I have been exploring Pintrest lately (follow me here!) and came across quite a recipe for pink lemonade cupcakes and they sounded delicious since I have been into all things lemon lately and the fact they were pink simply took the cake! Ha-ha I'm so punny. Please bear with me, its been a long day.
Anywho, back to the pink lemonade cupcakes; I just had to make them since I have recently moved into a new house and have been dying to try out my new kitchen. I read over the recipe and realized I didn't have all of the ingredients, mainly buttermilk. I looked for other recipes to try and most of them called for buttermilk, which I knew I could get easily but didn't really want to have it around since I had no other use for it.
Feeling discouraged I suddenly remembered stumbling on a recipe for Sprite Cake, so I immediately went to Google to find it and turns out it was from a well know blogger Bakerella! Her recipe was for a round cake and added Sprite more for moisture rather than flavor so I made a few modifications and gathered my ingredients.
Pink Lemonade Mini Cupcakes
1 white cake mix (I wanted to use lemon but Walmart didn't have any but if you can find lemon use it! then cut back on lemon juice)
4 eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 box instant lemon pudding (3 oz. size)
8 oz. of Sprite (use the mini can if you can find one if not just measure one cup)
2-4 Tbsp. lemon juice (less if you used the lemon cake mix)
Lemon Zest - Optional
Pink food color - I used Wilton brand (stock# 610-256 if that means anything to you)
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Line 2 mini cupcake pans with cupcake papers (48 total).
- Mix ingredients except for food color with whisk until it is just fully incorporated.
- Add your food color *Note if you have never used Wilton colors before they are concentrated so get just a small amount on a toothpick and add to batter and mix. If not the desired color, repeat until you achieve the desired color using a CLEAN toothpick each time to avoid contaminating and spoiling the color still in the jar.
- Use a 1oz. spring release ice cream scoop to put the batter into pans and bake for about 15 minutes but check on them around 10 mins! when a toothpick inserted comes out clean they are done.
- Let them cool in the pans a bit before transferring to the wire racks to cool completely before frosting.
Pink Lemonade Buttercream
I followed Bakerella's recipe almost exactly and since I put the frosting on cupcakes I ran out so I suggest making the recipe as follows;
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) REAL salted butter, softened
4 Tbsps lemon juice
1 1/2 1b. 10X powdered sugar
3-5 teaspoons milk, half and half or cream
Lemon Zest
Pink food coloring
If you don't have time/didn't think ahead etc. and your butter is not softened, fear not! Just cut into approx. 1 inch chunks and microwave for 15-30 seconds till soft but NOT MELTED.
Cream together butter, lemon juice and zest and milk then cream together until smooth. Take note that I did actually did this by hand (with my Williams Sonoma Spatula I got for Christmas from my amazing boyfriend!) and was super easy, but you can totally use a hand or stand mixer.
Add sugar gradually, incorporating fully each time.
Add food color (See note above).
For easy frosting scoop your freshly made buttercream into a ziplock bag, seal, cut the corner then frost those delicious cupcakes add some sprinkles then enjoy!
