Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream (2024)

These homemade lemon cupcakes are fluffy, moist and topped with lemon buttercream frosting. The citrus flavor comes from both lemon zest and fresh lemon juice and makes these cupcakes taste like sunshine. These are the perfect cupcakes for lemon lovers!

**This post was updated April 16, 2023 with new photos, recipe tips & a slightly updated recipe**

These lemon cupcakes are moist, fluffy and bursting with fresh lemon flavor. They’ve been one of my favorite cupcake recipes for a long time because they taste like sunshine and springtime – but can be made all year round. The lemon flavor is refreshing and slightly tangy to complement the butter and vanilla perfectly. They don’t taste sour- but instead have a delicious citrus flavor. The cupcake crumb is moist, fluffy, and perfectly soft. And to top it all off (literally and figuratively) – they’re frosted with lemon frosting. It’s creamy, fluffy and with a hint of lemon to balance out the sweetness.

Lemon Cupcake Recipe

This lemon cupcake recipe is based ona simple vanilla cupcake recipe, only we’re adding both lemon zest and lemon juice to get the perfect flavor. Like most cupcake recipes, we start off by creaming together the butter and sugar (plus lemon zest for this recipe). Then mix in the eggs 1 at a time. We alternate between mixing in additions of the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder & salt) and the wet ingredients (milk, sour cream & lemon juice).

Baking Tips & Tricks

• Ingredients should be room temperature before getting started. Take them out of the fridge 30 minutes prior. To warm up the eggs more quickly, place them in a bowl of lukewarm water.
• Zest the lemons before squeezing the juice – this makes the process much easier.
• Make sure to beat the butter and sugar until fluffy – this will take about 2-4 minutes and is called “creaming”. Creaming the butter and sugar makes cupcakes lighter and fluffier because it adds air to the batter.
• Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt before adding them to the batter. Whisking them together first ensures that the baking powder is evenly distributed in the batter so that the cupcakes rise beautifully.
• We’re using both sour cream and milk for moisture. Sour cream makes cakes and cupcakes extra moist, but the addition of milk too ensures that they don’t get too heavy and weighed down.
• We alternate between adding the wet and dry ingredients into the batter. Doing this in stages helps the cupcake batter become even and consistent. This ensures that the cupcakes have a soft crumb without air tunnels or a lumpy consistency.
• I always recommend doing the last few additions with a metal whisk. This helps avoid overmixing. Overmixing causes air tunnels in the batter and can cause tough cupcakes.
• Bake 1 tray of cupcakes at a time on the middle rack of the oven. Baking on a top rack can burn the tops, whereas baking on the bottom rack and burn the bottoms of the cupcakes.

**Do not use lemon juice from a bottle! It is too sour for baking and will not produce the right flavor.

Lemon Frosting for Lemon Cupcakes

Then once the cupcakes are baked – they’re frosted with lemon buttercream. Simple, creamy lemon frosting – made with lemon juice for the perfect lemon flavor. You can play around the amount of juice depending on how tangy you like the flavor. I definitely prefer a pretty pronounced lemon flavor, so the feel free to adjust as necessary.

Note that the lemon frosting recipe is enough to frost each cupcake using a piping bag with a very generous amount of frosting. If you plan to frost your cupcakes using a knife or prefer less frosting, I recommend halving the recipe so that you do not have leftovers.

Want lemon blueberry cupcakes?Use the recipe below, and gently fold in ¾ cup fresh blueberries at before spooning the batter into your cupcake pan. Be sure to use the smallest blueberries possible so that they are less likely to fall to the bottom. The bake time will be similar.

Want lemon raspberry cupcakes? Try this recipe instead.

For more delicious lemon recipes, try these other desserts:

• Lemon Blueberry Cake
• No Bake Lemon Cheesecake
• Lemon Loaf
• Lemon Brownies