Maria's Cupcakes (Lemon and Elderflower)

Maria over at The Goddess's Kitchen posted these the other day and as I still have a fridge full of Total Greek Yogurt and Elderflower cordial is a store cupboard essential for me I knew I had to give the recipe a try ASAP. I made a couple of very minor tweaks (hope you don't mind Maria!) so if you want to try the original recipe please head over to the Goddess's most wonderful blog and check the recipe out.

Lemon and Elderflower Cupcakes

200g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

225g caster sugar

25g ground almonds

Finely grated zest of 1 unwaxed lemon

2 large eggs

90ml corn oil

250ml low-fat Greek Yogurt (I used the 0% variety from the Total range)

Juice from 1/2 lemon

Icing

225g icing sugar

3 tsp elderflower cordial

2 tsp water

Jelly sweeties, lemon rind to decorate

Preheat the oven to 180C/fan 160C. Line a 12-hole non-stick muffin tin with paper muffin cases.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl. Sprinkle over the sugar and ground almonds, followed by the grated lemon zest, and mix everything together.In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs with the oil and Greek yogurt. Add the lemon juice. Slowly pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir with a wooden spoon. Mix until everything is combined and there are no clumps of dry ingredients.

Spoon the mixture into the paper cases so that they are three-quarters full. Bake the cakes in the centre of the preheated oven for about 20 minutes until they are firm and springy to the touch.

Remove from the oven and place the cakes on a wire rack to cool.

To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into a medium-sized bowl. Add the elderflower cordial and water a little at a time to achieve a thick, creamy consistency. When the cakes are cool, spoon a tablespoon of icing onto each one and decorate with jelly sweeties.

Makes 12

Stolen from The Goddess's Kitchen

These did not disappoint! It's the first time I've ever made cupcakes without all the butter and missing out the whole 'beat the butter with the sugar until light and creamy' seemed to be a step too far originally. The cupcakes have a fantastic lemon flavour, they are light and fluffy just like a cupcake should be. I diligently followed the instruction on only filling the cases 3/4 full and I managed to get 18 cupcakes out of the mixture (normally I would just keep topping up the cases until the mixture was gone but Maria said 3/4 and as she is a true Goddess who am I to argue?!?!?!)

The only thing I would do differently next time is the icing, even though I ramped up the amount of elderflower the flavour is still lost amongst all the lemon. Next time I'll use only Elderflower cordial I think ... and maybe add a little to the cupcake batter too?