Orange Zest Cupcakes

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a cookbook called "Perfect Cupcakes delicious, easy, and fun to make".  Yup, it's a cookbook filled with nothing but cupcakes.  There are plenty of decadent and dangerous looking cupcakes in this book.  The nice thing is each recipe is a serving size of six instead of the usual 18 or 24.

The first recipe I tried out are the Orange Zest cupcakes.  I thought it was interesting that the cupcakes weren't frosted but had a sugar and orange zest crumble topping.  It looked more like a muffin than a  cupcake.

Ingredients
Makes 6
1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon sugar1 1/2 teaspoons finely shredded orange zest3/4 cup cake flour3/4 tsp baking powder Pinch of salt1 egg, beaten1/4 cup milk2 tbsp melted butter1 tbsp frozen orange juice concentrate, thawedDirections

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Prepare a 6 cup standard muffin pan by greasing or inserting liners.

For the topping, in a small bowl, combine 1 teaspoon of the sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of the orange zest, pressing the zest into the sugar with the back of a spoon.  Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, and remaining orange zest.  Stir in the remaining sugar.  In a small mixing bowl, combine the egg, milk, melted butter, and orange juice concentrate.  Add all at once to the flour mixture and stir just until moistened.

Divide the batter equally among the prepared cups.  Sprinkle the tops with the sugar-orange mixture.  Bake until the tops spring back when lightly tapped, 20-25 minutes.  Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then turn out and cool completely.



The cupcakes came out really light and fluffy but they were on the dry side.  Maybe more butter or the addition of some cooking oil could help keep them moist.  Next time I will frost them with chocolate frosting and then sprinkle the orange sugar mixture on top.  A cupcake just isn't a cupcake without frosting.  Ha!