Are you ready for the most DELICIOUS Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes ever?? They are sweet and tangy and tickle your tongue all the way down!
Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes
Hi again! It’s Jenny from Honey and Birch, back again to share another fun recipe with you. Between this recipe and the last one I shared here, you would think that all I do is bake. I swear, I do more than that – in fact, on my website I haven’t shared a baked good in a while. That’s because I save them for everyone here!
I have always wanted to be a woman who bakes cakes. I have tried several times and have had minimal success. Baking cakes is hard. Maybe you feel the same way as me? It’s kind of a fun club to be in because we get to eat lots of cookies and pies.
And cupcakes. Oh the cupcakes!
Cupcakes are so much easier to make. I attribute it to their bite-size-edness – I think less time in the oven means less chance of messing up! Also, no worrying about greasing pans because you can just put some colorful cupcake liners in your pan.
Today’s cupcake recipe is perfect for that time between winter and spring. While lemons are easy to find year-round, citrus has always fallen in the realm of a winter fruit for me. And strawberries… well, strawberries are the epitome of spring to me. Joined together, you have the perfect dessert for March days that may be cold or warm.
Between the cupcakes and the frosting, you will need a half of cup of strawberries and 1 lemon. It may not sound like enough, but believe me, these cupcakes will be packed full of lemon and strawberry flavor. I suggest zesting your lemon first and then juicing it.
If you are worried that you won’t have enough lemon juice, I have a little trick for you.
Lemon Trick: microwave your lemon for 20 seconds.
Yep, put it in the microwave! Then just wait for it to cool down and you will be able to squeeze out a lot more juice. This is especially helpful if you aren’t using a juicing tool and are squeezing by hand.
Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes Recipe
Cupcakes
- 2 cups flour
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
- 1 cup white sugar
- 2 egg at room temperature
- 1 cup milk
- 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- zest of 1 lemon
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
Frosting
- 1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon strawberry puree (about 1/2 cup diced strawberries blended or processed)
- 2 cups powdered sugar
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Prepare a muffin pan with 12 cupcake liners.
In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, salt, and baking powder together and set aside. In the bowl of stand mixer fit with a paddle, on medium, beat the butter and sugar together until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time until well mixed. Beat in the vanilla extract, milk, lemon zest and lemon juice until combined.
Add the reserved flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix on low for 1-2 minutes, until the wet and dry ingredients are combined. *Batter will be thicker than normal.
Pour the batter into the prepared muffin pan, distributing the batter evenly. Bake for 16-18 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove pan from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes. Then take the cupcakes out of the pan and continue cooling on a cooling rack.
While the cupcakes are cooling, make the frosting. In a bowl, whisk the butter until smooth. Then slowly whisk the powdered sugar in until combined and fluffy. Whisk the lemon juice and strawberry puree into the frosting until just combined.
Pipe or spread the frosting on the cupcakes when they are completely cool.
Update: I have edited the amount of liquid in the frosting after reading the comments and remaking the frosting and cupcakes. I have also fixed the missing direction.
After making the cupcakes a fourth time and rereading the comments, I added a cup of milk and liked the consistency better. I have updated the recipe accordingly. Another suggestion: make sure that you don’t over bake the cupcakes and that you properly measure your flour. This is the technique I use: stir the flour before spooning it into your measuring cup and use a knife to level off the flour before using it.
Looking for more cupcake recipes? Try these:
chocolate coffee cupcakes with a whiskey buttercream frosting and candied bacon
Jenny
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Thanks for the lovely pictures but there are things missing from this recipe. And my batch came out a little firm, definitely not as light and fluffy as yours looks. The strawberry purée made my frosting liquid. Now I’m trying to salvage this before my kids come home from school.
Definitely missing some information. When do you add the dry ingredients? My batter looks more like cookie dough than cupcake batter. Where does it tell you how many cupcakes the recipe makes? Am I missing something??
Hi Ann, I was out of town when the recipe was published and just now got back here to view and respond to the comments – I am sorry I did not respond sooner. Looking at the recipe now it appears that there were some issues when I saved the file as the ingredients are posting twice and once with out instructions. I will be fixing this immediately, as well as making edits and updates as made the cupcakes again after reading everyone’s cupcakes. My apologies for any confusion that this may have caused you.
Hi Helen, I’m sorry for my delay in replying – I was out of town when the recipe was published and just now got back here to view and respond to the comments. I remade the recipe to see if their were errors and I followed my recipe exactly. I will be editing the liquid amount for the frosting as I can see what you mean about the consistency. My cupcakes, however, turned out the same way as pictured so I’m not sure where we did things differently. If you have a suggestion, I will check it out. I’m sorry that you are having problems with my recipe.
I don’t understand how the cupcakes pictured above could possibly have been made from this recipe. My batch turned out dry…like the texture of cornbread. The frosting is an entirely different matter. Runny, runny, runny…I should have known it would be runny, because no powdered sugar based recipe uses that much liquid. I had to add (ie waste) oodles of powdered sugar just to try and thicken mine up.
Hi Sarah, thank you for your comment – I will be changing the amount of liquid for the frosting as I can see what you mean by the consistency. I am sorry that it was runny and I hope that you were still able to enjoy the frosting after you added more sugar.
Thank you Helen for commenting. I was going to bake these but now decided not to. Hope you were able to salvage your cupcakes.
I made these cupcakes today (I’ll do the frosting tomorrow), but I followed the directions to a T and the cupcakes came out perfect! I had enough batter to make 15.
I made these yesterday and again today. I did add a few changes fruit wise. I added a little more lemon juice to both the icing and the batter and I also cut up strawberrys ( about 1/2 cup) to add to batter. other than that followed the recipe and they came out great!
These look so yummy, will have to try these out before summer is over!
I doubled the recipe and made these for a potluck today. They are amazing! I made 3 kinds of cupcakes and these went first. Great flavors for summer, moist cakes and yummy frosting. For the frosting make sure you’re adding the liquids a little at a time so you don’t get it too thin. If it does end up too thin just add some powdered sugar a little at a time until it’s the right consistency.
Awesome! Thanks for the feedback! :)
I’m considering making these for my daughter’s birthday party. Have you ever tried to make these with a cream cheese based frosting? If so which recipe? Thank you!