Lime Cupcakes with Momélie

My mother and I had a bag full of limes and a craving for something sweet. The cover of an old magazine on her coffee table featured a beautiful lemon pie. The lemon cupcakes with lemon curd (another Martha Stewart recipe) I made for a friend’s birthday a few years ago popped into my head. “Surely I can do that with limes…”

We got on our aprons and set to work! Mama started zesting and juicing, I began mixing the batter.

When it was time to separate the eggs, Mama had a surprise for me. Thank you to Kent of Follette Pottery for this amusingly disgusting gift to my mother, a nose (and ear and throat) doctor.

The lime curd was very yellow from the yolk. I added a drop of green food coloring. It looked awful, more slime than lime. I added a second to make it scream, “Lime!” (Or maybe… “Alien slime!”)

Martha Stewart’s recipe instructs inserting a pastry tip into the cupcake while piping to get curd in there. I didn’t have a pastry bag or tips, so I settled for a plastic baggy.  Since that wasn’t going to force any curd into the cupcake itself, I poked a hole about halfway in using the rounded end of a wooden honey dipper, which seemed about the right size (you might use a wooden spoon or similar implement). I dusted the cupcakes with powdered sugar, then piped lime curd into the holes, pooling more on the tops.

They tasted sweet and tart with a lovely lime flavor—delicate in the cake, strong in the curd.

Below are my modified ingredients to make these lime beauties. I halved the original recipe, which makes a huge amount! Find the full recipe (with lemons) in Martha Stewart’s 2009 cupcake cookbook, it isn’t available on her website. {Update: As of May 2019, the recipe is available in Amazon’s review of the book!} For the recipe online, see Today.com.

For 21 cupcakes
1 3/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon lime zest
1 tablespoon lime juice
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoons salt
1 1/4 sticks unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 oz. cream cheese
3 1/2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
powdered sugar

For plenty of lime curd
1 whole egg
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup lime juice
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
green food coloring (optional)