Cooking and traveling make my world go round

Passport & Plate - Lime Sunny Cupcakes

Vietnam | Friday, March 14, 2014 | 3 photos

Ingredients
(For 24 cupcakes)

For the crust:
- Digestive biscuit crumbs: 190g
- Granulated sugar: 50g
- Unsalted butter (melted): 80g

For the cupcake:
- Cake flour: 270g
- Baking powder: 1 tbsp
- Salt: 1/2 tsp
- Unsalted butter (room temperature): 230g
- Granulated sugar: 250g
- Zest of 1 lime
- Eggs (room temperature): 4
- Milk: 360ml
- Lime juice: 2 tbsp
- Vanilla extract: 2 tsps

For the lime curd:
- Eggs: 3
- Granulated sugar: 150g
- Lime juice: 60ml
- Unsalted butter (room temperature, cubed): 57g

For the frosting:
- Whipping cream: 300ml
- Icing sugar: 52g
- Vanilla extract: 1/2 tsp

 

How to prepare this recipe
Crust:

Turn oven to 175 degrees C. Line cupcake molds with paper liners. In a small bowl, mix together the digestive biscuit crumbs, granulated sugar and melted butter until incorporated. Spoon 1 tbsp of the mixture into each cupcake mold, press down evenly with a shot glass. Bake the crusts in the oven for 5 minutes then take out and place on a wire rack to cool. Maintain oven temperature.

Cupcake:

In a large bowl, mix together the cake flour, baking powder and salt. In another large bowl, beat butter for 3 minutes until pale and fluffy. Scrape the sides of the bowl, continue to beat for 1 minute. Mix in the grated lime zest, then sugar in 3 additions. Add the eggs one by one, beating just until incorporated, scraping the sides of the bowl every now and then. Add the lime juice into the milk, let stand for 10 minutes to make buttermilk. Mix the vanilla extract. Mix the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture into the egg mixture in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour, scraping the sides often.

Pour the batter into the cupcake molds, filling no more than 2/3 of the molds. Bake in the preheated oven for 18-22 minutes, depending on actual doneness. Put on wire rack to cool.

Lime curd:

Mix together the eggs and sugar in a non-stick pot. Mix in the lime juice. Put the pot on a stove, cook on low heat, constantly beating until the mixture gets heated through. Maintain the low heat to prevent the eggs from cooking. Add in the butter gradually, beating each addition until melted. Continue to heat and stir mixture until thick. Turn off the heat, pour mixture through a sifter, cool completely.

Frosting:

Add the vanilla extract and sugar to the whipping cream, whip together until light and fluffy. Put into a piping bag with a star tip.

Assemble:

Use a paring knife to dig a cone shape into each cupcake, remove the cones. Pour the lime curd into each hole. Pipe the whipped cream around the edge of each cupcake. Garnish with lime zest and wedges.

 

The story behind this recipe
I am a girl from Vietnam with a passion for baking, which is a conflict in itself. Vietnam is a South East Asian country with a very distinctive oriental culinary heritage bearing few resemblances to that of Western countries, where the art of baking originated. Thus I often have to improvise with my baking, utilizing what ingredients I could find in the local market. One thing I found out while researching thousands of baking recipes is that lemons are a mainstay in this area of cookery. I love lemons, when I can find them.

Vietnam's climate is not suitable for growing lemons. Every time I go looking for lemons in the markets, they are either unavailable or forbiddingly expensive. So I thought to myself 'there must be a substitute'. And there it was, right next to the empty shelf space where the lemons should have been, a basket of limes.

In many ways limes resemble lemons, zesty, citrusy and aromatic. But lime's flavor is more pungent. So I had to find a way to tame that vigorous taste, which was why I created the lime curd. Lime juice by itself is too sour, but when made into a curd, it is softened by sugar and butter and eggs. The resulting mixture is smooth, creamy, and fragrant, just like lemon curd, yet much more vibrant in a very Eastern way. I also put grated lime zest into the batter to intensify the limey flavor which evokes the image of a sunny Asian village where colorful fruits grace the scene.

The cupcake's name comes from its visuals. The white circle of cream around the yellow curd make the cake look like the Sun, which can be seen for most of the year in my tropical hometown, Hanoi. In many ways, the cake is me. I am an Asian girl born in Sofia, Bulgaria, with 1/8 French heritage. I was a gifted student in Vietnamese literature and history but I also traveled to the US at 17 on an English scholarship and became an English teacher later on. The incorporation of the Asian lime into an otherwise Western recipe represents my multicultural identity.