MSC: Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Hello Sweet Readers!

Thanks for coming by today. I hope you had a fabulous weekend. It started warming up around here and I'm so happy to see the weather report for this week. It says 76 degrees by Wednesday! And I love the longer days and more sunshine. Seems like a perfect time to make these beauties, doesn't it?

For this month's choice, Megan from My Baking Adventures chose Lemon Meringue Cupcakes. I loved the idea and the photo looked so pretty in the book. Little did I know what I would be in for this time around.

Now, I have made lemon curd before without a hitch. Tasted great, came together fine and all was well. Not the case this time. I started with making the lemon curd and stirred FOREVER and it never got thick. I followed the instructions and finally gave up, added the butter, and thought I'd wait for it to thicken. But I just knew it wouldn't, so I put the bowl back on the stove and stirred again. Forever. I have things to do other than to stir curd, my friends. I am not typically a person content to do one thing at a time, much less stand at a stove for an hour. I did catch up on a couple phone calls, and that helped, but it never thickened. It tasted divine, but now it's a sauce.
So I decided to bake the cupcakes. Fortunately, they came out perfectly. I don't like huge domes, and with this recipe, a dome would have made the curd (the dang curd) slide right off. So I got about 31 cuppies out of this recipe instead of 24.

Then I went back the next day and tried the curd again. I have no idea which curd I made before with success, so I decided to try a new one. Big mistake. I chose the one from "Cakelove". It said it was "easy" and would only have to be stirred for 10 minutes...7 or 8 in altitude. Perfect.

Not so much. I stirred again for, oh, about 50 minutes. Going nuts, mind you. No "lava bubbles" to be seen. ARGH! It was thicker than the other, but lava was elusive to me. So I called it quits at the thickness and stuck it in the fridge to hope it out.
In the meantime, I made the frosting. The seven minute frosting that all together, really, honestly, with measuring and boiling and all, takes about a half hour. Just so you know. It came out perfectly.

And the curd ended up coming out very good. It was not very tart, though, because I used Meyer lemons this time around. The Martha recipe tasted better (I used Eureka lemons), this one looked better. This one also had about 5 times the butter in it. Go figure.

So here is the finished product. They look lovely, don't they? I love the silky shiny frosting and it was fun to get out my torch. Especially after all my angst with the curd. LOL. They tasted very good all in all, though the cupcake was a tiny bit crumbly, which is not my favorite texture. It was very moist, but just a bit crumbly.

Another "interesting" thing to note is that you have to be careful traveling with these. I put them in my trusted Cupcake Courier to transport to a church meeting and they stayed fine. Except for the meringue, which didn't like the curves and turns combined with the slipperyness of the curd. Some slid halfway off. Nice.
I hope you were able to enjoy the story of the curd that finally was. And I'm glad you didn't have to go through it. I was told by a friend at the meeting that the Barefoot Contessa has a fabulous lemon curd recipe. I like her. I will have to try hers if I go there again. And I will. I'm a glutton for punishment and my husband loves lemon.

If you get a chance, check out the other entries for the club. I can't wait to hear how everyone did! http://mscclub.blogspot.com/