key lime cupcakes

My family and I have quite the sweet tooth (teeth?), so when we get together, someone frequently ends up baking dessert. One brother does pies, another has taken over Dad's fudge recipe, though Dad occasionally makes it himself, with mini-M&Ms thrown in while it's still hot. My mom and my sisters and I do the brownies, cookies, and cakes.

However, thus far, only the pie brother is willing to spend the hours baking that result in the kinds of desserts that I love. (We once created a rose cake together that will live forever in infamy. Improvisation in the kitchen, admittedly, has not been my strong point.) So when I bake with my sisters, I try to find simpler recipes that we can make together, so I can slowly convince them of the superiority of from-scratch recipes that don't require half a day to make.

So last time we were all craving dessert, I suggested we try these. We made my favorite yellow cupcake recipe (from New Best Recipes)--quick and no fail. And then we mixed up a batch of key lime pie filling and threw it into the cupcakes. Easy and delicious. You don't even need frosting. B thought they were too sticky and continues to disparage them, but my family and I loved them. If you find them too sticky as well, you could up the liminess of the cupcakes by using more zest and decrease the filling. Or you could use the cone method to fill the cupcakes after baking, if you don't mind raw eggs.

key lime cupcakes
yellow cupcakes: (modified from The New Best Recipes, editors of Cook's Illustrated)
1.5 C unbleached all-purpose flour
1 C sugar
1.5 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp salt
8 TB unsalted butter, softened
.5 C sour cream
1 large egg, plus 2 yolks, at room temperature
2 TB key lime juice
grated lime zest

key lime filling (from epicurious.com):
14 oz. sweetened condensed milk
4 large egg yolks
.5 C + 2 TB key lime juice

Preheat oven to 350. Grease muffin tins and line with muffin cups.

Mix dry ingredients. Add butter, sour cream, egg, yolks, lime juice, and zest, and beat until smooth and satiny, about 30 seconds. Scrape sides of bowl with rubber spatula and stir by hand until smooth and no flour pockets remain.

Whisk together sweetened condensed milk and egg yolks until combined well. Add lime juice and whisk until combined well.

Divide half of cupcake batter amount muffin tins. Add a generous helping of key lime filling to each tin, and cover with more cupcake batter. Bake as appropriate for size of cupcakes. (You may need to bake slightly longer because of filling.)