I had a summer picnic to prepare and what better than something tasty and cakey for dessert?

I decided to go for something fresh and light – and what better than lemon cupcakes! I find that a really simple way of doing a lemon cake (although it is cheating a little bit) is to bake an ordinary vanilla sponge cupcake but when as soon as it comes out of the oven to make a hole in the top of the cake and fill it full of tasty lemon curd. Because the cake is warm it absorbs some of the lemon and you get a lovely burst of lemon when you bite into it. You can smooth a layer over the top of the cake too!

To finish the cake off I used my primrose yellow paste colouring to make some vanilla butter icing to pipe summery swirls onto each cupcake. I decided to make these a bit different though! I carefully put the butter icing into one side of the bag and then into the other side of the bag I spooned in some lemon curd. You will need to pipe it out onto some leftovers or into a bowl until the lemon curd comes through – but it means that when you start piping the swirls you get a gorgeous edge of lemon curd – another super zesty hit of lemon when you bite into the cake. It does take a bit of practice but once you get the hang of it the effect is really impressive.

The final touch was to sprinkle over some lemony glitter – to catch the sun when out for the picnic!

Next time I will be trying with two different colours of butter cream to get a more dramatic effect so watch this space…