Gateau au citron

Do you like lemon muffins? Who does not!

The lemon muffins are not a big deal. They taste great as they are, but when you pimp them you will have a spectacular dessert. A cupcake with a twist.
Since my trips to the south of Italy and the Island of Sicily, I love Limoncello. I did a couple of other recipes with this liqueur.

For this recipe you will need a bit of prep time.

recipe in 3 steps:

Buttercream:
250 ml whole milk
strips of peel of 1/2 lemon
1 tsp vanilla sugar
3 egg yolk
25 g potato starch
60 g sugar

In a pot bring milk, lemon peel and vanilla to a boil. Discard the peel.
Beat egg yolks with sugar and starch to a cream in a bowl.
In a thin stream pour the hot milk into the egg cream. Now pour that through a fine sieve into a pot and on medium to low heat cook and stir constantly until thickened.
You will get a thick creamy pudding.
Pour it on a low plate and cover the top with clingfilm to prevent a skin. Cool down completely.

Lemon Muffins:
80 g soft unsalted butter
80g sugar
1 egg
zest of a lemon
2 tbsp lemon juice
80 g flour
1 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven  to 170 C
In a stand mixer cream butter, zest and sugar together until light, add the egg and stir again.
Now add flour and baking powder together with the lemon  juice.

Make a smooth batter and fill into the muffin cases up halve an bake 25min.
Cool down.

Finish:
160 g  unsalted butter
5 tbsp Lemon curd
candied lemon peel
Limoncello
12 Mini Pipetten

Beat the butter in a stand mixer creamy white, add some of the pudding and then more and more of it until completely mixed in. Now add 5 tbsp lemon curd to the mix until you have a fluffy mixture.
Use a pastry bag with a star nozzle and fill the buttercream in.

Use an apple corer and make a hole in the  muffin and fill some lemon curd in.
Now pipe the buttercream on top. Crumble some candied lemon peel on top.
Fill the Mini Pipetten with Limoncello and stick one of them in each muffin.

 These lemon cakes are sweet and tangy and the shot of liqueur gives them a special note.

Oops, I forgot to take the pictures of all the ingredients. I baked the lemon muffins first and later thought about how to pimp them. Limoncello and Lemon Curd were in stock.