Clementine Countdown: 7

Clementine Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting
It's that time of year again—the time when it seems necessary to have dessert at brunch. That, and my recent commitment to daily clementines, is what inspired me to make tiny clementine cupcakes for my family’s annual Christmas brunch this morning. Seasonally appropriate, child friendly, and a rational portion size for a course that doesn’t really exist.

I used the Citrus Cupcake recipe from the new Cooking at Home, swapped clementines for oranges, and made a clementine cream cheese frosting. They’re bite-sized and great. So how many tiny cupcakes make up a serving? At least seven, right?

Clementine Cupcakes
Adapted from Cooking at Home, Williams-Sonoma.

1½ cups flour
1¼ t baking powder
½ t baking soda
¼ t salt
¾ cup sugar
¼ cup unsalted butter
2/3 c milk
Zest of 4 clementines
Zest of 1 lemon
1 egg plus 1 yolk

• Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl. Stir in the sugar.
• Combine butter, milk and zest in a medium sauce pan and heat over medium heat until the butter melts.
• Whisk the hot milk mixture into the flour mixture until combined. Add the egg and yolk.
• Pour the batter into tiny cupcake tins with liners, and bake at 350 for 10-11 minutes.
• Remove the cupcakes from the tin to cool.
• Spoon the frosting into a large zip lock bag, snip the bottom corner of the bag off, and squeeze the frosting out to top the cakes.

Clementine Cream Cheese Frosting
Juice and zest from 4 clementines
1 T sugar
1 # cream cheese, room temperature
6 T unsalted butter, room temperature
1 ¼ cups powdered sugar
1 t vanilla extract

• Heat the juice and sugar in a small sauce pan over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved and the juice is slightly thickened, about 4 minutes. Set aside to cool.
• Mix the cream cheese and butter in an electric mixer on high until smooth.
• Reduce the speed to low and add the powdered sugar.
• Mix in the vanilla juice mixture.