Margarita Cupcakes

I baked these cupcakes after buying a rather disappointing margarita cupcake. It was not limey enough and the hint of salt I was hoping for on top turned out to be only sugar. I improvised these ones to have a slightly more intense flavour. The basic cake comes from bonappetit.com, although your favorite vanilla cake recipe with a little lime zest mixed in would be great as well. The icing flavour is up to you; increase the lime juice and tequila for a stronger flavour and a runnier icing, or leave the icing thicker and milder. A drop of green food colouring would look good in the icing, but I left it out because I didn't have any natural food colouring and I try to avoid artificial ingredients. They look great uncoloured too.

I made up the icing recipe with:

• 3 cups icing sugar
  
• 1/3 cup butter
  
• lime juice to taste
  
• tequila (optional)
  
• lime zest
  

Cream the butter and sugar and then add lime juice and tequila a couple of tablespoons at a time until you have the flavour and texture you want. This is subjective, but I was going for a strong lime flavour because the cake itself is quite mellow. The tequila is optional, but it does nicely balance the sweetness of the cake.

I also wanted to have salt for the margarita rims. I used about a 1-1 ratio of fleur de sel and sugar, with lime rind mixed in. You can roll the edge of the cupcakes in the sugar and salt like a real margarita or you can just sprinkle it on top.

These were possibly my favorite cupcakes. The salty, crunchy, sweet topping lingered after the cupcake was gone.