Baking Without Butter - Lemon Sponge Cupcakes

Ingredients: 

• 3 eggs (divided)
• 115g sugar
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• zest of 1/2 a lemon
• 1 pinch of salt
• 45g flour (sifted 4+ times)
• 20g corn flour (sifted 4+ times)
• icing sugar (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 150 °C and line your muffin/cupcake tray with paper liners.
2. Beat the egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest and salt together on a high speed for around 4-5 minutes until light in colour and fluffy in texture. In the meantime, continue to sift both types of flour. This will make the texture of your cupcakes much lighter.
3. Sift around 1/3 of the flour onto the yolk mixture and mix in on a slow-medium speed. Repeat until all the flour is combined.
4. Whisk the egg whites in a separate bowl until soft peaks are formed and then fold the egg whites gently into the batter; be careful not to over-fold the mixture. 
5. Spoon into your cupcake liners and bake for around 20 minutes, or until the surface of each cupcake springs back when touched.  
6. Place on a cooling rack and subsequently dust lightly with icing sugar.

* Makes 12 cupcakes.

Notes:

These cupcakes are only mildly lemony. This is a personal preference. Feel free to add more lemon zest if you like. 

Variations:

- Double the recipe if you choose to opt for a cake rather than cupcakes. Bake in two unbuttered 7" cake tins for 25-30 minutes.

- Substitute the lemon zest/juice with orange zest/juice for an orange sponge. 

- Alternatively, replace the citrus flavours with cinnamon or cocoa powder. In such cases, be sure to swap the 1 tbsp of juice with an equivalent amount of water.