Lemon and Passion Fruit Cupcakes

Preheat the oven to 350 F and line a 12 hole cupcake tin with paper liners.

Place the butter, sugar and lemon zest into a large bowl, or the bowl of your stand mixer and beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary, until well incorporated. This will take about 1 minute on medium-high speed. Add the flour, salt, baking powder and milk and mix on medium-high until you have a smooth, well combined batter.

Place 1 tablespoon of batter into each cupcake liner, then put 1/2 tablespoon of passion fruit coulis on top of the batter in the liners. Then, place another tablespoon of cake batter over the coulis, to make sure it’s covered.

Place in the oven and bake for 18-22 minutes, until risen, golden and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. (Of course, you may end up with a little coulis on your skewer, but it’s easy to distinguish between that and raw batter. The coulis will be wet, shiny and yellow.)

Once baked, immediately remove them from the tin and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Yes, they’re hot, but this stops the liners from peeling away from the cupcakes.

Once cooled, make the frosting. Place butter, powdered sugar and lemon zest into a large bowl/the bowl of your stand mixer and beat until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes on medium-high speed. Add the passion fruit coulis and mix until well combined. If frosting is still a little runny, add in up to an extra 1/2 cup powdered sugar.

Once you have the correct consistency, place frosting into a piping bag fitted with a large open star nozzle and pipe a swirl onto each cupcake. Alternately, you can spoon frosting onto cupcakes and smooth over.

Drizzle a little extra coulis onto each cupcake and top with sprinkles, if desired.

Cupcakes will keep in an airtight container in the fridge, for 3 days. Take them out of the fridge 30 minutes before serving.

Note: You can find passion fruit coulis in some well stocked supermarkets; otherwise you can use a simple fruit puree and add a little sugar if needed.