Eating her curds and whey

Lemon curd-filled vanilla cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (cupcakeblog)

Cuspcake Rating: 3.5/5

So I outdid myself this weekend with two batches of cupcakes, the second being more complicated than any I've tried – the Lemon Curd-filled Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting from Cheryl Porro's cupcakeblog, a delicious blog I'm forcing myself to devour bit by bit. She's got a great, scientific approach to cupcaking, really unusual flavour combinations and by the looks of this one – superb recipes!

The people at work, tired out by rich chocolatey desserts, had requested something fruity for a change, and I love tart flavours so I zoomed in on this recipe. Plus, the chance to try my hand at making curd and stuffing cupcakes was irresistible.

I used evaporated milk in the vanilla cupcakes as that's all I had on hand, not sure how that affected flavour and texture. Also doubled the vanilla as I wanted it discernible to contrast with the lemon, and used a 1:4 ratio of cake flour to all-purpose, as I'd read reviews where cupcakes had turned out dense. The batter half-filled 16 2-inch cups.

The cupcakes turned out very tasty, and moist in a slightly sticky way, which may have been the evap milk talking. They also mostly had round bumps just in the centre, which was odd, but worked out alright as they lent a base to the eventual mound of frosting. I plan to experiment – just a little lighter (the weather is always hot here) and this'll be my go-to vanilla cupcake recipe.

Added more lemon juice to the curd with no apparent ill-effects, as I wanted something really tangy. The curd was yummy, I'd love to eat it over icecream, and could see myself just glazing plain cupcakes with it in a pinch. Wonder how a mango version'd work out, think mango juice might not hold up to heat as well as lemon? I added the leftover curd to the frosting, with some more lemon juice to counter all the sugar (didn't use it all in the end).

The results got good reviews at work (except from a dieter who went unhappily without). But honestly I didn't really care since, most importantly, they pleased a picky almost-five-year-old (who ate mostly the frosting and the coloured hundreds-and-thousands I'd bought expressly for her pleasure) and a perhaps-pickier 37-year-old, which pleased me no end.

There's nothing quite like baking for people you love. And no baked good says love quite like a cupcake, don't you think?