Mini Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Mascarpone Frosting

Holidays are such a great excuse to make your favorite desserts (like you need an excuse, but still). With Easter coming up, it seemed like a great time to share my favorite lemon cake with you. This time around I made it in mini form, with an update to my favorite cream cheese frosting. Enter Mini Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Mascarpone Frosting!

This makes the fluffiest lemon cake ever, and topped with creamy mascarpone frosting it’s a show-stopping dessert. It will ruin you for all other cakes. It’s also adaptable – it works wonderfully as mini cupcakes, full-sized cupcakes and as a 9-inch layer cake. So, choose your own adventure and let’s get to it.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The Cupcakes

Before you start mixing, gather your ingredients. Soften the butter and allow the eggs to come to room temp, zest and juice your lemons (break out that microplane!), mix together your dry ingredients, and measure out everything else. I like to get everything ready to go ahead of time so mixing up the cake batter is quick and easy. The French call this mise en place – and you know the French know what they’re talking about when it comes to food. You should end up with a super fluffy cake batter (see photos above).

A few tips:

• Having all of your ingredients at room temp (including eggs and milk) will help create the light, fluffy batter you’re looking for.
• Normally in a cake recipe, you’ll alternate adding the dry ingredients with the milk. However, in this case you’ll add all of the dry ingredients first, then the milk and lemon juice at the end. I’m honestly not sure why it works so well here, but it does, so I’m not messing with it.
• Bake them just until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out mostly clean with a few moist crumbs. They won’t really be browned at this point. This will make sure you have a moist, fluffy cake. Yes, I know I just used the word “moist” twice – oops, three times – sorry.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The Frosting

There is nothing better than a creamy, fluffy, not-too-sweet frosting. Cream cheese frosting has always been my go-to, but now that I’ve tried mascarpone in place of cream cheese, I’ll never go back.

If you’re not familiar with it, mascarpone cheese is a creamy Italian cheese, similar to cream cheese but MUCH more buttery. Oh, so buttery! You can usually find it with the fancy cheeses in your grocery store, or occasionally it’s shelved with the cream cheese. If you can’t find it, you can just go with cream cheese (check out my fave cream cheese frosting recipe here). One thing to know about mascarpone, though, is that if you beat it too long it will start to separate, and your frosting will get weepy. That’s why in this recipe you’ll add the mascarpone at the end and mix it in just until it’s combined. You’ll be left with a super fluffy, creamy frosting with a lemony tang reminiscent of summer sunshine. Amazing.

This will be the perfect dessert for all of your Spring holiday celebrations (Easter, Mother’s Day, Birthdays!). Add some sprinkles, candy, or fruit for decoration – the sky’s the limit.

Happy Baking!