Secret Recipe Club (SRC) February Reveal: No Reason Needed

It's time for the February Secret Recipe Club reveal...and the first reveal of 2012. Happy New Year!

What's the Secret Recipe Club? It's a group started by Amanda of Amanda's Cookin'. Each month, every participant is assigned to someone else's blog from which they pick a recipe - or two - to make and post, but it's all a secret until the big day. Today's the day. I always love a kitchen challenge and some culinary adventure. This month I had some help in form of my littlest Baker Mann, Dylan.

Here's my source of inspiration: No Reason Needed. Dylan asked if he could make lemon cupcakes for dessert. I said, "you just made fennel pollen-lemon muffins this morning."

Mom, I SAID cupcakes, not muffins.

"What's the difference between a cupcake and a muffin?" I was genuinely interested in his take on this.

The frosting, of course. A muffin is naked.

Makes sense.

So, after dinner, I let the enthusiastic zester go to town and he made triple lemon cupcakes. Triple lemon =  (1) lemon-ginger cupcakes, filled with (2) lemon-ginger curd, and topped with (3) lemon-ginger cream cheese frosting...so it's not naked.

I am still unsure of the difference between a muffin and a cake, despite Dylan's fervent defense of his definition. And I didn't tell him, but we used a lemon muffin recipe as the base of his creation, No Reason Needed's lemon-poppyseed muffin recipe.

I made a few adjustments. Since I used coconut flour, I needed to increase the moisture, adding more oil and more yogurt; and I used plain yogurt instead of lemon yogurt because that's what I had. Also, we left out the poppyseeds, but added ginger syrup.

1-1/2 C white whole wheat flour
1/2 C coconut flour
1/3 C organic brown sugar, packed
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/4 t pink Himalaya salt
6 T olive oil
zest and juice from one lemon
16 oz organic plain yogurt
1 large egg, lightly beaten
ground ginger
2 T ginger syrup

Preheat oven to 375°. Combine flours, sugar, baking powder, soda, ground ginger and salt in a medium bowl; make a well in center of mixture. Combine oil, zest, juice, yogurt, ginger syrup and egg; stir well. Add to dry ingredients, stirring just until moist.

Spoon batter into each of 12 muffin cups. Bake at 375° for 30 minutes or until golden. Remove muffins from pan immediately; place on a wire rack.

Once they are cool enough to touch, cut a hole in the top, scoop out a little bit of the cake, and drop in a spoonful of lemon curd. Plug the cake hole. Click here for the lemon-ginger curd recipe.

The Frosting
8 oz of cream cheese, softened
2 T butter, softened
1/2 C organic powdered sugar
1 T ginger syrup

Place all of the frosting ingredients into a large mixing bowl and beat together until light and fluffy. Spread over the cupcake and top with a few pieces of lemon zest.

Delicious...and Dylan was thrilled.