Honey Cupcakes With Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
Medically reviewed by Christiana George Updated Date: June 8, 2023
Saturday afternoon had me knee-deep in frosting. There was frosting in the sink, on the floor, in my fingernails. My hands smelled like butter, which, if you know me, is akin to having butter-smelling perfume sprayed directly into my nose. Or worse, cologne. Like a really obnoxious-smelling cologne. I have a sensitive sense of smell.
For my friend’s birthday, I’d originally intended to make lavender frosting because lavender is her favorite flavor ever, which is why I made honey-flavored cupcakes. Honey and lavender—they seem a fine pair, don’t they? But, me being me, I didn’t begin looking for the lavender until the last minute, the morning of her party in fact, which is how I ended up with a botched Swiss meringue buttercream frosting hanging stickily in pots and pans all around the kitchen: lavender was nowhere to be found, at least in my immediate vicinity, so I switched to the buttercream, and subsequently flubbed it. I’m not an experienced frosting maker, if you can’t tell.
So I guess you could call the creation of the lemon cream cheese frosting a metaphorical throwing in of the towel. I mean, I did throw a dish towel at the counter in disgust after the buttercream underperformed (fine, I underperformed), and even contemplated showing up at my friend’s place with unfrosted cupcakes. But just like bestowing a cake upon a friend with a slice cut out for the sake of my food blog would be a violation of a basic human right, showing up with plain cupcakes would be, well, just plain pathetic.
That is how I ended up with a lemon zest-spiked cream cheese frosting. I was happy with my decision in the end. It may have been a safe and easy choice, but it was SO good. And I don’t even like lemon.
Unfortunately, the honey cupcakes turned out kind of dry. I might try swapping out the butter for canola oil if I ever make them again. But a delicious, complementary frosting is usually compensation enough, no? And I do believe that honey and lemon work wonderfully together.
I’ll have to practice my Swiss meringue buttercream craft the next time a birthday comes around. But only if there’s ample time to spare and I’ve prepped my ingredients earlier.
Honey Cupcakes With Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
Adapted from Half-Baked, the Cake Blog
Makes a dozen cupcakes
Ingredients:
For the cupcakes:
1 stick butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla extract
For the frosting:
1-1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
3 cups confectioners sugar
3 Tbsp honey
Grated zest from 1 lemon
Directions:
For the cupcakes:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 12 muffin cups with liners.
In medium bowl mix together flour, baking powder and salt, and set aside. In small bowl mix together buttermilk, honey and vanilla, and set aside. In bowl of stand mixer cream butter and sugar on medium speed until combined. Add eggs, one at a time beating well after each addition and scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Gradually add the dry and wet ingredients, alternating starting and ending with dry ingredients. Don’t overmix.
Fill the liners 2/3 full. Bake 18-20 minutes or until tops are golden.
For the frosting:
In a large bowl, cream butter and cream cheese until combined. Gradually add confectioner’s sugar and continue to mixing scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Mix in honey and lemon zest. Frost the cupcakes.
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Korean Fried Chicken
I have had the most incredible hankering for Korean food recently. I can’t explain it, except that this current weather makes me want to cuddle up with a bowl of soondubu and freshly cooked rice, made in a stone pot of course. I also just recently discovered Maangchi, who is just about the cutest woman alive other than my mom. They remind me an awful lot of each other actually.
Maangchi doesn’t do anything in half measures, meaning everything she cooks is in huge quantities. She whips out 10 pounds of kimchi at a time, fries huge basins of japchae. I can’t imagine the number of people she cooks for, but in the case of the recipe I’m sharing today, she deep-fried three pounds of chicken wings. For Chris and me, two to three wings/drumettes each, so maybe half a pound of chicken total, is sufficient. Although maybe we’re just light eaters. It’s hard to say.
But hold it! I’m misleading you, aren’t I? I actually didn’t end up following Maangchi’s recipe. It was pretty good, but I found that I preferred Saveur’s version better. The two taste totally different; I just found her version to be a bit cloying. (Also, I don’t understand why corn syrup seems to end up in a lot of Korean dishes—is it a common ingredient? And why?)
What the two versions have in common—and what makes Korean fried chicken so dang addictive—is that the chicken is fried twice. This results in a Seriously Crispy Crust. It’s the difference between a weak handshake and a firm one, sallow and sturdy. A robust crust, if you will. I think it’s dead simple and pretty genius. (The only downside is that you have to withstand being barraged by oil twice as long. Actually, come to think of it, that’s a pretty big downside. Deep-frying is freaky. Make sure you wear long sleeves. And gloves. And clear everything away around the perimeter of the pot because it’s going to get dirty.) And then you smother it in a hot-garlicky-mouth-puckering sauce and away you go!
(On an unrelated note, if you follow me on Instagram, you might know that I was in California last week, where I got to meet the newest generation of the Anderson clan, aka Chris’s brother’s four-and-a-half month old son and our nephew! I get a little giddy calling him this, because it didn’t really occur to me that he WAS related to me until Chris’s sister-in-law [which makes her my sister-in-law?] called me Aunt Linda. Aunt Linda! That’s so exciting! And now that I’ve seen him and fallen in love, I want to buy him things like this onesie. What do you think? Isn’t it adorable?? [Now my mom thinks I want to start popping them out. Ha. Ha ha ha. Sorry Mom. You’ll have to give me time.])
KOREAN FRIED CHICKEN (aka KFC)
From Saveur
Makes 16 pieces
Ingredients:
- 5 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1 (1.5″) piece peeled ginger, chopped
- 3 Tbsp soy sauce
- 3 Tbsp gochujang
- 1.5 Tbsp rice vinegar
- 1 Tbsp Asian sesame oil
- 1 Tbsp honey
- 2/3 cup flour
- 1 Tbsp cornstarch
- 2/3 cup water
- 16 chicken wingettes/drumettes (from 8 chicken wings)
- Canola oil, for frying
- Sesame seeds and chopped green onions for topping
Directions:
Make the sauce: process the garlic, ginger, soy sauce, gochujang, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and honey with a food processor/immesion blender until blended (or mince the garlic and ginger and whisk the ingredients together by hand).
For the chicken: in a bowl, whisk the flour, corn starch, and water. Add the chicken and toss. In a medium-sized heavy-bottomed pot, pour about 2 inches of oil. Clip a candy thermometer onto the side of the pot and heat the oil until it reaches a temperature of 350 degrees F. Add the chicken pieces gently, but don’t crowd the pot; you’ll have to work in two or three batches. Fry chicken until golden, about 6 to 8 minutes. Drain on paper towels. Reheat the oil to 350 degrees and fry chicken again until crisp and medium brown, 6 to 8 minutes. Drain.
In a large bowl, toss the chicken pieces with the sauce, top with sesame seeds and green onions if using, and serve. With lots of napkins.
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