaspoons lemon extract
  • 6 large egg yolks
  • 1 cup milk

Creamy Lime Frosting

  • 3 ounces cream cheese, softened
  • 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
  • 1/4 cup lime curd
  • 1.5 cups confectioner’s sugar

Instructions –

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and put cupcake liners in tins.

2. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, and salt.

3. Cream together butter and sugar in a stand mixer on medium speed, beating with paddle attachment for about 5 minutes, or until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla and lemon extracts, then the egg yolks one at a time.

creamed butter and sugar creamed butter with sugar with yolks

4. Reduce to low speed and beat in one third of the flour mixture, then half of the milk, the next third of flour mixture, the rest of the milk, then the remainder of the flour mixture. Scrape down in between.

5. Spoon into muffin tins and bake for 13-15 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool in the pans for 5 minutes, then remove to wire rack to finish cooling.

Lemon cake

6. To make frosting, beat cream cheese and butter in a stand mixer on medium speed for 4 minutes. Beat in lime curd. Beat in confectioner’s sugar gradually. When it’s all in, beat another 5 minutes.

7. Frost cupcakes.

Lemon Lime Cupcakes

*Note: This frosting is a bit soft and doesn’t hold shape well when piped. It tastes fantastic though so I would still use it for a different look. I chose to put some colorful sugar sprinkles on top (appropriate for a kids birthday party).

Lemon Lime Cupcakes with sprinkles

posted by jessica at 06:06 PM Filed under Desserts, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.