Sour Cream-Pound Cake Cupcakes

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 (8oz.) package cream cheese, softened

2 cups sugar

4 large eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

3 cups all-purpose flour (sift your dry ingredients)

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 (8oz.) container sour cream

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy.  Beat in sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating until blended after each addition.  Stir in vanilla.

2.  Combine flour and next 3 ingredients.  Gradually add to butter mixture alternately with sour cream, beating until blended.  Spoon batter by rounded tablespoonfuls into lightly greased miniature muffin pans.

3.  Bake at 350 degrees for 13 to 15 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in centers comes out clean.  Cool in pans on wire racks 5 minutes.  Remove from pans to wire racks, and cool completely (about 30 minutes).

(I used regular muffin tins)  Bake at 350 degrees for 22 to 24 minutes or until wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean.  Spread cupcakes with buttercream icing.

Vanilla Buttercream Icing

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 (3oz.) package cream cheese, softened

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 (16oz.) package powdered sugar (sift, it removes all the tiny lumps and makes the icing much smoother)

3 to 4 Tbsp. milk

1.  Beat first 3 ingredients at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy.

2.  Gradually add powdered sugar alternately with 3 Tbsp. milk, beating at low speed until blended and smooth after each addition.

3.  If desired, beat in remaining 1 Tbsp. milk, 1 tsp. at a time, until desired consistency.

This recipe makes 2 dozen cupcakes or 6 dozen miniature cupcakes.  These cupcakes are dense but not overly sweet, which makes the buttercream icing a great addition.  This recipe is from the February 2010 issue of Southern Living.  I hope you’ll try them and if you you do, leave me a comment and tell me what you think.

Along with my Mom, I put out a very large vegetable garden where it does require a great deal of work and often, a lot of luck, to have a good crop.  This year we had an enormous crop and actually with all the rain we had, we had the garden produce a second showing, which had us scrambling to either use up the produce or give it away.

When you labor for weeks to have a cucumber or tomato grow, you feel a great sense of accomplishment and know that without your efforts, the fruit would not flourish and would die on the vine.  You watch as the tiniest shoots emerge form the ground and you marvel at how quickly they grow into life-sustaining plants.  It’s a natural high but with my lemon tree, all I did was watch it, for months on end with no results.  Oh I watered and fertilized it but still, all 30 of the lemons that were dangling from the branches stayed green.  I checked more than once to make sure that I hadn’t bought a lime tree.  I even planted impatiens at the base of the tree, so that it didn’t look so bare.  The impatiens did so well that they nearly covered the entire lemon tree but that was OK, since I had gotten tired of looking at the drooping branches.

I read conflicting reviews on how and when lemons ripen but I was preoccupied with weddings and parties this summer, that I didn’t investigate fully and thought, why not just be surprised.  I was and am.  I’ll be moving my lemon tree inside soon, so that it can survive the winter and hopefully start it’s new crop, in the spring.  I’ll get to watch the blooms emerge and bring with them the tiny green fruit and it’s OK now that those green orbs stay green, for so long, because I’ll know what’s awaiting me, in the Fall.