Baking

Mary Berry's Lemon Butterfly Cakes recipe

Name: Mary Berry's Lemon Butterfly Cakes
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 12
Ingredients: 100g sifted self-raising flour; 100g caster sugar; 1 tsp baking powder; 100g softened butter; 2 large eggs; zest from 1 lemon; 200g sifted icing sugar; 100g softened butter; 2 tsp lemon juice; 1 tsp icing sugar for dusting

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Mary Berry's light and easy lemon butterfly cakes. The original recipe makes an enormous amount of buttercream so I've amended the quantities (see the notes section).

Prep30m
Cook15m
Total45m

cake cupcakes

This recipe comes from Mary Berry’s Baking Bible (affiliate link) and is pretty low effort, even for someone like me who doesn't enjoy decorating cakes. The lemon adds a lovely flavour but you could easily use orange or substitute 25g of the flour with cocoa powder and top with chocolate buttercream.

Notes

I ended up with a lot of leftover buttercream when using the quantities of sugar and butter specified by Mary Berry so I've decreased the amounts to 200g of icing sugar, 100g of butter and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice.

For the batch I made in the photograph I halved the buttercream ingredients again (using 100g of icing sugar, 50g of butter and 1 teaspoon of lemon juice) and found that this was enough for twelve cakes. I should say that I'm not really a fan of buttercream. If you have more of a sweet tooth then the quantities in the ingredients list will be fine.

Recipe credit

Mary Berry’s Baking Bible (affiliate link).

Recipe

Mary Berry's Lemon Butterfly Cakes

Prep30m
Cook15m
Total45m

Makes: 12

Ingredients

Cupcakes

100g sifted self-raising flour
100g caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
100g softened butter
2 large eggs
zest from 1 lemon

Buttercream (can be halved, see notes)

200g sifted icing sugar
100g softened butter
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp icing sugar for dusting

Method

Cakes: Preheat your oven to 180°C (160°C fan) and line a 12-hole muffin tin with cases.
Add 100g of self-raising flour, 100g of sugar, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 100g of butter, 2 eggs and the zest from 1 lemon into a large bowl and whisk well (I used an electric hand whisk).
Divide the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 15-20 minutes until the cupcakes have risen and are golden brown. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
Buttercream (quantities can be halved, see notes): Add 200g of icing sugar, 100g of butter and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice into a large bowl and whisk until fully combined.
Once the cakes are completely cool, take a sharp knife and slice a circle out of the top of each cake then halve it to make the butterfly wings.
Spoon or pipe a small amount of buttercream onto the top of each cake.
Take the two halves of the circle cut from the cake and place on top of the buttercream with the curved edges facing inwards.
Dust with icing sugar and store in an airtight tin for up to 3 days.