Cantaloupe Cupcakes

I realized today that I still had some of those wonderful candied peels Lisa sent me earlier this year, and I got really excited. See, I had decided to use some cantaloupe that I'd frozen in cupcakes today, to go with our leftovers meal of red beans and rice, and that fricassee. But when I discovered those hiding (from Ross, I'm guessing, since I can't imagine why else I'd have hidden it. Though it's possible I hid it from myself so I wouldn't plow through them all before I got to use them in recipes either) in the fridge, I realized that the perfect compliment to my cupcakes was not going to be lemon butter cream, but instead would be vanilla butter cream with PEELS IN THEM! I was supposed to make more butter cream anyway, since Ross likes to put it in his coffee (I know how weird that sounds, but it's oddly delicious) so all of this works out to be full of win for all the tummies in this house. Anyway, I can't see any reason why you couldn't do this with or without peel, or the cakes with a different sort of fruit. Let me know if you play with it and how things turned out. Hope you enjoy!

1/2 cup sugar
1 stick room temperature butter (I always use unsalted, but you can use whatever you want)
2 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour (or cake, if you want it more delicate)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2-3 tablespoons yogurt (your call; I only eye-balled how much I stuck in there)
1 cup diced cantaloupe*

Heat the oven to 350F. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add in the eggs one at a time. Add the yogurt. Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt, and then stir in the fruit. Put into a lined cupcake tray and bake for 17-20 minutes (a tester will come out clean; I want to say it's about 19 minutes for me). Cool on a rack. Frost. Makes 12.

Frosting:

2 sticks of butter
3-ish cups of powdered sugar (I admit I never measure this, but it looks like about that much)
1 teaspoon-ish vanilla paste
1-2 tablespoons finely chopped candied citrus peel of your choice (I used yuzu!)

Beat the sugar and vanilla into the butter, until it's frosting. Fold in peels. Pipe or whatever onto cupcakes, then eat!

*This can be frozen and thawed, or it can be fresh - alternately you may puree it. That being said, you will most assuredly want to increase the baking time if you use fresh fruit that is diced and not pureed, because you won't be able to get a lot of the juices out. Cantaloupe has a LOT more juice than I realized, so once I had thawed and chopped it up, I put it in a strainer and pressed all the bits so they'd be a lot drier and not add a ton of moisture to the batter.


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