Raspberry Lemonade Cupcakes

My sister rocks. Seriously. Because she’s come up with the perfect scheme for my bridal shower.

We’re having our own Cupcake Wars.

Every summer, my lovely aunt Jill hosts a Girls’ Weekend for all the women on the Watts side of my family. Grandma, moms, aunts, cousins, and female significant others all get together for a few days of shopping, munching, cooking, games, lounging by the pool, and catching up.

Sometimes, we do things like this (because all Watts kids learn to play Scrabble young – and they play it well):

Or this (because my cousin’s fiancee is a yoga instructor, and she made us):

Or this (because we can’t resist things like matching camis that declare we are “chicks” of one kind or another):

If you’re female, you should be jealous. I look forward to this shindig every summer.

This year, it’ll end with my bridal shower.

The theme of the shower is “Fruits of the Spirit,” so the Cupcake Wars rule is that the cupcakes have to involve some kind of fruit. In the batter. In the frosting. On top.

Got it down. Ready to go. The bride-to-be will WIN. We may as well not even compete (but it’s fun, so we will).

Who wants to be on my team?

I’m going to make Raspberry Lemonade Cupcakes, which are actually lemon cupcakes with a raspberry cream cheese frosting, but which taste incredibly like raspberry lemonade when you bite into them and the flavors mingle on your tongue. And who doesn’t like raspberry lemonade?

I first made these cupcakes for Easter, with my soon-to-be nieces in mind. I got the idea from Eva at Adventures in Cooking, except that hers are sweet lime cupcakes with raspberry frosting. Well, I had lemons in the fruit bowl, not sweet limes (yes, sweet limes are an actual variety of lime, and they are now on my list of new foods to track down. Never heard of sweet limes? Don’t sweat it. I hadn’t either). So I made lemon cupcakes, and played the frosting recipe just a bit, and was delighted by how perfectly springy they were – perfect for Easter.

I put them in darling little flower-shaped cupcake liners like these, and set them on my tiered cupcake stand, and they were charming. But better than the charming part was the delicious part. Because let me tell you, these are seriously good. They are a tiny bit tangy and a lot sweet, and they are everything a perfect cupcake should be texture-wise: fluffy and moist, with a fine, velvety crumb.

That texture happened because I found this in the grocery store:

I know, it’s just cake flour. But it’s unbleached, all-natural cake flour. I think I jumped up and down and squealed when I saw it there on the shelf. I love King Arthur. I put a box in my cart (resisting the urge to buy all they had in fear that it wouldn’t be there the next time I needed some), and did the rest of my shopping in a half-fog because I was daydreaming about what I was going to do with that cake flour.

I used to shy away from recipes that called for cake flour because I didn’t want to use the bleached, chemicalized stuff. And honestly, if a recipe says to use cake flour and you use not-cake flour, you’ll be disappointed in the results. But now that I’ve found King Arthur cake flour, the world is a happier place for me.

So. If you don’t have any cake flour on hand, stop reading now and go out and get some. Or order some from King Arthur’s online shop. When you have the cake flour, come back to this recipe. Well, you can finish reading the post now, but don’t try to bake these without the cake flour. Okay?

Here we go…

For the cupcakes:

3 cups unbleached, all-natural cake flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon kosher or sea salt

2 cups ultrafine sugar (if you don’t have or can’t find ultrafine sugar, just whirl some regular sugar around in the blender or food processor to make it finer. I blended raw sugar for these to make it ultrafine. Just don’t let it get to the powder stage)

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

4 large eggs

1 tablespoon non-GMO canola oil 

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Grated zest from 1 lemon (about 2 tablespoons)

Juice from 1 lemon (about 1/4 cup)

2/3 cup whole milk

1/2 cup buttermilk

For the frosting:

3-4 cups powdered sugar

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries (if you use frozen, thaw them completely and drain them really well before using, or your frosting will be too thin)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare two cupcake pans (enough for 18 cupcakes) with paper liners, or grease well with spray oil.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

 In the bowl of a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy.

 Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Mix in the oil, vanilla, lemon zest, and juice until well combined.

Stir together the milk and buttermilk. Add to the butter mixture about a half cupful at a time, alternating with the flour mixture, until everything is just blended. Don’t over-mix at this point.

Fill the cupcake pans about 3/4 full, and bake 12-15 minutes, until golden, and a toothpick or cake tester inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean.

Remove cupcakes to a cooling rack. Cool completely before frosting.

Clean your mixing bowl and beaters. Beat together the butter and cream cheese until fluffy.

Beat in the vanilla and berries until fully incorporated.

With the mixer on low (so that the powdered sugar doesn’t become a cloud as you add it), add the sugar a half cupful or so at a time, mixing well after each addition.

Keep adding sugar until the mixture achieves a spreadable consistency. It will probably be a bit soft, so it helps to refrigerate it for 10-15 minutes before using it.

Spread onto cooled cupcakes with an offset spatula or knife, or pipe it on prettily with a piping bag and star tip.

Makes about 18 cupcakes.