The Lemon Cupcake and Pineapple Flower-Part 1

Alright I’ll admit it. I never used to like citrus fruit. While at a Cheesecake Factory, I tried the orange chicken. Oh. My. Goodness. Delightful. I decided from this point on, it was in my absolute best interests to begin to incorporate citrus into my cooking. And thus came the lemon wedding cake we had, citrus fruit breads, cupcakes, marmalade ham, lemon potatoes, the list goes on.

For Kelsey’s shower I decided that something light would be great for dessert and when I think citrus-I think light lemon-y, orange, etc. To start off I took the easy way out and whipped up a batch of lemon cupcakes from a cake mix. Yes I know-easy way out, but sometimes when you’re making ten different items, you need to cut some corners! Don’t even get me started on my massacre of a jellyroll yet.

The cupcakes turned out beautifully. I bought these adorable muffin papers from Michaels for $1 for 50. They have awesome deals if you look around in their dollar aisles, and the prints are so cute. I like having a variety of prints available for different occasions. You can see the ones I used look very vintagey with the little chairs and blue stripes. The ones scattered with baking utensils are also very appropriate since Kelsey is a baker.

I let the lemon cupcakes cool completely. Then I brought out a recipe from the Real Women of Philadelphia: lemon cream cheese frosting. This recipe worked great, way to go Cayla for making such an easy to pipe frosting that tastes great. I made up the icing recipe and used a large icing tip to ice the cupcakes in a flower pattern. I use this pattern often because it covers a large amount of space, looks nice, but doesn’t have to be three inches thick with icing.  The cupcakes didn’t take long to ice and I got started on the pineapple flowers...