In an attempt to broaden my cooking and baking knowledge in 2012 as part of my resolutions, I have decided to attempt to try to learn a recipe a month.  For January, I decided to beat the winter blues by creating a cupcake filled with citrus zest and a delish topping…enter in the the Lemon Meringue cupcake.

This cupcake was a two-process from creating the batter from stratch to a lemon curd (the filling in the cupcake) plus a the meringue topping.  I will say that everything was clipping right along in this cupcake making process until I made the meringue.  Now the directions were fairly scary, including creating a simple sugar syrup then pouring into a egg white mixture without touching the grease free bowl or mixer.   I turned my back for about 10 seconds a low and behold the syrup was burnt.  When I added it to the egg white mixture,  it created sugar crystals…. wrong for this recipe.   Round One: The simple syrup won. I thought I would roll with the punches here, I added the meringue to the cupcakes to be broiled for a perfect tint.  I began doing the dishes and got fairly distracted (I do this when I am in the kitchen…) and low and behold (again) the topping on the cupcakes, well burned.  Awesome.  Just awesome.   Round Two: Meringue won.

From that moment I removed the meringue topping and started all over. This time, I won and took on this recipe with flying colors. Yes please, thank you very much.   Just in time for yesterday’s episode of ABC’s The Bachelor.  Perfection.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes!

Next up?  Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes.  Yummy!

PS- In case you are wondering, my current read is The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.  I am at 25% (thank you Kindle) and really enjoying it.