Lemon Cupcakes with Pistachio Icing

To make these, I took a classic cupcake formula, added a little lemon zest, and topped the resulting cupcakes with the pistachio buttercream from a macaroon recipe. It works.

Ingredients

For the cupcakes:
125g unsalted butter, softened
125g caster sugar
2 large eggs
125g self raising flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
Zest of 1 lemon, finely chopped
Juice of 1 lemon
A few tablespoons milk (optional)

For the Icing:
125g icing sugar
30g pistachios
65g unsalted butter, softened

Method

Preheat a fanforced oven to 200 degrees celsius. Line a muffin tray with patty pans.

To make the cakes, cream together the butter and sugar until light and pale.  Add eggs and vanilla and beat to combine.  Sift over the flour and beat to combine. Stir in the lemon zest and lemon juice.  By this stage the mixture should be a smooth dropping consistency (you want it to be cooperative enough, that is to say not overly thick and sticky, to easily spoon into the cupcake cases). If it is still too thick, add a small amount of milk.

In each patty pan, spoon in one large tablespoon of the mixture.  Add a little more to each patty pan until you've used all of the mixture.

Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes, or until golden and slightly springy to the touch. Cool on a wire rack.

To make the pistachio buttercream, place the pistachios and the icing sugar into a food processor and process until the nuts are finely ground and the sugar is like fragrant, pale green sand. In a bowl, cream the butter and add the pistachio-sugar mixture, a little at a time, beating consistently until you have a combined butter cream.  Sometimes the mixture turns out a little too hard, so I beat in a tiny bit of milk to make it easier to spread.  Make sure the cupcakes are completely cold, then ice them.

Makes 12 cupcakes