Lemon Cupcakes with Champagne Glaze

for the cupcakes:
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 tsp vanilla
zest of 1 large lemon
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt

for the glaze:
1 tbl butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2-4 tbls champagne

(makes about a dozen)

Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder. Cream the sugar and butter. Add the egg and mix well. Add the sour cream, lemon zest and vanilla. Mix well. Add the dry ingredients and mix to combine. Prep a cupcake pan with liners and dole out the batter evenly between them. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven till a toothpick comes out clean, about 20-25 minutes.

For the glaze:
Melt the butter in a small sauce pan over low heat. Add the sugar and champagne and mix to combine. Stir over low heat till the sugar is dissolved. Dip cupcake tops in the glaze.

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First things first, props: I got the cupcake recipe from here. I was looking for a nice, simple (and small) lemon cupcake recipe and it fit the bill. Most of the recipes I saw wanted three eggs (making it hard to halve the recipe) and made at least two dozen cupcakes. I didn't need anything like that many, it was just a little something to celebrate my girlfriends first week at her new job. I changed it a tiny bit, swapping out zest for extract and making them full size cupcakes instead of minis. Other than that, it's the same thing. They came out well, although the glaze I whipped up needs a little work. I used to make a champagne glaze that was devastating, but for some reason I can't remember it at all. So I tossed one together using tidbits from the internet (although this post at How to Cook Like Your Grandmother is what reminded me of the whole thing). It was ok. It tasted oddly like Swedish fish, sort of. Instead of like champagne, which was the goal of course. But it went well with lemon and it wasn't gross so it wasn't a fail. Allow me show you.

First, cupcakes. Sweet, cakey treasures, piping hot from their forty watt womb... er, sorry. Cartoons have warped me. These are not made in a Happy Cake Oven, they are made in a real oven. Which means we need to cream the butter and sugar. Once again I'm doing it by hand. I think I'm going to go so far as to throw out my hand mixer, it's a piece of crap and I never use it. Anyway, once that's done add the egg. Mix to combine. I added the vanilla to the zest a little earlier, my brother told me that the alcohol would pull out some of the oils and make it more lemony. Don't know if it worked, but it smelled awesome. So, then I added the sour cream, zest and vanilla. Again, mix to combine. Dry mix? Mix to combine. Now you could resist the urge to eat some of the sweet, lemony batter but I don't recommend it. In fact if you look at that picture you will see at least one finger swipe. I had to make sure it was good, you see. And it was. Now, portion the batter out evenly into your lined cupcake pan. I only got eleven, but that was plenty since it was just the two of us. Into the 350 degree oven till done, about twenty five minutes. I've found it's important to stick your thumb in at least one cupcake while pulling them out of the oven. If it was perfect, no one would believe it, right? Right. And that's that, except for the glaze. Which I didn't manage to get a single decent picture of while I was making it. Sorry. But since it's kind of a work in progress, I'll worry about it more next time I try it. Hopefully then it will come out better too. So, there it is. Lemon sour cream cupcakes with a champagne glaze. They were moist, delicious and for some reason very hard to get a really good, sharp picture of. I think it's all the light colors and shiny surfaces. Well, they tasted good, that's the most important thing. And they weren't all blurry in real life. Heh.