Meyer Lemon Cupcakes and Thanksgiving

If you have ever seen Meyer lemons in a store, please let me know.

Meyer lemons are one of those things that Martha Stewart likes to use in her recipes to make life difficult for people who don't have Meyer lemon trees. Meyer lemons are, in fact, different from regular, run-of-the-mill grocery store lemons. They are smoother, and have a milder taste, more similar to an orange.

In San Francisco, we had a Meyer lemon cupcake at Kara's Cupcakes in Ghirardelli Square. Two days later, my parents went back and bought another one. It was that good.

I decided the recipe I would make over Thanksgiving had to be the Meyer lemon one. I called my mom to see if she could find Meyer lemons in a store in Las Vegas, and she informed me that their neighbors had a Meyer lemon tree, and they had been passing them out at church. My mom managed to score eight of them in exchange for a few cupcakes and the recipe. And we were on our way.

The cupcakes were a very small part of the weekend, truth be told.

I got to eat at In-N-Out Burger, one of my favorite places to eat when I am in Vegas, on Wednesday night, with my parents and Melanee's family. The burger was excellent, but the best part of dinner was hanging out with Kevin while he drank catsup and Sammie, who had a really tough time understanding why it wasn't okay for her to eat food that has fallen on the floor.

You may notice Kevin's catsup moustache. Up until this happened, he and Melanee were sharing a catsup cup. After that, Mel got her own.

We made a quick stop at a cupcake bakery. One of my other goals for this trip was to sample as many cupcakes as I could get my hands on. My first stop was a place called Cupcake Lane Bakery, whose cupcakes were all named after streets.

This is their pretty packaging.

This is what was left of a Savannah Street, which was red velvet with cream cheese frosting. We also got a Lombard Street (chocolate filled with cream, like a Hostess Cupcake), a Road to Hana (chocolate with a liquid chocolate center and chocolate buttercream), and a Michigan Avenue, which was lemon with lemon buttercream. The Savannah Street was great, but the others were just average.

After I took these pictures, I misplaced my camera for several days. On Thursday, we had Thanksgiving dinner. In the evening, we made ornaments out of Sculpey, which we used to decorate a tree to send to my brother Danny on his mission. It started out with simple ornaments made with cookie cutters, and slowly progressed to some pretty ornate ornaments. Shane surprised us all with his creativity.

Friday morning, Melanee, Dad, and I woke up early and braved the Black Friday crowd at Wal-Mart. For those of you who have never experienced Black Friday, it is one of those things that is worth experiencing once, if only because it makes you appreciate Wal-Mart on days when it is not Black Friday. However, we had a checklist of things to get, and we managed to get all of them. When we got home, I fell asleep for several hours. In the afternoon, we visited the Bass Pro Shop located in the Silverton Casino. The kids got a chance to sit on Santa's lap, which only Sammie was okay with. We have some great shots of Kevin crying hysterically while Sammie gives the camera her best smile.

They also had a giant fish tank, and some unlucky employees who put on mermaid costumes and periodically swim around for the tourists.

When we got home, the Oka family, who, collectively was running on about 20 minutes of sleep, crashed, and we didn't see any of them until the next morning. Meanwhile, the rest of the adults watched Angels and Demons while I started the Meyer lemon cupcakes.

These cupcakes do not have frosting, but they do have Meyer lemon curd, which has sort of a pudding-like consistency and a dusting of powdered sugar. The cake is a little bit dense, and the cream cheese gives it a sort of a cheesecake taste. My family had no trouble eating them, despite the fact that we had lots of food around the house even before I made them.

Meyer Lemon Cupcakes (makes 42)

3 1/2 c. all purpose flour, sifted

2 Tbsp. finely grated Meyer lemon zest, plus 2 Tbsp. fresh Meyer lemon juice (about 1 to 2 Meyer lemons)

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 1/2 tsp. coarse salt (I use sea salt)

1 3/4 c. (3 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter (I did not use unsalted butter because, apparently, there was a run on it at the nearby grocery store)

3 c. granulated sugar

8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature

7 large eggs (No, that is not a typo. Brace yourself, it gets worse.)

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

Confectioner's sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 325. Line your muffin tins. Whisk together dry ingredients. Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in cream cheese. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in lemon juice and vanilla. Add flour mixture. Divide batter, filling each muffin cup 3/4 of the way. Bake until a tester comes out clean, about 28 minutes.

Let cupcakes cool completely. To finish, dust with confectioner's sugar. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a coupler and a medium round tip with lemon curd. Insert tip into top of each cupcake and squeeze some curd into a pool on top (it will look kind of like a fried egg). Or, if you left your pastry tips and bags at home, you can cut a little out of the center of each cupcake (someone will eat the centers, I promise), put your lemon curd in a Ziploc bag, cut the tip of, and squeeze it into the craters you made in the cupcakes.

Lemon Curd

2 whole eggs, plus 8 egg yolks (no, this is not a typo, either)

1 c. sugar

2/3 c. fresh lemon juice (about 6 lemons)

2 Tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, room temperature

Combine whole eggs and yolks, sugar, and lemon juice into a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Cook, whisking constantly until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Remove from heat. Add butter, a few pieces at a time. whisking until smooth after each addition. Strain through a fine sieve into another bowl and cover with parchment paper or plastic wrap, pressing it directly on surface. This prevents the curd from getting a skin, unless you are a fan of pudding skin.

This recipe makes a lot, as you can see, so it is a good one to take to a potluck dinner or to distribute among your family, friends and neighbors.

I imagine you can make these with regular lemons, and I would guess it's not that different. It's a great recipe.

I continued on with my cupcake crawl on Monday.

I made a trip to Mad Hatter cupcakes, across the street from Cupcake Lane. We got a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting, and a Mad About Coconut cupcake, which was coconut cake with coconut filling and coconut frosting. That one was my mom's favorite. We ate them for dessert at Baja Fresh.

And the last cupcake store I visited on my trip was the Cupcakery. This was clearly the most chain-like store I visited, although, when I looked it up online, I discovered that they had only four locations-two in Las Vegas, and two in the Dallas area. Weird. We had a buy-2-get-one-free coupon, and we bought a chocolate mint cupcake, a Boston creme pie, and a maple pecan cupcake.

It was a great Thanksgiving.