Lemon Yogurt Cupcakes, a home-kitchen plate

Soft and moist lemon yogurt cupcakes adorned with marshmallow peeps. The unfussy lemon yogurt glaze brings the steady tart and sweet balance.

We think we were about 8 years old.

We had an ambitious dream that we would be making lots of money by selling chicken eggs. We are cracking up right now as we write this post but here is the story…

One beautiful spring afternoon, school has just ended and kids were rushing out to the front gate of the school to return home. We noticed a bunch of kids were gathered around a man holding a large box in front of him. We, of course, had to investigate what was going on. There we saw kids holding the cute fluffy yellow spring chicks on their hands! “Peeps, peeps, and peeps!” There were boxful of chicks inside the box. The man was selling these lovely chicks to the kids. He claimed that all these chicks would become hens and lay many eggs everyday. (we didn’t know how to distinguish male or female, and we purely believed what the man promised)

We emptied out all the coins we had in our pocket and that was good enough to buy only one chick! We picked the fluffiest and plumpest chick and took her(?) home carefully. As we were walking home, we imagined this chick becoming a hen and lay many eggs. And her eggs hatch and become chicks to hens, and they would yield lots of more eggs. We pictured myself surrounded by the cute fluffy chicks and gathering hundreds of eggs from their mother hens. Eggs were expensive when we were growing up, and we dreamed of selling those eggs and become a richest kid in Korea (or in our hometown at least).

Well, the dream lasted only about 48 hours. We did a keeper we could to take care of the chick to make sure she was safe and fed right. But the chick died two days after we brought her home.

We cried. And we cried even harder when the neighbor lady, who came to visit our mom and saw us crying, told us that our chick was NOT a female. She heard our ambitious plan about this chick, then she checked the bottom. (we guess she knew how to tell the gender) we are not sure we cried because we were sad at the fact that the chick died, or the chick was not meant to be a hen because the chick seller lied to us, or simply because our chance of becoming the richest kid in our hometown had gone out the window.

As we were placing these little marshmallow peeps on top of our Lemon Yogurt Cupcakes with Lemon Yogurt Glaze, the memory of that male spring chicks we had for two days brought us some quiet laugh.

Coming to the recipe, this lemon cupcakes are top notch. Not only it is so unfussy to make, it is so tender and moist, and brings the steady tart and sweet balance. We were going to make butter cream frosting to go with these cupcakes but we are glad that we changed to unfussy lemon glaze using the leftover yogurt. It enhanced the flavor so evenly.

How the dish comes together

Combine all the dry ingredients.

Cream the butter, sugar, and an egg in the mixer until fluffy.

Add the yogurt, lemon zest, and lemon juice. Mix!

Add the dry ingredients and your batter is ready-yo!

Here are the cupcakes after baked.

Mix all the glaze ingredients and spoon over the cooled cupcakes. Let it flow down! If you prefer thicker icing, just add more powdered sugar.

We don’t like the look of white marshmallow part revealing when you tear them apart, so we just dipped them in the yellow sugar to cover up. Then, let your chicks to sit on top of the cupcakes. You are done!

We like simply decorated cupcakes. We often felt so guilty of taking bites out of a cupcake that looked like a masterpiece. However we can picture these unfussy lemon cupcakes with lovely peeps nesting on our Easter dessert table.

Ahhhhh…! Spring is finally here. We can almost smell it. Hope you are having a fantastic week so far!

• Yield: 12 cupcakes
• Prep: 15 minutes
• Cook: 25 minutes

Ingredients

• 1-1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, very softened
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt, Greek style preferred
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon zest
• 3 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 10-12 marshmallow peeps for decoration, optional

Lemon Yogurt Glaze

• 1-1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar
• 2 tablespoon plain yogurt, Greek style preferred
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 2 teaspoon lemon zest

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Prepare the muffin pan with paper liners.
2. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Set aside.
3. In another bow, mix sugar, butter, and egg until smooth. Add yogurt, lemon zest, and lemon juice, and beat well. Stir in the flour mixture and mix just until combined.
4. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, about 2/3 full. The recipe will make about 10-12 cupcakes.
5. Bake in the oven for 22-25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, remove from the pan and cool completely.
6. For the glaze, mix all the glaze ingredients well until smooth. Spoon over the cupcakes, and decorate with marshmallow peeps as you like.