Lemon Cupcake or Cake recipe???

Do you have a vanilla cake recipe you love?  I use that and replace the vanilla with pure lemon extract.

My lemon cake comes from my vanilla cake. I add lemon zest, and about 1/4 tsp of lemon extract in addition to the normal amount of vanilla extract. Be careful when adding lemon extract. It is very strong, and it can take a while for the flavor to fully develop. But once it does, oh boy, it is strong. Lemon zest is best.

I also make a lemon curd that I layer with my cake. 

I've been lurking on these boards for a while and since you mentioned lemon cake I guess I'll make an account and post, because I just made a really good one today.  I've probably made about 25 versions of this cake so far in the past couple months, and I think I'm basically ready to call it finished.  Be sure to follow the directions very closely,  it's a high-ratio cake(more sugar than flour) and I've had it "break"(basically the bottom becomes soggy, I'm assuming because the sugar and liquid sinks to the bottom) by using just a little too much liquid.  It really helps to have all the ingredients at room temperature.  I get the ingredients to 70 degrees by tossing the eggs in warm water to start off with and microwaving the liquid ingredients and butter for a few seconds at a time.  It makes it much more likely to come together properly.  I suppose it might help to use the two-stage method of mixing since it is high-ratio, but I have yet to try that.  The main thing to get it to come together well is room temperature ingredients and careful measuring with a digital scale.  Oh, and don't try to substitute cake flour for AP flour, as I've heard cake flour holds more liquid. 

Alton Brown says pulsing flour in a food processor works better than sifting, so I went with that.  The brown sugar is to duplicate the flavor of raw sugar, I suppose you could use raw sugar throughout, I have yet to try that.  It also uses sour cream and apple cider vinegar to give it a little "zing" and extra sweetness.  It has a little pudding in it, but doesn't overuse it--overusing it can make it taste like a box mix.  I didn't think to put lemon zest in it, maybe I'll try that next!  Anyway here it is, hopefully I wrote everything down right in my notes:

10 oz of butter, at room temperature
16 oz of sugar
1.5 oz light brown sugar
3 eggs, at room temperature
12.5 oz cake flour
1 1/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 oz instant vanilla pudding
2.5 oz sour cream, at room temperature
10 oz buttermilk, at room temperature
1 tbs lemon extract
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbs apple cider vinegar
 

This makes good cupcakes also, it should make about 32 of them.

This is awesome with a lemon-cream cheese icing btw, I can give you that recipe if you want.
 

Oh, and if you take out the lemon extract, you've got just yellow cake.  Replace the 3 eggs with 5 egg whites and 1/2 an egg yolk(to help bind it to the butter-sugar) beaten together, and use white chocolate pudding instead of vanilla and you've got a great white cake.  Reduce the buttermilk by 4 oz and add 2 oz of red food coloring and use chocolate pudding and you've got a great red velvet cake.

These are by far and away the most moist scratch cakes I've made and they don't dry out either because of the high fat content.  They're also sweet and go well with a mild buttercream(high fat-low sugar) to let the flavor of the cake stand out.