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Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Limoncello Cupcakes

Serendipity: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.


About a month ago one of my husband's coworkers brought into work bags of lemons from his prolific lemon tree. So we ended up with 2 dozen lemons. With some of the lemons I made preserved lemons and the rest of the lemons were destined to be limoncello. 


I tucked the mason jar full of lemon peels and vodka in the back corner of one of my kitchen cabinets and then promptly forgot about it....until I saw that the next recipe was for limoncello cupcakes and I knew it was meant to be. 

I finished making the limoncello and then got to work on the cupcakes. Sugar, flour, and lemon zest go into a bowl, and to my surprise so does cardamom. 

You know how sometimes you smell something and you are instantly transported back in time, to another event. The smell and the moment are intrinsically link together.  Whenever I smell cardamom I am immediately brought back to the time I spent in Jordan. Cardamom coffee is popular throughout the Middle East, where they grind pods of cardamom in with their coffee beans making the most delicious smelling coffee. So when I opened the jar of cardamom for the briefest of moments I was right back in Jordan, standing in front of a sidewalk coffee stand, sipping cardamom coffee and being lost in a world that was not mine own...but just like that I was back in my kitchen on a quiet Tuesday morning making boozy cupcakes.

Since neither my husband nor my 5 year old drinks I decided to take the boozy cupcakes with me when I got together with some friends. They quickly disappeared (the cupcakes not the friends). 

Who would have thought that 6 years ago I would have been hitching rides on the back of camels out in to the deserts of Jordan to have cardamom scented coffee with Bedouins and today I would bring cardamom scented boozy cupcakes to an officer spouse's club social. Some days I wonder which world is the one that is in fact not my own. 




Limoncello Cupcakes. Baking Chez Moi page 194 

8 comments:

  1. Your cupcakes look lovely. I would love to make my own limoncello.

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  2. Beautiful cupcake! They must have been delicious with homemade limoncello.

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  3. Your cupcakes look gorgeous! Sounds like they were a hit as well!

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  4. I really enjoyed reading your post! Fun story! Your piped frosting looks a lot like mine :)

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  5. The cupcakes look very yummy. Aren't you glad the a scent can call up a memory that was exciting and fun. They are both your worlds, without even knowing it you bring pieces of all of those memories into today. It shapes the colors you chose, scents that make you happy, designs that just seem to be right. You are the camel riding, city tromping, gallery haunting, suburban escapee, cook, baker, crafty woman that is all of those things.

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  6. Yum! I might have to try some coffee with cardamom, that sounds delicious and it's one of my favorite spices. Lucky friends that got to taste these.

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  7. Your cupcakes look fabulous - kudos for making your own limoncello.

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