Bookish Recipe: Lemon Cakes

Welcome to Bookish Recipes, a feature on the blog where I cook or bake a recipe from a book I have loved and share the result with you. This week's recipe is inspired by the book Love, Lies and Lemon Cakes by Sue Watson. This is an inspiring story about taking a moment to re-evaluate your life, deciding if it is all you ever wanted and finding the courage to change it for the better, all with a bit of cake (to help deciding).

Since reading this book, I have been wanting to try the mouth-watering lemon cakes that Dan bakes in the book. And I saw that a while back Sue posted Dan's secret recipe in her page. So here is the result (I can already tell you, they were a roaring success and disappeared in a couple of hours):

1) Gather all of the ingredients and preheat the oven to 180ºC. With this recipe I made 12 cupcakes. So prepare 12 cupcake papers.

2) Beat together the softened butter and the sugar. When it's mixed add the eggs, milk and lemon zest and beat until combined.

3) Combine the flour with the baking powder and then add it to the mix. Beat in low speed until well combined.

4) Divide the mixture in the cupcakes containers, filling them only 3/4 parts.

5) Let them bake in the oven for about 35 minutes. I kind of forgot about mine and they stayed 40 minutes so they were a bit more golden but completely fine. So basically, don't forget about them. And let them cool while you make the icing.

6) Now the icing. Beat together the icing sugar, the butter and the lemon zest. Then, once it’s all mixed add the milk and continue to whisk for at least five minutes.

7) Add the icing to the cupcakes (they have to be completely cool otherwise the icing will melt). Use a spatula or a pastry bag, depending on your piping skills. Finally, add some more lemon zest to decorate.

The cupcakes were delicious. My boyfriend and my sister loved them. I will be repeating them for sure!

About the book:

Title: Love, Lies and Lemon Cake

Author: Sue Watson

Published: June 27th 2014 by Bookouture

Amazon | Amazon UK

Blurb: Faye Dobson has lost her sparkle. Living on film star fantasies and vague memories of a marriage that once was, she can’t help feeling that life is passing her by. She dreams of being whisked to Paris for dinner, making three wishes at the Trevi fountain and having sex under the stars. But the wrinkles are multiplying, her husband’s passion is for plumbing, and the nearest she’ll get to Rome is a take-away pizza.

So when Faye meets Dan the gorgeous Australian surfer guy working in the local deli she can’t help but wonder what it would be like to see the world. He is blonde, tanned, ten years younger and bakes the mostamazing lemon cake. Unlike her husband Dan actually listens to Faye, his smile makes her feel fizzy inside, and when he smiles... Oh. My. God.

But is Faye being silly? What would Dan see in someone like her? Even if he did have feelings for her, could she give everything up to be with him?

A laugh-out-loud, bittersweet comedy about taking your life back before it’s too late.