Lemon Lavender Cupcakes

I am currently obsessed with lavender.
I want to put it in everything I bake and cook.

Like - lavendar roast chicken?! Yes please! Or lavender crème brûlée!? Oh my!

For the baby shower however, I decided to make cupcakes so I could decorate them all cute - just like Martha would. These, like my Dutch Apple Pie, are totally not gluten-free, low-glycemic or Dukan friendly.

So - how did I make these cupcakes?

Easy as pie...but not Dutch Apple Pie (that was super hard).

What You'll Need:

• A vanilla cupcake mix from the grocery store (I know...mega cheat, I can feel Martha shaking her head). My cake mix called for the following to be added: 2 eggs, 100ml skim milk, 1/3 cup room temperature butter
• 1 Tbsp dried lavender
• 1 large lemon for zesting and juicing

What You'll Do:

• Zest your lemon
• Pestle up your dried lavender so it is a bit more fine
• Add the two eggs and milk into the pre-made cake mix
• Blend with your hand mixer until smooth
• Slowly chunk in the room temperature butter and mix until very smooth
• Add in your lavender and lemon zest
• Squeeze half of your lemon into the mix (I usually pre-squeeze the lemon over a separate bowl so I can remove all seeds first)
• Mix thoroughly
• Pour into 12, lined cupcake tins
• Bake for how long your boxed mix said to at the heat it told you to. Mine said 20 minutes at 180C (or 350F)
• Let cool completely before you decorate - nobody likes runny icing

Ideas for Decorating:

• I made a simple glaze for my cupcakes as I am not an icing/frosting fan
• You can add some lemon juice into your glaze and even add a few dried lavender flowers on top to really hit it home that you are a culinary wizard
• I made a lemon lavender cake a few weeks back, and instead of a glaze, I candied lemons and added the lemon-infused simple syrup over the top (yeah I did!).

Anyway, here is what they look like - I think they look pretty darn cute!

STEWART SCORE:
Appearance: 2
Taste: 2 (they were a hit!)
Ease: 2 (they would still rank a 2 even if you don't cheat and use a boxed mix)

The Stewart Score

I love Martha Stewart.
Her magazines and TV show hold treasured ideas, always leaving me wanting to redecorate, become a professional pastry chef and move to Tuscany so I can garden and can harvest my own buffalo mozzarella.

Martha is the biggest domestic influencer. Making baking, cooking, cleaning and home-life glamourous. Making domesticity intelligent.
Aspirational.
Creating a do-it-yourself empire while challenging your idea of what the good life is.

Building this empire not as a sex symbol, or the wife of someone famous, but as an admirable aesthetic adventuress who understands how to portray the ideal in easy-to-follow steps.
Delicious procedures with intriguing narrative and stunning photography.

When I bake, cook, garden or craft - I often think if Martha would be down with what I was doing? Trying to channel her ingenuity into my own domestic life, I have created the Stewart Score.

Based on three key principles and ranked out of two, this simple scoring system is as follows:

The STEWART SCORE:
Appearance: 1  2
Taste: 1  2 
Ease: 1  2

1= Not Worthy
2 = Its a Good Thing

My blog will rank each recipe I try. I would love to hear if you try something and have Martha-worthy results.

I hope you enjoy reading Martha Would be Proud!

                            This photo was taken at the Wired Business conference
                            in New York, April 2011. She sat in front of me. I may have
                            tried to smell her hair...but I got this (slightly blurry) picture
                            with her. She nailed it, like a total pro.