Lemon and Poppyseed Cupcakes with Lemon Macarons

Last weekend was all about lemons and piping!  I have to thank friends of ours, Mr and Mrs H, for the bag of lemons they generously gave me! The lemons have been sitting on my kitchen bench for some few weeks now.  I’ve wanted to incorporate them into my baking but I didn’t want to go with the obvious choice of making a lemon tart so they’ve just been sitting there, staring at me.

A little word about how I got the lemons.  A couple of weeks ago at M’s baby shower, we were heading back towards our car, which was parked the furthest away in a dingy lit carpark.  So there we were all alone walking in the dark when Mr H comes up to me and out of left field he says in hushed tones, “I’ve got some lemons for you.”

”Huh?” I think what the? Lemons?

“Yeah, they’re in the back of the car,” Mr H says quickly.

“Ummm...okay... ” Why are we whispering? Why is Mr H giving me lemons?

Then Mrs H comes along and explains all, “Yeah, we found them on our bike ride.  They were hanging from someone’s backyard so we picked them from the branches! You can use them in your baking!” Oh, I see now haha! How awesome! You guys are the best!

So here are some lemon and poppyseed cupcakes with a lemon swiss meringue buttercream.  As you can see, I wanted to experiment with different piping. 

I love piping the rosette! They’re so pretty! I still need to perfect it, but for a first attempt, I’m quite happy with how they turned out!

Then I went the traditional swirl top as I needed a mound for my macarons to sit on.  I'm not a huge fan of that much frosting on my cupcake.  I much prefer the rosette as for me, it contains the perfect ratio of frosting to cupcake.

 

C is not much of a fan of cupcakes on the basis that cupcakes are sooooo five years ago and they have been done to death! Based on that, I felt like I really had to jazz up these cupcakes and decided to top them with mini macarons!

These macarons are filled with the lemon swiss meringue buttercream and I made these primarily to experiment with piping love hearts, and I know that they're not the best looking batch!  Macarons are notoriously temperamental and it doesn't matter how often I make them, I can still stuff them up.  But like I said, these were made primarily for the purpose of experimenting with heart shaped macarons!

Making mini macarons is not good for the waistline! You can just keep popping them in your mouth and before you know it, you’ve consumed something like 5 of them without realising!

And a word about the swiss meringue buttercream.  Wow! I am a HUGE fan! It’s so wonderfully light and airy and not sickenly sweet! I think I'll keep to this type of frosting from now on.  

So there you have it, a weekend of piping and lemons!