Luscious Lavender Cupcakes

(Recipe courtesy of Dawn at Beat Until Fluffy. See related blog post link.)

Place one teaspoon of lavender buds and milk in a small saucepan over medium heat. Scald the milk and pour into a heatproof container. Chill in the fridge.

Place superfine and confectioner’s sugar each in their own zip lock bag (quart size works fine) or tupperware. Add one teaspoon of lavender buds to each. Stir, seal and allow to rest for several hours, or as long as you like—the scent will just get stronger.

Heat your oven to 325 degrees. Place muffin cups in your muffin pan, or place the cups on a cookie sheet if you do not have a muffin pan. Spritz the cups with cooking spray. Sift flour and baking powder together, set aside. Strain the superfine sugar. Strain the scalded milk of lavender buds and set 2 tablespoons of it aside, leaving about 1/2 cup for the batter. Place superfine sugar, 3 tablespoons of the butter and the egg in your mixer bowl and beat well. Add sifted flour/baking powder to the batter and combine. Keep the mixer going and slowly add 1/2 cup of the scalded milk and ‘Beat Until Fluffy.’ Scoop batter into muffin cups, filling each one halfway. Bake for 22-25 minutes or until golden brown. Let the cupcakes cool until you can handle them and remove to wire racks. You’ll get 12 average-sized cupcakes out of this recipe with a little batter left over.

Frosting:

Sift lavender buds from confectioner’s sugar. Place confectioner’s sugar, remaining 5 tablespoons butter and 3 drops each of blue and red food coloring in your mixer bowl. Mix until combined. With the mixer running, slowly pour in remainder of scalded milk and ‘Beat Until Fluffy.’ The longer you beat this frosting, the more ‘fluff’ it will acquire. I beat mine for about 8 minutes today. Afterwards, I put the frosting in a zip lock bag and snipped off one corner so I could pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes.