This wasn’t the most attractive or successful cupcake experiment. Not only did I go completely overboard with the icing (doesn’t it remind you of those little crabs at the beach that leave behind swirls of sand?), but the cake itself wasn’t enormously appetising – I grated the lemon rind too roughly, so that each cake was studded with chunky pieces of lemon peel. I’m putting the recipe up here anyway, as I thought the cakes looked rather amusing, and I’m sure it’d be a good basic recipe if the lemon is more finely grated.

1/2 cup softened butter
3/4 cup castor sugar
2 eggs, beaten
grated rind of 1 lemon
2 tsp lemon juice
2 1/4 cups self raising flour
3/4 cup milk

icing:
1/2 cup butter
4 cups icing sugar
lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy. Stir in the eggs, then add the lemon rind and juice. Mix in the flour alternately with the milk.

Spoon into muffin tins (filled with paper cases) – about one big dessert spoonful per cup. Makes 12.

Bake for 20 minutes.

While the cakes are cooling, beat the butter with the icing sugar, and add lemon juice until you get the texture you want. I made mine quite thick, and piped it onto the cupcakes. If you’re not into mountains of icing, I’d reduce the butter, and cut down the sugar by a cup. I dyed my icing with yellow food colouring, although it was quite a pretty pale yellow from the butter originally.