Hiya all,

I've just made a very nice vanilla cupcake recipe.

I've been asked to make some lemon cupcakes and I wondered if I could add lemon zest and Lemon juice to the batter to make them into lemon cupcakes?

I know a lot of cupcake bakeries will use their vanilla based recipes for other flavours but I wondered if anyone has tried this??

The recipe calls for milk so if I added a little lemon juice should I remove that amount if milk?

Any advice would be fab x xx

Yes, you definitely can. I wouldn't add lemon juice though, the acidity will likely throw the whole recipe off. I add the zest of a smallish lemon, or half a large lemon, to each batch of 12 cupcakes. Keep all other ingredients the same, including the milk.
You can use the juice to add to your buttercream if you want it lemony too.

I add lemon emulsion and zest and cut the vanilla extract a little

I do the same for lemon... zest and organic extract. I also use it for vanilla Oreo. I think it would work for any fruit flavor. But I usually have a separate recipe for each flavor to make it completely different.

You could also use CK icing fruits.

http://www.ckproducts.com/categories/546/Icing-Fruit

Just remember that a little goes a long way, I once added lemon zest to a vanilla based cake and it was SO lemony! I def. went overboard!! But it was still good!

I tried this with my basic yellow cake recipe but it only worked for minor additions like lemon zest and extract for lemon cakes. Turning my yellow cake recipe to an orange cake took more than just adding OJ and zest. By the time I was done, I had a completely new recipe since I had to modify the leavening, liquids and sugar to compensate for what the OJ was bringing to the recipe. Then I continued tweaking from there. Took about 4 tries to get the darn thing right. Not all recipes can handle the tweaks without major alterations.

I did this recently. I added some lemon zest and a tiny amount of lemon extract. A little does go a long way. I wouldn't add lemon juice since it does change the acidity.