Lemon Glaze Cream Cheese Frosting!

That’s a mouthful….but I accidentally made my favorite homemade icing yesterday!

My friends and I like to watch the Bachelor/Bachelorette/Golden Bachelorette etc. all together every Monday, and it has become a fun tradition we look forward to.

To kick off our first watch party of Grant's season as The Bachelor, we decided to have a FEAST. MJ made this delicious spread comprised of a lemon-y garlic pasta, a tomato basil-y pasta, with homemade bruschetta and a salad with almonds, cranberries, feta and balsamic vinaigrette.... SO GOOD.

I decided to contribute a dessert to the gathering and wanted to make a lemon raspberry cupcake. The thought process was a journey... ultimately I went with a classic vanilla cupcake base, and decided to add cut up fresh raspberries at the end. One thing that is hard about lemon desserts is that you can not put natural / real lemon flavoring in any mix that contains dairy, because it will curdle. It was too late for me to find a cream-less recipe because I'd already started, so I opted to make the lemon aspect show out in the frosting. Also, one thing that always irks me is when my fruit sinks to the bottom of my cupcakes, despite tossing them in flour. This batter was more on the liquid-y side, and the raspberries were still cut in pretty big pieces, so I have nobody to blame but myself... but just wanted to throw that pet peeve in...

Back to the frosting! First, I tried to make a lemon glaze topping by taking powdered sugar, vanilla, and lemon juice. It definitely turned into a glaze- but the flavor just wasn’t there. I tried to brainstorm what to do next and luckily we had a block of cream cheese in the fridge. I took the cream cheese- added a little bit of granulated sugar, and added the lemon glaze. After beating it with a hand mixer, it made a sort of grainy cream cheese whipped frosting. Tasted GOOD- but not great. Kept thinking and thinking- I ended up adding more cream cheese, more vanilla and the zest of 1 whole lemon. Overtime, it became less grainy due to the sugar dissolving and mixing in, and the result was a really soft, really delicious, lemon cream cheese icing! I honestly think this will officially be my go-to lemon frosting when I need it! I might even incorporate raspberry puree or fresh raspberries too next time… the options are endless.

THANKS FOR TUNING IN TO THIS POST ABOUT MY LEMON-RAZZ-CUPCAKE JOURNEY!