Your Mom Wants You to Make Lemon Cupcakes

Mother's Day is coming up in, like, three days. That means you have three days to come up with some magnificent way to tell your mom you love her.

Tell her with cake.

Everybody knows food speaks louder than words (especially beans....beans speak very loudly), so what better way to tell your mom "thanks for putting up with me" than with fresh lemony cupcakes buried under mounds of fresh lemony frosting? Trick question. There is no better way.

Okay, maybe a free trip to Paris, but we're broke, so cupcakes it is.

This recipe was originally posted by FriedBlueTomato on AllRecipes.com. It is by far the best from-scratch cake recipe I've ever tried. I didn't drop an F-bomb once.

Ingredients:
3 cups flour
1 tbs baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
Zest of 3-4 lemons
1 cup milk
3 tbs lemon juice

Plus:
2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 tbs lemon juice
Yellow food dye (optional)

Instructions:
1. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

2. Beat butter and sugar together until fluffy. Do not mistake for a kitten.

3. Add eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition.

4. Mix in the vanilla and lemon zest.

5. Gently beat in approximately 1/3 of the flour mixture, then half the milk, and half the lemon juice. Gently beat in another 1/3 of the flour mixture, the rest of the milk, and the rest of the lemon juice. Gently beat in the rest of the flour until just combined. Don't abuse your batter.

6. Spoon into a muffin tin lined with pretty cupcake papers and bake at 375 for 17-20 minutes until your house smells good and stabbing your muffins with a toothpick does not result in lemony bloodsplatter everywhere. Lick the bowl. No, seriously. Do it.

7. Let your cupcakes cool in the pan while you whip up some frosting.

8. To make frosting, beat the heavy cream until it starts to thicken. Gradually add in 3/4 cup of powdered sugar and 1 1/2 tbs lemon juice. Keep beating until your arm falls off or mixture gets all thick and frosting-like. Add yellow food coloring for extra lemony emphasis.

9. Let the cupcakes finish cooling on a wire rack and then frost until beautiful.

If cake making isn't really your thing, you can also bring your mother flowers (cliche!) or spend a whole crapton of time giving your younger siblings noogies until they agree to do a photo shoot with you, and then spend a whole other crapton of time going through the photos and cropping them and editing them and printing them and then arranging them in a little album.

Since I opted for the latter option and would hate for all my craptons of time to go unappreciated, here's a sneak peek at our highly unprofessional photo shoot.

Also, just because I love you guys, here's the JPG for the album cover in case you want to make one for your mom. I printed this up at 4.5x6.25" to fit our album, but you can stretch it and skew it any way necessary, just right-click and "Save As."

Happy Mother's Day!

I shared this recipe in Eat Drink & Be Mary's Delicious Dish Tuesday Linkup. Go check her out!