Vanilla Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

I needed a way to thank the volunteers who are helping me give one of my finals, so I went with cupcakes. I've never put cream cheese frosting on any cake or cupcakes other than carrot, red velvet, and possibly chocolate..but these are delicious! And I love the recipe I used for the cake part.

the minis:




For the cupcake:

* 3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 sticks)
* 1 1/2 cup sugar
* 2 eggs
* 2 1/2 cup flour [I used cake flour- so I added 2 extra tbsp of flour]
* 2 tsp baking powder
* 1/4 tsp salt
* 1 cup milk
* 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
* 1/4 tsp lemon extract

Preheat oven to 350º. Bring the butter and the eggs to room temperature before mixing [Tips Below**$$]. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together using a hand mixer. Mix in the eggs one at a time. Then, stir in all of the dry ingredients until just combined. Slowly pour in the milk and the extracts while beating constantly. Line two muffin tins with cupcake papers. Fill 2/3 of each space with batter. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the cupcakes are lightly golden on top and a toothpick inserted in the center of one comes out clean. Remove the cupcakes from the tins to racks to cool. Cupcakes should be completely cooled before frosting.

Makes around 18 regular sized cupcakes, but I split the batter up and made some minis.
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** : Bring the eggs to room temp quickly by filling a bowl with warm water, and placing the eggs inside. (Do not use too hot, because then your eggs would cook! Think warm/hot bath temperature.

$$ : Room temperature butter is the same as softened. It's not melted, but if you poke it, your finger should slowly slide through the butter. I usually soften butter using the microwave (using 40% power and doing 40 sec intervals), but yesterday was so hot outside, I sat the bowl of butter outside for 10 minutes while I prepped everything else.
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For the frosting, I never use a recipe. You can find plenty on the web if you need one. If I had to guess: around 8 oz cream cheese, 2 cups of powdered sugar, 2 tps vanilla extract, 3 tps lemon extract, and the rind of an entire lemon. And I added food coloring for fun.

These are delicious.

Oh and here's an idea: One part of baking cupcakes or muffins I hate is spooning the mixture into the individual wells. Batter usually spills over the edges and it just takes a while to do this part. So I used Amy's idea of filling up a bag with batter, cutting one of the corners off (still make a small cut!), and quickly squeezing the batter into each well (she used this idea for squeezing the filling into cookies). Much quicker and simpler. See bag below.