I have to make a confession… I don’t like summer. When you ask most people what their favorite season is 9 out of 10 times you will get summer. I love Autumn 🍁 and Winter ❄. While I don’t love summer, I do love summer fruit especially raspberries. My favorite combination is lemon and any kind of berry.

Last week I started making raspberry cupcakes from my current favorite cookbook Keep Calm and Bake Cupcakes when I decided to change it by adding lemons. Lemons are perfect because they make cupcakes light and refreshing. I followed the recipe as usual until the raspberries were added. Right before adding them I added about 2 teaspoons of lemon zest, 1 teaspoon of lemon juice (or extract) and 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract.

I love the look of the fresh raspberries in the batter and the lovely pink tint it gives it.

This recipe  made exactly 9 cupcakes like the cookbook states. My tip to get identical cupcakes is the use an ice cream scooper. I prefer the metal ones. I got mine at Stop and Shop.

Everyone’s favorite part is the frosting. Since it is such a light cupcake I made a lemon raspberry whip cream frosting. I mashed up ¼ of a cup of raspberries and added 1 ½ teaspoons of lemon extract. I piped the frosting and added a whole raspberry on top.

You can use your favorite vanilla cupcake recipe and just add the lemon
and raspberries. If you are not a from scratch baker, I would use lemon cake mix and add raspberries. If you want the exact recipe I used, you can find it in Keep Calm and Bake Cupcakes.

Have a wonderful day!

Love Kate ❤