Lemon Cup Cakes with Lemon Butter Icing

I told Luke's teacher that I would make some cup cakes to send to his school on his birthday.

Just some simple ones as there's no baking competition in the local school and kids appreciate tasty cakes.  I did scratch the bottom of the barrel trying to find out what I can make when I was told, please do not send anything with chocolate or nuts due to allergy concerns...

No chocolate, that's a bit harsh, considering, Luke doesn't like any other cakes apart from chocolate.  Very occasionally, he'd take some vanilla cakes, but he's very very particular about fruits, dry or fresh in his cakes.

He doesn't like them and he prefers smooth texture.

But just butter cake, will that be a bit bland?  

As long as there's no chunks of fruit.   We settled down on:

Lemon Cup Cakes with Lemon Butter Icing

For 28 Cup Cakes
(including the students in his class, his teacher, the teaching aid and his speech therapist)
3 cups of Self Raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
200g salt reduced butter, room temperature
4 large eggs
1.5 cup sugar
1 cup milk
very fine zests of 2 lemon
Juice of 1.25 lemon
1/2 tsp vanilla essense

Lemon Butter Icing
50g butter
100g icing sugar
1.5 tsp yellow icing
Juice of 0.75 of lemon (juice of 2 lemons in total)

Pre-heat oven to 180C
Cream butter and sugar, till light and pale, add in eggs, one by one, I used bench top mixer on high.
Add in room temperature milk and vanilla and whisk till well mixed.
Sift flour and bi-carb soda in another clean bowl and add to the milk butter mixture.  Fold in well and add lemon juice and zest.
Share the batter in the cups and bake for 15-18 minutes, until it's turning a bit light brown.

For the icing, it's simple, just heat up lemon juice and butter, mix well and add in food colouring and icing sugar, till it's thick and glossy.  Apply to cooled cup cakes and add on a bit of sprinkles...