I was looking for a lemony treat to make for my aunt's birthday when I saw this great recipe for a lemon souffle from Martha Stewart. The recipe showed the souffle baked inside of the skin of a lemon. It looked amazing, but very time consuming. Seeing as how I had about an hour to prepare, bake and decorate, I thought it was a little out of reach so instead I took the concept and added a little twist.
First I started by making a meringue. I used a basic meringue recipe, piped it onto parchment paper and baked for about an hour. Then I moved on to the cake.
I took 8 lemons and removed all of the juice, pulp and rinds. Then I created a lemon cake batter and filled the lemons about 3/4 of the way full with the batter and put in the oven at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. I had enough batter left over to make a round cake too, so I greased up a pan and put that into the oven also.
Once the cakes were done I made a lite glaze (just powdered sugar, milk and vanilla extract) to spoon over top of the completed cupcakes and cake. I cut the rounded tops off of the cupcakes so that they had a flat top surface and put just a small spoonful of glaze over top, then I put the cooled meringues on top of them. For the cake, I covered the complete cake with the glaze then added some gold flecks.
Everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy the treats. Using the lemon skin really gave the cupcakes a terrific added lemon flavor that the cake did not have.
Here are the finished products:
What do you think??? I will definitely be making these again. They were light and fresh and, most importantly, they were a hit!
