Green Eggs & Dirt

These are actually lemon cake cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting but I used my basic yellow cake recipe and just added lemon juice and rind to the batter for lemony goodness.  The cake is what they call a basic “1234 cake” recipe but I’ll give you some additional tips for how to get a fluffy, moist cake.  You can use this cake batter as a base for other flavors of cake, like lemon!

Cake Ingredients:

• 4 eggs, warmed to room temperature and separated (you can let the eggs sit in a bowl of warm water for 10 minutes, that does the trick)
• 1 cup milk, also left to sit out at room temperature for at least 30 minutes
• 3 cups of unbleached white flour, pastry flour, or ideally cake flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

*To make lemon cake, add 1 tablespoon of grated lemon zest plus 2 teaspoons lemon juice to the batter.  If it’s not lemony enough for you, add more. It wasn’t lemony enough for me so I added a bit more.

Directions:

1. If you can, think ahead and leave the butter, milk and eggs to sit out for 30 minutes to an hour to get them to room temperature.  Cutting the butter into smaller chunks helps it soften much faster.
2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
3. Grease your cake pan(s) and line them with parchment paper.  I usually use a little butter to grease pans, smearing it with the butter wrapper, a paper towel, or just my fingers.  Then grease the paper and dust the pans with flour, tapping out the excess.
4. Sift and then measure your flour.  Once sifted, add the baking powder and salt to the flour and mix with a fork to combine.
5. In a bowl or using a stand mixer (best method), beat the butter until it’s light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.
6. Add in the sugar and let the sugar and butter cream for about 10 minutes, until it’s fluffy and light yellow.
7. Beat in the egg yolks, one at a time, and then add in the vanilla.
8. Once that’s well mixed, add the flour and the milk alternately, starting and ending with one third of the flour.  Stir until just combined.
9. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks.  Stir one third of the whipped egg whites into the batter, then gently fold in the rest.
10. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. For 2 layer cakes, that’s about 30 minutes (but start testing at about 25 minutes).  For cupcakes, that’s about 20 minutes (but start testing at 18 or so).
11. Once cooked, frost with your favorite frosting. For the cupcakes pictured, I used my favorite cream-cheese whipped-cream frosting, spiked with some lemon juice and colored yellow.

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