Week 31: Lemon Meringue Cupcakes and the Mini-Magnolia

This awesome cupcake recipe is from The Artful Cupcake by Marcianne Miller. It has four parts: make the cupcakes, stuff the cupcakes, meringue the cupcakes, and then you get to torch them! It all took quite a while but it was so much fun.


I made the cupcakes on Saturday night so that I could have at least one thing done. Then on Sunday, around 2;00 (earlier I had to make a visit to the Montgomery County Refuse Center (the dump) to get rid of all of our recycleables left over from this past week and then of course, I had to stop at Target to see what was going on there...I was there at least 2 hours roaming the aisles. I heard some lady talking on her cell phone that she was STILL in Target...I knew just what she meant. I was talking to my Mom on my cell phone while I was in Target and I felt someone pull my sleeve...it was someone from my office...I'm always meeting people I know in Target) anyway, back to the cupcakes. I really did follow the recipe except for this one thing. I made a pie crust and crumbled it up in the lemon curd so that there are bits on crust in it. I got this idea from the Pumpkin ice cream that the University of Maryland Dairy makes...they put pieces of pie crust in the ice cream and it is delicious!...So, I dug a little hole in the cupcakes and squirted in the lemon curd (with pie crust pieces) and then put the top back on. Then I made the meringue...which took quite a while to turn into meringue...and then I frosted the cupcakes.

The best part was fooling around with the torch! It only took a minute to figure out how to do it so that it didn't burn...but once or twice I had to blow out the fire on the cupcake. Then, at first I wasn't sure how to turn it off and I was basically pointing this torch around the kitchen (not even pointing at the cupcake anymore) looking for the off switch! The house is still standing and all the meringue goo has cleaned up nicely. They are really lucious!


Story Number 2: My brother, Jim, lives in Spokane, Washington, Unfortunatley, he is an ardent fan of the Gonzaga basketball team and whenever they play Maryland, we bet on the game. It happens that Maryland was playing the Zags on Monday, Nov. 21 in the Maui Classic. The bet was whoever loses has to make a dozen cupcakes and fed ex them overnight to the winner. He has been dying to get a hold of one of my cupcakes and I think he paid the team to play even better than they ever had to beat the Terps and they did!


I decided to make the Magnolia Bakery's vanilla cupcake recipe because it's one of my favorites and hard to mess up, too. I made their basic vanilla frosting recipe, turned it pink and added peppermint.mmmmm. It's really great! I've never fed ex'd overnight. I'll let you know how it goes.

With the left over batter, I made what I'm calling "Mini-Magolias." They turned out so cute! People at work: you don't get any of the minis...sorry, you have to be content with the Lemon Meringue Cupcakes. Download this recipe HERE