The rest of our trip in Lebanon

Day 2



Days 3 and 4

Our first day in Lebanon

A bit about our trip and the Lebanese food we've enjoyed...

Obligatory St Paddy's Post

Happy St. Paddy's Day to you all wherever you're celebrating! I'm in Beirut, Lebanon this week and celebrating here with my new Lebanese friends!

Apologies for the lack of recipe today, but I imagine the blogosphere will be jam packed with Irish themed or "Irish" themed food for you to enjoy. For now though I'm going to get back to the Lebanese cuisine I've been enjoying...

Lemony cupcakes

It's been such a loooong winter here, which seems to have disappeared like a flick of a switch when we moved from February to March. I made these last week when I was longing for a little sunshine again and they did the trick. I love citrusy flavours for sunny days but I'll have to remember to enjoy citrusy things to encourage the sun to come back too now!

I've based this on a recipe here from Deeba at Passionate about Baking who got it from CoffeeGrounded who got it from the Martha Stewart website. So thanks Martha!

Lemony cupcakes

Makes about 12-18 cupcakes or 6-9 muffins

Ingredients
Cupcakes
100g unsalted butter (room temp)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk (room temp)
1 teaspoon vanilla (I used the insides of a vanilla bean)
Zest of one lemon, finely grated, plus juice
1 cup granulated sugar

Icing
1 cup icing sugar
a drop of yellow food colouring
2-3 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp water

Recipe
1. Preheat your oven to 170˚C and prepare your bun/muffin cases on your baking tray.
2. In one bowl mix together the four, baking powder and salt. In another bowl whisk together the butermilk, vanilla, lemon juice and zest.
3. Beat the butter until smooth, then beat in the sugar.
4. Beat in the eggs one at a time
5. Mix in a third of the flour mix, then half the buttermilk mix, another third of the flour, the rest of the buttermilk and the last of the flour mix.
6. Divide the batter amongst the bun/muffin cases and bake for 20-25 minutes.
7. Leave to cool on a rack before frosting.



8. Mix together the icing sugar and food colouring , then gradually beat in a little lemon juice at a time until all the sugar is mixed in and the mixture is thick (not too runny). Use to decorate your cupcakes.