A friend of mine raved bout a local bakery's raspberry lemonade cupcakes. She described the cupcake as a pink cake, with no seeds, topped with a tart lemon frosting.
This sounds like the perfect summer cupcake! You can't go wrong with raspberry and lemons...
I searched the Internet high and low for such a recipe. Of course there were recipes that had food coloring, Jello or whole raspberries in the cake. Even the lemon frosting had lemonade drink mix powder in it. *sigh*
I decided to make up my own recipe from scratch and it took four tries. This recipe uses cake flour, which I gratefully found at a GREAT price in the bulk section of Winco.
The first cupcake used raspberry extract and food coloring. While the cupcake looked pretty and had a great texture, the raspberry extract lent an artificial taste.
The second and third tries used raspberry puree. I used too much puree in this cupcake and it ended up very dense, and rubbery. Great color and taste, though.
On attempt number three, I misread the amount of butter and put too much, resulting in a overly buttery cupcake.
I substituted some of the liquid in the cake (buttermilk) for the raspberry puree. It was easier to puree the raspberries with a little bit of the buttermilk.
The puree is strained through a fine mesh sieve, removing billions of little seeds.
Here is the final cupcake!
It has a light lavender color, perfect texture and pairs fabulously with the lemon frosting.
I think we have a winner!
Raspberry Lemonade Cupcakes
(4x6 recipe download) (full page printable recipe)
