Lemon Cupcakes

I got some new decorating tips designed for cupcakes that I wanted to try out. My son loves lemons, so I thought some lemon cupcakes would be a nice treat for him. 

I got a cupcake filling tip. I filled my bag with lemon curd and piped them directly into the center of the cupcakes.

The technique for this is to insert the tip into the cupcake. Then you start to squeeze, and you must stop squeezing before you bring up the tip. It was neat to see the cupcakes rise a little as they were getting loaded with lemon curd.

This is one of my standard icing mixtures. I usually add some gelatin to help stabilize it, but I thought this time I might try karo syrup instead. The way to make this icing is to take a small box of instant pudding mix and add 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of cream. I added a tablespoon of karo syrup to help stabilize it, but you could use a tablespoon of unflavored gelatin as well. Since this is a diary based icing, the stabilizer allows the icing to set out at room temperature without melting.

Here is another one of my new tips. It is to make cool looking swirls of icing on top of the cupcakes. Aside from the filling tip, the rest of the tips in the kit were really for icing cupcakes. I just like this one because it is big and easy to use.

For those of you wondering, the ending results of the The Chocolate Chip Cookie Experiment was that the regular all-purpose flour I used was the winner. They were the first set of cookies to go, followed by the unbleached flour, and nobody really touched the whole wheat flour cookies aside from when I forced them to eat one for the sack of testing. I guess the whole wheat cookies were fine fresh out of hte oven, but with time they got hard. I think the flaw in my experiment was making chocolate chip cookies. I make them so much they have become accustom to them tasting a certain way. Next time I try a big experiment, I will have to make something new they've never had before.