With April showers making us reach for our umbrellas once again, why not follow this recipe for these dreamy lemon and poppy seed cupcakes and inject some sunshine in to your kitchen…

LEMON AND POPPYSEED CUPCAKES in FOUR EASY STEPS

Ingredients:

225g self-raising flour

175g golden caster sugar

zest 2 lemons

1 tbsp poppy seeds , toasted

3 eggs

100g natural yogurt

175g butter , melted and cooled a little

For the icing:

225g butter , softened

400g icing sugar , sifted

juice 1 lemon

few drops yellow food colouring

icing flowers or yellow sprinkles, to decorate

 1) Heat the oven to 180C/gas 4 and line a 12-hole muffin tin with cupcake or muffin cases. Mix the flour, sugar, lemon zest and poppy seeds together in a large mixing bowl. Beat the eggs into the yoghurt, then tip this into the dry ingredients with the melted butter. Mix together with a wooden spoon or whisk until lump-free, then divide between the cases.

2) Bake for 20-22 mins – the cakes will be quite pale on top still. Cool for 5 minutes in the tin, then carefully lift onto a wire rack to complete cooling.

3) To ice, beat the softened butter until really soft in a large bowl, then gradually beat in the icing sugar and lemon juice. Stir in enough food colouring for a pale lemon colour, then spoon the icing into a piping bag with a large star nozzle.

4) Ice one cake at a time, holding the piping bag almost upright with the nozzle about 1cm from the surface of the cake. Pipe one spiral of icing around the edge, then pause to break the flow before moving the nozzle towards the centre slightly and piping a second, smaller spiral that continues until there are no gaps in the centre. Slightly ‘dot’ the nozzle into the icing as you stop squeezing to finish neatly, et voila! 

Too tempting and too delicious to just have one, the summery lemony scent and pastel perfect icing well and truly earns this cupcake recipe the Coast seal of approval!

If you’re in love with all things pastel, take a look at our Pastel Perfect pin board on Pinterest here and soak up all things candy coloured for your sweetest Spring yet!

(Recipe sourced from BBC Good Food

Images sourced from laceandcake.blogspot and Pinterest)