A Day in the Life on the Farm: Serving Dessert for the Final Day of #Brunchweek.

This is it. The final day of Brunch Week. Hasn't it been a blast?! I am awestruck by all of the amazing recipes we have shared. I hope that all of your have found items to make your Mother's Day Brunch very special.

Speaking of Awestruck. What did you think of the wonderful prize packages our sponsors are raffling off? What prize packages? Where in the heck have you been?!! Quick....go to my introduction post and enter right this minute. Today is the last day and you DO NOT want to miss out on these great prizes.

I want to give a last thank you to #BrunchWeek Sponsors: Red Star Yeast, Dixie Crystals, Cabot Cheese, Vidalia Onion Committee, Sage Fruits, Nielsen-Massey, KitchenIQ, and Le Creuset for providing the prizes free of charge. These companies also provided the bloggers with samples and product to use for #BrunchWeek. All opinions are my own.

And I want to shout out a huge THANK YOU to our wonderful host of this event, Terri of Love and Confections. This is the 4th year that Terri has hosted this event. It is time consuming and labor intensive and I want her to know how much we all appreciate her. If you have been enjoying all the posts this week please stop by her blog and show her some love!!

For this final post, I decided to make a dessert, featuring products and tools recieved from Nielsen-Massey, Kitchen IQ and Vidalia Onions. I found this wonderful recipe for Lemon Cupcakes with Lavender Frosting at The Pioneer Woman. This recipe is not from Ree but was a guest post from Jessica. It sounded delicious and I have been wanting to try lavender in my baking. I did adapt the recipe slightly but not too much.

I didn't have dried culinary lavender so I used a lavender extract. I also had some gargantuan lemons so I only used the zest of two of them and the juice from one. The juice was slightly more that ne 1/4 c. called for in the recipe so I used less milk than in the original.

Of course, I used Dixie Crystals for my sugar products. This is a photo of what they are giving away to one of our lucky readers. Did you enter back at the beginning when I reminded you? No? Well, hurry up about it....I wish I could enter to win this great gift!!

These gorgeous cupcakes are the perfect dessert for a Springtime brunch. I am showcasing them for Mother's Day but they would work beautifully for Easter, a Spring Tea or a Baby Shower.

Thank you again for sharing Brunch Week with us. Don't forget to scroll down below the recipe to take a look at the other's final Brunch Week posts.

Lemon Cupcakes with Lavender Frosting

slightly adapted from The Pioneer Woman

Cupcakes:

1 1/2 c. flour

1 t. baking powder

pinch of salt

zest of two large lemons

1/2 c. butter, room temperature

1 c. sugar (I used Dixie Crystals)

1 large egg + 2 large egg whites

1 t. vanilla

1 t. lemon extract (I used Nielsen-Massey)

Juice of 1 large lemon + milk to equal 3/4 cup

Frosting:

3/4 c. butter, room temperature

3 c. Powdered sugar (I used Dixie Crystals)

1 t. vanilla

1/4 t. lavender extract

1 t. half and half

Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl and set aside. In the large bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and each egg white, beating well after each. Mix in the vanilla, zest and lemon extract. Turn mixer to low speed and add half of the flour mixture until combined. Mix in the lemon/milk mixture and the remaining flour mixture, beating until combined.

Divide batter between 12 cupcake tins with liners. Bake in a preheated 350* oven for 16-18 minutes or until tops are set. Let cool completely before frosting.

For Frosting:

Cream the butter in the large bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Gradually add the powdered sugar at low speed until incorporated. Add the cream, vanilla and lavender. Increase the speed and beat until light and fluffy adding more cream or sugar if needed for desired consistency.

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