Lavender Orange Cupcakes

This cupcake is in a cup because I wanted to take a picture of it in the snow drift on my balcony. Unfortunately, so much snow blew up against the door that I couldn't open it - and it's a sliding door. Also, where the heck is my camera? I'm not a good photographer, but taking pictures with my Blackberry is NOT helping matters.

This week, a friend and I held and all-cupcake bake sale for our journal's upcoming symposium entitled War On...:The Fallout of Declaring War on Social Issues. It was meant to be two days in duration, but it seems that the weather had other plans for us. Last night, I was worried that we would still have school, so I needed to bake a few more cupcakes. I tried to go to the grocery store right after class, but almost slid off the road going approximately 12mph - I am experienced enough on snow to know that this is not a safe circumstance.

Anyway, at this point, I'd already baked approximately 6 dozen cupcakes, and I just wanted to make two more types. I didn't have any milk, lemons, or canola oil (I couldn't even bake a boxed cake!) and I was running low enough on sugar that I wasn't sure I'd have enough for multiple batches of cupcakes. And so this recipe was born. And it's delicious. If you want to use regular milk, I'd add back in a heading quarter cup of sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla extract.

Ingredients

• 1/2 C White Sugar
• 1/2 C Unsalted Butter at room temperature
  
• 2 Eggs
• 1/4 tsp Orange Oil (or zest of an orange)
  
• 1 1/2 C All Purpose Flour
• 1 3/4 tsp Baking Powder
• 3/4 C Vanilla Almond Milk
• 2 TBSP Lavender Syrup

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 350 and line a 12 cup muffin tin.
   
2. Cream butter and sugar together with a mixer VERY thoroughly - at least 5 minutes.
3. Add in eggs, one at a time, mixing until fully combined after each one. Then add in orange oil.
4. Pour the lavender syrup in with the milk and the baking powder in with the flour. Alternate adding wet and dry ingredients until everything is fully combined.
5. Add 1/4 C of batter to each muffin liner and bake for 20-24 minutes.

For the frosting, I made a basic frosting with 1 stick of butter, almond milk, lavender syrup, and enough powdered sugar to make it a thick enough consistency to put through my piper.