Bitter Sweet Recipes

These special little cupcakes are a mixture of two recipes from The Australian Women’s Weekly book “cupcakes”.
They are a great alternative to traditional lemon meringue pie and they deliver just the right amount of coconut and lemon flavours for an indulgent treat. The pretty decoration and unusual frosting and really easy to do, and they look great arranged on a platter for a birthday party or get together.

This recipe makes 12 standard cupcakes, or 6 texas muffins, or 1 medium cake. It needs to be eaten on the same day of cooking however you can prepare the lemon curd a day in advance for faster assembly on the day. This recipe is not suitable for freezing, and will be affected negatively by prolonged refrigeration. This recipe can be doubled.

INGREDIENTS

Coconut Cake
125 grams softened butter
2 teaspoons of finely grated lemon zest
150 grams White sugar
2 whole fresh eggs
80 ml Milk
60 grams Desiccated Coconut
185 grams Self Raising Flour

Lemon Curd Filling
4 egg yolks
75 grams White sugar
2 teaspoons of finely grated lemon zest
60 ml Lemon Juice
40 grams Butter

Marshmallow Meringue Frosting
220 grams White sugar
80 ml Water
2 egg whites

Coloured Sugar
White sugar
1 drop of yellow food colouring

METHOD

Make the Lemon Curd:
Combine all ingredients in a clean bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Whisk constantly until mixture is thickened and will coat the back of a metal spoon. Cover the surface of the lemon curd with cling wrap and refrigerate until cold.

Make the Coconut Cakes:
Preheat your oven to 160 degrees celcius and prepare a 12 hole standard muffin pan or a 6 hold texas muffin pan by lining them with paper cases.

Beat the Butter, zest and sugar until light and fluffy. Stir in the milk and coconut, then fold in the flour.

folding in the coconut and flour

Divide the mixture amongst your prepared muffin cases and bake in your preheated oven for 20-30 minutes or until they are golden brown and spring back to the touch.

Place on a rack to cool.

Make the frosting:
When the cupcakes and curd are cold, prepare the frosting. Combine the water and sugar in a small saucepan and boil without stirring, until mixture thickens but does not colour. This should take about 5 minutes.

boilling sugar syrup

In a large clean bowl, whip your 2 egg whites to soft peaks with electric beaters. With the beaters still running slowly start adding the hot sugar syrup in a small stream to the egg whites, continue to mix well until all syrup is added and your egg whites are volumous, white, glossy and very fluffy.

Hot sugar syrup being beaten into the egg whites

Assemble:
Scoop out about a tablespoon of cake from the top of the cupcakes.

Cupckaes with holes ready to be filled with curd

Fill the hole with a tablespoon of curd

Cupcake Filled with Lemon Curd

Ice the cupcakes with the marshmallow meringue frosting. You can pipe it on or spoon it on and create peaks with the back of a spoon.

Make the coloured sugar by combining the sugar and food colouring in a small zip lock baggie and shake till all the sugar crystals are evenly coloured.

Sugar coloured Yellow

Sprinkle it over the tops of the cupcakes.

VARIATIONS
If you like you can use a blowtorch to lightly brown the meringue frosting. It is already technically cooked due to the use of hot sugar syrup but this will give it a nice appearance and a slight crunch.

If you like you can also make this recipe into a full sized cake. Just bake the cake mix in a medium round cake pan, slice in half and fill with lemon curd and then ice with the frosting.