LEMON MERINGUE CUPCAKES

I cannot explain how excited I am about these cupcakes! Let me explain...David is not a big dessert person which, as you can imagine, is a little tough to accept seeing as desserts & sweets probably constitute about 50% of my diet. He is particularly opposed to cupcakes as they are often too sweet with too much icing. For this reason, I made it my mission to bake cupcakes that he would like for his birthday yesterday - lemon meringue cupcakes. And...it worked, he ate 4!

Fairy cakes: 100g butter, 100g sugar, 100g flour, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon baking powder, zest of 1 small lemon, juice of half a lemon. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Cream together butter & sugar. Add eggs, lemon juice & zest and whisk. Whisk in the flour & baking powder and divide equally between 10 - 12 cupcake cases. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden.

Lemon curd: 2 tablespoons cornflour, 4 tablespoons sugar, 150ml water, 2 egg yolks, juice of 1.5 lemons, zest of 1 lemon. Mix the sugar, water and cornflour together, place on a medium heat and keep whisking until you get a translucent mixture as shown in the photo above. Remove from heat and whisk in 2 egg yolks, lemon juice and zest. Place back on the heat and keep whisking for a couple of minutes. Remove from heat and leave to cool. Meringue: 2 egg whites, 100g sugar. Whisk egg whites until stiff, whisk in sugar until stiff peaks are formed. Place in piping bag.

Cut holes out of the cupcakes, fill with lemon curd and pipe on meringue in tear drop shapes. Place under the grill for a minute or two until the meringue is slightly golden.