In the fall, I made a bunch of salted caramel things (including one of my favorite cupcakes ever, these salted caramel cupcakes). One day, after posting recipes for salted caramel mochas and salted caramel pears within a week or two of each other, I tweeted something about being on a salted caramel kick and asking what else I should make.

Be careful what you wish for.

One of my coworkers immediately replied to my tweet with her suggestion: salted caramel macarons.

I inwardly groaned. Ugh…macarons. While these trendy little cookies are delicious and fun to eat, they are infamously difficult to make. I made them once when I first began blogging two years ago (see them here: passion fruit and prickly pear macarons). It was pretty successful for a first try (many had “feet,” the ruffled edge around the bottom), but I remember them being a lot of work for not quite enough return.

A challenge is a challenge though, and I knew I would try to make them as soon as I read her idea. Truth is, I love a good baking challenge. I was lucky enough to stumble upon Not Quite Nigella‘s post on a macaron class she took, which included tips and a recipe for salted caramel macarons. If you want to tackle macarons, you have to check out her helpful photos and directions. I also watched this video on making macarons the first time I made them.

These were worth the effort! I don’t foresee myself making them again soon, because they are a lot of work, but they were really good. One friend said they were actually better than the ones at Ginger Elizabeth (a wonderful Sacramento chocolatier). I finally got around to trying the macarons there last month, and I too preferred my version of salted caramel macarons only because the one from Ginger Elizabeth didn’t have much filling and was barely salty at all (however, I did love the mocha macaron I had there). The salted caramel filling in this recipe has a great balance of sweet and salty – you can taste the saltiness, but it doesn’t overwhelm the other flavors.

I ended up with way too much filling so I whipped up some easy chocolate whoopie pies and filled them with the extra salted caramel filling (stay tuned – I’ll share those with you in a few days).

Have you ever tried making macarons? How did it go?

Recipe:

Salted Caramel Macarons

Adapted from Baroque Patisserie

Salted Caramel Filling

• 250g heavy cream
• 350g castor sugar (fine granulated sugar)
• 10g fleur de sel
• 350g butter, cut into small cubes

Caramel Macaron Cookies

• 300g almond meal (AKA almond flour)
• 300g powdered sugar
• 120g egg whites
• 300g castor sugar
• 75g water
• 120g egg whites

Make salted caramel filling:
Place cream into a small saucepan. Pour sugar into a medium saucepan and set aside. Cook cream until it just begins to boil, then remove from heat. Begin cooking the sugar, stirring occasionally so it caramelizes evenly. Once the sugar reaches a dark copper color, remove from heat and pour in hot cream, continuing to stir with a spatula.

Let mixture cool to around 115°F. Add fleur de sel and butter, a few cubes at a time, while continuing to stir the caramel. Once all the butter has been incorporated, pour the caramel into a shallow container and let cool in the fridge.

Once cooled, beat the mixture until light, shiny and smooth. Store in fridge until your macarons are baked and completely cooled.

Make caramel macaron cookies:

Sift together almond meal and powdered sugar. Run through a food processor if needed to remove any lumps. Mix with 120g of egg whites until it becomes a smooth paste and set aside.

In a small sauce pan over medium heat, combine castor sugar and water. Place the remaining 120g of egg whites in a stand mixer with whisk attachment. Once the sugar has reached 239°F, begin whipping egg whites until they have a soft peak. When sugar reaches 244°F, remove from heat and pour slowly into the egg whites, keeping the mixer on low speed. Turn the speed to high for about a minute, then reduce to medium speed for around 2 minutes. Let meringue cool to 120°F while mixing at low speed.

Use a spatula to gently fold in the almond meal mixture into the meringue until batter becomes unified and shiny.

Pour batter into a piping bag with a plain, round tip. Pipe shells onto a baking sheet lined with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper (you can use a template if you want to make them the exact same sizes – just Google “macaron template”). Tap the baking sheet gently so batter spreads a bit (if you use a template, stop piping before the mix reaches the outer edge of the circles and tap until it spreads to the edges).

Preheat oven to 300° and let the batter sit until they form a skin and are dry to the touch.

Bake for 10-15 minutes, turning the baking pan around halfway through. Let them cool completely before removing from pan. You can pour a little water underneath the Silpat/parchment paper to help release the macraons easily (the steam helps).

Assemble the salted caramel macarons:

Remove salted caramel filling from fridge. Soften over a bain marie (you could try using a microwave but be careful – you just want to soften it slightly). Once soften, remove from heat and whisk vigorously until it thickens to a buttercream consistency.

Match up pairs of macaron cookies that are the same size. Spread or pipe some filling on one, living approximately 3mm from the edge. Take it’s pair in your other hand and gently twist the two cookies together, letting filling spread all the way to the edges.

Store in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours and let return to room temperature before serving.

Last week I received a surprise package in the mail. I had no idea what it was but the box said to refrigerate immediately. So I opened it up and found…

A bouquet of endives!

Isn’t it cute? I never really thought about it before, but endives kind of look like flowers. Wrapped up with a bow they passed for a nice bouquet.

When I opened up the bouquet, I found that the roots were still attached, giving a glimpse into how endives are grown. Did you know that endives are one of the most difficult vegetables to grow? They’re actually grown twice – first in a field, then the roots of the plants are harvested and kept dormant inside cold storage. The roots are taken out of cold storage and placed in a precisely controlled environment of a forcing room, where they bloom and mature. That means the leaves have never been exposed to soil (you don’t even need to wash them) and they can be grown year-round, which they are here in California.

I’d never made endives before. You can eat them raw, but they have a reputation for being bitter, so I decided to cook them. Russ recommended roasting them, and I consulted the Flavor Bible to see which flavors would best compliment them. Honey and thyme were both on the list, and I found a roasted endive recipe that uses a simple sauce with these flavors. After roasting them for over 20 minutes at 350°F, the endives became soft and began to brown. However, I found them to still taste a bit bitter. I put them in the fridge overnight, and the flavor significantly mellowed and the bitterness went away. I think next time I will try roasting them at a higher temperature and that will give more of a roasted flavor (and hopefully reduce the bitterness more).

Here are a lot more endive recipes. Thanks Discover Endive for the Valentine surprise!

Have you ever tried endives before?

RECIPE:

Honey Roasted Endive

Adapted from Saveur

• 6 medium-size Belgian endives
• 2 Tbsp. olive oil
• 1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
• 1 Tbsp. honey
• 2 tsp. chopped thyme
•  Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2. Slice endives in half lengthwise and remove as much of the bitter core as you can. Place endive halves into a baking dish.

2. Combine butter, olive oil, honey, thyme, salt and pepper in a small pan. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally. When mixture starts bubbling, remove from heat and pour evenly over endives in dish.

 3. Roast for 20-30 minutes, until endives have softened and turned brown around the edges.

A couple of weekends ago I found myself making heart shaped cake pops, flourless chocolate cupcakes and heart shaped sugar cookies. All in 2 days. And you know I have to sample everything I bake, because otherwise how could I tell you what it tastes like? I do it all for you guys. I don’t enjoy one minute of sampling a new cake pop flavor or licking the bowl — not that I lick the bowl. Um, so anyways…

So this will be a sugar-free week at 52 Kitchen Adventures, but don’t worry – I always have more desserts up my sleeve. In fact, I made salted caramel macarons and whoopie pies 2 months ago that I still haven’t posted. Next week might be the perfect time to share them with you finally. And if you need your dessert fill, check out my brand-new Recipe Index. There’s an entire page just for dessert recipes.

Enough about past desserts. This CrockPot chicken recipe is incredibly easy. There’s practically no prep, just mix together the sauce and pour it over drumettes in the slow cooker. They came out really moist, with the tangy and slightly sweet meat falling off the bones. The only thing I didn’t like about the recipe is that the pineapple pieces just absorbed the sauce and turned black and terribly salty. Next time I’m going to try omitting them.

I’ve been using my slow cooker a lot recently to make easy dinners. Do you have a favorite slow cooker meal?

RECIPE:

Slow Cooker Honey-Soy Drumettes

Adapted from Recipe 4 Living

I keep seeing red and pink hearts everywhere – in store displays, on Pinterest, and all over the blogosphere. That can only mean one thing: it’s almost Valentine’s Day. I know that some people hate this holiday but I figure at the least it’s an excuse to eat something sweet. At it’s best, it’s a time to celebrate love and show your loved ones how much you care and appreciate them. Either way you look at Valentine’s, this recipe will work for you. You can bake some cookies for yourself to enjoy and/or share them with your friends and family. It’s a win-win.

Plus, there are infinite ways to decorate the cookies. First, you can make the icing any color and then you can leave it plain (like the ones above). Or you can…

add some colored sprinkles or…

a variety of sprinkles!

This is where my hoarding of sprinkles comes in handy. I don’t know how I came to own so many different types of sprinkles but I finally found a way to use them. Plus, I got this adjustable rolling pin with removable discs for Christmas and now making dough is so easy! I used to have such a hard time rolling it out evenly and to the right thickness. I have a feeling I’ll be making a lot more sugar cookies in the near future.

I love love love this sugar cookie recipe. To me it’s perfect; the cookies are soft and buttery. However, I’m still looking for the perfect royal icing recipe. With my first batch of cookies (seen here), I used a simple powdered sugar glaze, but the pink icing turned white a few days later. On my second batch, I used Bake at 350′s trusted royal icing recipe, but it finished dull and the outline was a little brittle. Do you have a royal icing recipe that you love? Please share it with me!

So, what’s the verdict on Valentine’s Day? Are you boycotting it this year or celebrating it big? And, more importantly, are you going to be baking anything special?

P.S. If you’re looking for other things to bake, try my heart cake pops, flourless chocolate cupcakes, or really any dessert in my recipe box. Plus, here’s a roundup of 21 delicious desserts for your Valentine.

RECIPE:

Perfect Sugar Cookies

Adapted from Alton Brown

Makes around 3 1/2 dozen cookies

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tablespoon milk
• Powdered sugar, for rolling out dough
• Cookie cutters

Combine flour, baking powder and salt together in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Mix in egg and milk. With mixer on low speed, gradually add dry ingredients and mix until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl. Divide dough in half, roll into 2 balls and wrap in saran wrap or wax paper. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.

Did you watch the Superbowl yesterday? I didn’t – instead I worked on some Valentine’s Day sugar cookies. I have a sugar cookie recipe that I love, but I’m still trying to find the perfect royal icing recipe. Do you have a favorite? Please share it in the comments section!

For now, we have some Valentine’s cupcakes (and don’t forget about the heart shaped cake pops if you want lots of small treats for your  many Valentines). This cupcake is brought to you by my awesome friend Annie who had the good idea to take this:

Flourless Chocolate Peppermint Cake

and turn it into cupcakes. I wasn’t sure how the cupcakes would turn out, since the cake does sink a little in the middle. She told me that her cupcakes sank but that they were the best chocolate cupcakes she’d ever had – even better than “Better Than Sex” Chocolate Cupcakes. I thought that was something worth pursuing!

My cupcakes did sink quite a bit in the middle and they also behaved differently in different kinds of cupcakes wrappers. See below:

The cupcake on the left sunk but it didn’t shrink. The one on the right both sunk and also shrunk in on itself. So for these cupcakes, I recommend getting sturdy paper liners like the ones pictured below. When I used foil and thin paper liners from the grocery store, the cupcakes shrank quite a bit after baking.

Use liners like these, found at Walmart, Target, Michael’s, or other craft stores

Besides the weird sinking/shrinking, these cupcakes are wonderful. Each bite is rich, decadent, spongy and almost fluffy chocolate cake. I made lightly sweetened whipped cream to go on top, as these rich cupcakes don’t need a heavy frosting. A chocolate lover would be content to eat these plain, but the whipped cream does make them look a lot prettier – I think of the sinking as the perfect bowl for a little frosting.

As an added bonus, these cupcakes are gluten-free and under 200 calories! I’m not one to count calories, but I started thinking about the fact that there wasn’t any butter or oil in the recipe. I put the ingredients into this recipe calculator and found that they’re 185 calories each, even with the whipped cream topping. They still have a decent amount of fat and sugar, but if you’re counting calories, this is a better alternative to some other cupcakes.

RECIPE:

“Lighter than Air” Flourless Chocolate Cake

Adapted from Gourmet

• 6 ounces of your favorite chocolate, roughly chopped
• 3 tablespoons water
• 6 large eggs, at room temperature, separated
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon table salt

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a cupcake tins with stiff paper liners.

Over low heat, melt chocolate and water together in a small saucepan or double boiler. Stir until mixture is smooth, remove from heat and let cool.

In a medium or large bowl, beat egg yolks with an electric mixer until pale and creamy.

Gradually add sugar and continue to beat until yolks are pale and ribbony.

Gently mix in the cooled chocolate.

In a separate large, clean bowl with clean beaters, beat egg whites and salt until the mixture holds stiff peaks.

Stir 1/4 of stiff egg whites into the chocolate/yolk mixture to lighten it.

In 3 additions, gently but thoroughly fold the remaining whites into the batter.

Pour batter into liners until each is at least 3/4 full (they will puff up quite a bit but then deflate and sink in the middle). Bake for 15-18 minutes, until cake is puffed and dry to the touch.

Whipped Cream

• 1/2 cup heavy or whipping cream
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons powdered sugar, sifted
• Food coloring (optional)

In a large non-reactive bowl (such as stainless steel or glass), beat the cream, vanilla and sugar together with a whisk or electric mixer. Once the mixture holds a soft peak, taste and mix in additional sugar if needed. Add in food dye if using and stir to combine. Spoon over cooled cupcakes just before serving (or refrigerate covered, for up to 4 hours).

It’s almost Valentine’s Day and I spent last weekend baking up a storm. These cake pops, plus heart shaped sugar cookies and some special flourless cupcakes with pink frosting are all coming your way.

Each time I make cake pops, I find more ways to make them more easily and quickly (I’ll have to compile all my tips into a post soon). These heart shape cake pops are even easier to make than they seem. After I combined the cake and frosting together, I pushed it flat into the bottom of a casserole dish. Then I just used cookie cutter to cut the cake pops into hearts (see photo in the recipe below).

So easy and much faster than shaping each heart by hand!

Then you can either push the lollipop sticks in to make them standing up (above) or flat on a dish (below). I like making them like the ones below because you don’t need anything to hold them up.

Are you making anything special for Valentine’s Day?

Recipe:

Heart Cake Pops

Makes around 40 cake pops

Vanilla Cake

Adapted from King Arthur’s Flour

Makes 1 9″x13″ cake

I’ve been wanting to make homemade Fig Newtons for a while, ever since I discovered this fig butter at Trader Joe’s:

 It tastes just like the filling of a Fig Newton!

When Lipton asked “how do you enjoy your tea?” and sent me their new Green Tea Superfruit flavors to try, I thought of making a simple cookie or scone. I consulted one of my favorite cooking books, the Flavor Bible, and looked up the superfruit flavors. Under raspberry, I found fig and a lightbulb went on – perfect time to try making fig bars!

I tried making the first batch of fig bars with half whole wheat and half all purpose flour. It was great – moist, chewy dough filled with the sweet fig butter. I tried the recipe again using all whole wheat flour, and the cookie part was much drier. A friend suggested I try whole wheat pastry dough for baking, so that’s on my shopping list for next time. For now, unless you’re really concerned about using regular flour, I recommend doing half and half.

Use the widget below to share how you enjoy tea. The first 3 commenters will receive a box of Lipton Green Tea Superfruits to try for themselves!

RECIPE:

Whole Wheat Fig Bars

Adapted from Eat, Live, Run

Makes around 40 cookies

• 6 T butter, softened
• 1/2 cup + 2 T brown sugar, packed
• 1 T heavy cream
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 t baking powder
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 1/2 t cinnamon
• 1/2 t salt
• 2/3 cup fig butter (if you can’t find fig butter, you can find a filling recipe here)

In a large bowl, beat together the brown sugar and butter. Add in the cream and continue to beat until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add one egg and mix until combined. Add the second egg and mix again until combined.

In a separate bowl, combine both types of flour with baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Add dry ingredients to butter and sugar mixture and mix just until a soft dough forms.

Roll dough into a ball and cover with saran wrap. Place in fridge for 2-4 hours (or overnight).

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Remove dough from fridge and divide in half. Place the half you’re not using in the fridge. Roll the other half into a rectangle of 1/4″ thickness, around 12″ long and 4″ wide.

Place the dough onto a baking sheet covered with a silpat or parchment paper. Spread 1/3 cup of fig butter onto the dough, leaving some room around the edges.

Fold in the long sides until they meet in the middle, then fold in top and bottom, pinching the dough together.  Carefully flip dough over onto baking sheet.

Repeat with other half of dough. Bake for 20 minutes, until it turns golden brown. Let cool before slicing.

Now that I have shared what I would pair with these refreshing Lipton Green Tea Superfruits, I want to know, how do you enjoy your tea?

Share your tea time must haves for a chance to win a year’s supply of Lipton Tea, a tea kettle, a tea box, a mug/saucer set, a travel tumbler and a $50 gift card to Amazon.com!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Lipton Green Tea Superfruit. The opinions and text are all mine. Official Sweepstakes Rules.

“Those cake pops were seriously the best cake pops I’ve ever had! Even better than Freeport Bakery.”

This high praise comes from a former co-worker, Mariel. For her last day in our office, I wanted to bake something special as a surprise. I knew she liked cake pops and salted caramel (she requested that I make salted caramel macarons a few months ago, which I will post soon). The idea of a salted caramel cake pop was born.

I was shocked that I couldn’t find any recipes for salted caramel cake pops online. I ended up adapting my salted caramel cupcakes (one of my all-time favorite cupcake recipes). However, once I covered them in chocolate, the delicate salted caramel flavor of the cake and frosting was overwhelmed by the chocolate. I made a salted caramel sauce to drizzle on top (along with a sprinkle of fleur de sel, a French sea salt). I think you could probably use an easier vanilla frosting recipe and simply make some salted caramel sauce to pour over them.

Stay tuned for Valentine’s Day recipes coming next week, including some heart shaped cake pops. I realize I’m a bit behind as far as food blog schedules go, but I couldn’t bring myself to bake Valentine’s desserts in early January.

RECIPE:

Salted Caramel Cake Pops

Adapted from Salted Caramel Cupcakes

Makes around 35-40 cake pops

Brown Sugar Cake

Makes 2 8″ cakes

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 stick of unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk (or add a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar to regular milk and let sit for 5 mins)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease two 8″ cake pans or line them with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.

In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each until fully incorporated. Mix in vanilla extract. Add flour mixture to wet ingredients in 3 batches, alternating with 1/2 of the buttermilk, stirring after each until everything is combined.

Pour half of the batter into each prepared cake pan. Bake for around 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cakes comes out clean.

Salted Caramel Buttercream Frosting

• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 stick salted butter
• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 cups powdered sugar, sifted

Make caramel: In a medium saucepan, combine sugar and water and cook over medium-high heat. Boil without stirring until it turns a deep amber color. Remove from heat and slowly pour in cream and vanilla, whisking until it is very smooth. Let cool for around 20 minutes, until it’s just barely warm and still pourable.

Meanwhile, beat butter and salt together in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Add powdered sugar and beat until thoroughly combined. Pour in the cooled caramel and beat on medium-high speed until light and airy (around 2 minutes). If frosting is too runny, the caramel was too warm when added – refrigerate for around 15-20 minutes until frosting is stiffer.

Salted Caramel Sauce

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

The sauce is extra work, but I found that the salted caramel flavor of the cake was overwhelmed by the chocolate coating. If you want to cut down on the work, you could do a simple vanilla cake/frosting inside the pop instead of the cake and frosting recipe above. Use my snowmen vanilla cake pops recipe and cover them in chocolate, a tiny sprinkle of salt, and this salted caramel sauce.

Makes about 1 1/3 cups – use the extra to pour over ice cream, fruit, desserts, or anything!

• 1 cup sugar
• 3 ounces (6 tablespoons) salted butter (I recommend using 1/2 salted and 1/2 unsalted, then add additional salt to taste if needed)
• 1/2 cup plus two tablespoons heavy cream, at room temperature

In a large saucepan, heat the sugar over medium-high heat. Once it begins melting, stir occasionally with a spatula to ensure it heats evenly. Cook the liquified sugar until it reaches a deep copper color, then add the butter. Stir until it has completely melted and combined, then remove from heat. Add heavy cream (be careful – it will foam) and whisk until you have a smooth sauce.

Use immediately or refrigerate for up to 2 weeks. Microwave for a minute to bring it back to pouring consistency.

Assemble the Cake Pops

• Semisweet chocolate (I used around 16 oz.)
• Canola oil (optional)
• 35-40 6″ lollipop sticks
• Styrofoam block
• Fleur de sel or flaky sea salt

What does that mean? Check it out:

Front of the Create-A-Crock

It’s a customizable Crock-Pot! The “Create-A-Crock” lets you choose from a variety of colors and designs for the background. Then you upload 4 of your favorite photos and they’re printed right onto the Crock-Pot! I’ve never seen a personalized kitchen appliance like this before – have you?

Back of the Create-A-Crock

I worked with Crock-Pot in the fall for their Crock-Star Confessions campaign. Last month they contacted me to tell me about the new Create-A-Crock and see if I wanted to try it out. I already have 2 fairly large slow cookers, 3.5 and 6 quarts, and I didn’t really need another one at 5.5 quarts. But I couldn’t give up on this great opportunity for the ultimate present.

If you know what I look like (there’s a photo of me at the top of the right column over there –>) then you’ll realize I’m not actually pictured on this slow cooker. That’s my dear friend Annie and her family.

Close-up of the photos on the front (that is the world’s best dog, Cosmo, by the way)

I wanted to surprise her so I downloaded photos off of her Facebook page instead of asking her to send me some. I was worried they wouldn’t be high quality enough and would print out fuzzy, but they look great! The website wouldn’t let me upload certain photos, citing poor quality, so you can trust that it will only let you use ones that are good enough.

Annie and her “little” brothers from a Mother’s Day photoshoot I did for them last year

I couldn’t be happier with the way the Crock-Pot came out. It does take 3-4 weeks to be made after you order it, so keep that in mind. It ended up arriving after Christmas, so it became a belated gift, but one worth the wait.

Annie and I met half-way between our cities to do a little outlet shopping and I finally was able to give it to her. (On the ground, in the middle of a parking lot – I tell you this only to explain the next photo.)

Annie’s reaction says it all:

Happiness!

She says: “This is an awesome present for anyone because it’s so personalized. Pink and pictures?! Could not ask for a better present.”

Since it was a present, I didn’t try using it, but I have a Crock-Pot 6 quart slow cooker and it works great. If Annie has any feedback after she uses the Create-A-Crock, I will update this post to reflect her observations.

If you’re interested in getting a Create-A-Crock for yourself (or for an awesome gift), check out the Crock-Pot website. I think it would make a great present for a wedding, bridal shower, birthday, or really any occasion. It would also be handy if you use slow cookers while you’re entertaining or if you bring them to potluck parties. You can make one to match your decor and no one will ever mistakenly take yours home with them!

I received the Create-A-Crock slow cooker from Crock-Pot to review. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.

Last year a close friend of mine was diagnosed with several food allergies after having health problems and discomfort for years. Turns out she’s allergic to eggs, dairy and yeast, foods she used to eat on a regular basis. A few weeks ago she came to visit, which coincided with me receiving a bag of Meyer lemons from my brother’s tree. I knew I wanted to bake something, but I had to avoid some major players in baked goods.

You probably know where I’m going with this, since you’ve seen the title of this post, but the easiest way to avoid eggs and dairy is…bake vegan! I actually have a great vegan cupcake cookbook, but it doesn’t have a simple lemon cupcake recipe. I was pretty set on using my surplus of Meyer lemons, so I found a vegan lemon cupcake recipe on another blog and adapted it.

By just tasting them, I don’t think anyone would guess that these cupcakes are vegan. They’re extremely light and fluffy and have a subtle lemon flavor. By topping them with a simple lemon glaze, the cupcakes remain light and lemony, a satisfying dessert that won’t leave you feeling weighed down. I garnished them with candied Meyer lemon peels for an extra lemon punch. You can make this with regular lemons too, and I’m sure it would be just as good. (If you’re not familiar with them, Meyer lemons are a cross of lemons and oranges, so they’re a bit sweeter and milder than regular lemons).

Do you bake for any people with food allergies or special diets?

Recipe:

Vegan Meyer Lemon Cupcakes

Adapted from Livvie’s Limelight

• 1 cup milk alternative (I used almond milk; soy or rice would work too)
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup Meyer lemon juice*
• 1 Tablespoon Meyer lemon zest*

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a muffin tin with liners.
2. In a small bowl, stir together milk and apple cider vinegar. Let sit for 5 minutes.
3. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
4. In a separate large bowl, combine milk, oil, sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and zest.
5. Add dry ingredients to wet and stir until well combined.
6. Pour batter into lined muffin tin until each is 3/4 full.
7. Bake 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool completely before frosting.

Meyer Lemon Glaze

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted
• 1 Tablespoon Meyer lemon juice*
• Candied Meyer lemon peel for garnish (optional)

1. Combine powdered sugar and juice in a small bowl and stir until smooth.
2. Add additional sugar or lemon juice to taste and to reach desired consistency.
3. Spoon onto cooled cupcakes and top with candied peel.

*You could use regular lemon instead of Meyer lemon