Peach cupcakes with brown sugar cream cheese frosting

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Just as blueberries own the month of July, for August it has got to be peaches – hands down. Peaches and nectarines dominate the farmers markets around here starting late June, and boy do they rule in August! These cupcakes adapted from smitten kitchen are one of my first “summer” bakes from a decade ago, and I can confidently say that I’ve made them – with a few tweaks here and there – every summer since. Light batter, juicy peaches, and brown sugar cream cheese frosting so perfectly matched to the cupcakes’ flavor, this one’s a keeper. I’ve made this into a layered cake for many summer birthdays over the years, and it just had to be the final installment of my seasonal cupcake project! In fact, when I started planning it, August was one of the first months I locked in with Peach (even though it was the last month in the series)!

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Strawberry cupcakes with strawberry cream cheese frosting

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Easy, simple, summery strawberry cupcake recipe to help you zip through your strawberry picking/farmer’s market haul! What’s great about this recipe is that it can be made from strawberry puree, so if you can puree some peak season strawberries right now, you can recreate the summery feeling whenever you feel like it!

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Lemon cupcakes with lemon icing

An ultra-luxe pound cake recipe adapted to cupcake format, with a lemon flavor so bright and cheerful, it will make all the zesting and juicing well worth the effort! The citrus plays beautifully with the buttery poundcake here. As a poundcake purist I can safely say that if you are going to mess with a classic, you better do it right!

We start by zesting and juicing a whole lot of lemons for this cake. 8 lemons sounds like a lot, but you are doing the work for the batter, the syrup (to soak the cupcakes and make them extra moist and lemony) and the sharp, tart glaze that will wake you up!

Put on some nice music and get right to it!

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Cupcakes and Gratitude

Final Update: August 25, 2021!

When I was pregnant last year, there were so many reasons it felt like a cloud was hanging over us, the pandemic being just one of them. Most of the time we powered through, busy with work, getting the house ready for the baby, and like everyone else in the world, tracking down toilet paper and disinfecting our groceries took up 80% of whatever time was left over! The upcoming early months with the baby seemed very daunting at the time, especially since we were not going to have anyone to help out at home, so to make it fun and to have something to mark the milestones and celebrate the fact that we were “surviving” early parenthood, I planned this very special little side project: I decided that for each of our baby’s monthly birthdays (the 25th of each month), I would make a seasonal cupcake recipe, and take his picture with the cupcakes!

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