Strange July and Tea Infused Cupcakes

Hello readers - welcome to the Sunday night closer to Monday night blog post. It has been an extremely busy weekend in the Maddabling household...hence the late blog post. I share with you today Strange July and Tea Infused Cupcakes. Happy Reading xo

Strange July 
The weather this July has been unseasonally temperate in my part of the world, especially considering it's winter. I have seen two things in the past few days that I haven't seen before in July - our day lillies are starting to bloom............

and we saw a rather large and venomous tiger snake sunning itself on a warm winters day. How completely strange! 

I also accidentally captured the wind turbine movement when I took this photo using my mobile phone, I decided to run it through an instagram filter to give it a more striking colour and to highlight those amazing skies.

Lady Grey Tea Infused Cupcakes

I promised a loved one that I would bake some cupcakes for a special life event this weekend and I have been experimenting in the kitchen. I found a recipe for Earl Grey and Lemon Cupcakes in a women's magazine and have adapted this to make Lady Grey Tea Infused Cupcakes instead. Lady Grey Tea has a more delicate flavour with the brand I use containing black teas, Seville orange, lemon, bergamot, and cornflowers. These really are terribly delicious - try baking these for yourselves!  

Ingredients:

Cupcake Batter 
4 Lady Grey Teabags
1/2 cup just boiled water
125g softened butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
finely grated zest of one lemon
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
1 3/4 cups Self Raising flour

Lemon Buttercream Icing
60g butter softened
2 cups icing sugar
zest and juice of one lemon 

Method: 
Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Line a 12 hole muffin pan with paper baking cups.

In a jug or mug, add teabags to water. Set aside for 5 minutes to infuse. Remove teabags and cool.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar together until pale and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in zest.

Lightly fold in sifted flour, alternating with cooled tea and lemon juice, beginning and ending with flour. 

Spoon into baking cups until 2/3 full. 

Bake 20-25 minutes, until lightly golden and cooked when tested. 

Transfer to wire rack to cool completely. 

Make the butter cream icing by mixing butter, lemon juice, lemon zest and icing sugar together with an electric mixer until pale and creamy. Ice cooled cupcakes and devour! 

I hope you enjoyed Strange July and Tea Infused Cupcakes. See you all on Wednesday for a new edition of Wednesday Wishes xo