The cupcakes are back! Hip, hip, hooray! Since it's been awhile since I've touched my cupcake cookbook or even cupcakes for that matter, I thought maybe I had been brilliant and was starting off the new year with the first cupcake in the next section of the cookbook. Turns out I am not so brilliant (shocker), and my memory is also not so good. However, it does seem appropriate that the third cupcake in the section is triple-citrus cupcakes. Triple, third, get it? Good.
The hardest (most annoying) part of this recipe was grating all the fruit to make the amount of zest needed for the recipe. Just to put it in perspective this meant grating 1 orange, 2 lemons and 2 limes. I had no idea how long this would take. I didn't calculate the amount of time it took to grate the orange. But, after grating the orange for what seemed like forever I was curious as to how long it had taken me. So, I busted out my stopwatch (not true, I just looked at the clock when I started and stopped) and kept track of the time. 12 minutes. It took me 12 minutes to grate 2 lemons and then it took me 12 minutes to grate 2 lemons. I can only assume it took me roughly 12 minutes to also grate the orange. By my math (and using a calculator) that is 36 minutes of grating. It didn't even take 36 minutes to bake these cupcakes. On the bright side, the grating did provide with a lovely citrus aroma for 36 minutes as well as an arm workout. Once the grating was over, it was all downhill from there, although adding the eggs took awhile. There were 9 of them after all. But even adding 9 eggs to the batter didn't require 36 minutes.
I filled the liners three-quarters full and tapped the pan on the counter as Martha instructed me to do. The cupcakes were baked for 20 total minutes with a turn halfway through the baking time. The cupcakes didn't really rise much while they were baking, but I didn't expect that they would. I'm 3 cupcakes into the glazed and dipped portion of the cookbook, and I have the feeling that the majority of these cupcakes will be flat. 2 out of the 3 cupcakes so far have had a pound-cake-like consistency which results in a flatter, dense cupcake as opposed to a lighter, rounded cupcake. I do prefer the look of a rounded cupcake, but what's most important is the taste of the cupcakes.
The citrus glaze was extremely easy, but it did require more grating (sigh). However, the grating was only necessary to garnish the cupcakes and it took a couple seconds for each cupcake. That's the kind of grating I can handle. I glazed and garnished each cupcake, and I didn't love how they looked. It was the lime-zest garnish. It just wasn't as flattering on my cupcakes as it was in Martha's picture. That's why she's the pro and why I only have a blog.
Taste test time! For being pound-cake like, the cupcakes were surprisingly light, and I liked the flavors of both the cupcake and the glaze. However, I did not like the consistency of having the zest in the cupcakes. I should have known. I'm a pulp-free orange juice kind of a gal for a reason. I don't like pulp. Maybe I thought this would be different because a cupcake is a solid food and not a liquid but that wasn't the case. Maybe the cupcake on deck will help me overcome my disappointment with this recipe. We'll just have to wait and see.
