The best Lemon Zest Cupcakes with a Drizzle of Learning
Lemon Zest Cupcakes
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Estimated Learning Time: 30 minutes
Subject: Gross Motor, Fine Motor, Confidence, Concentration
Jump to Recipe
Why Lemon Cupcakes?
Who doesn’t love a lemon drizzle cake! Well these Lemon Zest Cupcakes are just as tasty. Baking is such a great thing to do. Not only for the people eating but also for your child baking it.
Creating lemon zest cakes gives you very tasty bakes and also provides your child with a lot of learning. We all learn best when we are doing things we love. Learning is done best through play or fun activities.
So what can you learn through this recipe? Great question, below we will answer this and show you how we have made the recipe simple and based around encouraging strong motor skills.
These little bakes have a lot to give. Most of all have fun and embrace the mess and creativity.
Cook, Learn, Grow – One step at a time. Not all children develop in the same way and at the same time.
The Learning Within The Lemon Zest Recipe
The learning within the Lemon Zest Cupcakes……there is more than you can imagine.
By creating this recipe with your child/teenager you will be giving them so many opportunities to learn. The best part is that they will be having so much fun baking they won’t even think that they are learning.
Fine Motor – Mixing and sieving
Some children, like my own, have delayed development of their fine motor skills. So please do not think that this is only for young children. Even older children need help to strengthen the muscles in their fingers and hands. The small muscles strengthen to develop fine motor skills. Having strong fine motor skills then helps with handwriting, buttons, shoe laces and using scissors.
When making a this Lemon Zest Cupcake recipe part of the method is mixing, using a sieve and grating. All of these actions will help to strengthen the fine motor skills. At first it won’t be easy for them but slowly slowly and in their own time they will get there.
The recipe suggest that you do not use an electric mixer. As it is the whisking and mixing that is particularly beneficial to gross and fine motor strengthening. In fact whisking can feel like a full body workout at times!
If the whisking and mixing gets too much then do move to an electric mixer. The whisking needs to be built up over time – step by step.
For more detail on fine motor skills check out this post – Fine Motor Skills
Confidence – Creating something amazing
It is great to see our children grow in confidence. Often when they are confident in one thing this then spreads into other areas of their lives.
By building on skills, like cooking and baking, our children and teenagers build confidence to do these steps independently. In my experience this isn’t done by handing them a recipe and leaving them to it. It is by doing the recipe together or parts of the recipe together. Learning and growing in confidence step by step.
Sensory – Smell the cakes cooking
I feel that this Lemon Zest Cupcakes recipe really captures our sense of smell. Particularly when it is baking in the oven. It is so tempting when the oven door opens and the cakes come out to eat them straight away! The smell is yummy.
A great talking point with our children/teenagers, is the smell. When the cakes go into the oven can you smell anything? As they slowly bake are you starting to smell something?
Below is a great video about our sense of taste and how it links to taste.
| Skill Category | What We’re Practicing |
| Fine Motor | Strengthening the muscles on the hand and wrist. This helps with writing, tying shoe laces, buttons and zips. |
| Gross Motor | Gross motor skills are normally seen as something you would strengthen through doing a sport. However, through some activities in the kitchen like whisking and sieving. These muscles will get stronger. |
| Confidence | When we create something yummy in the kitchen and people tell us how great it tastes or looks, this makes us feel great. Confidence can be grown in the kitchen. |
Tools and Equipment
Sieve
Using a sieve may seem like an unnecessary step. However, for helping to strengthen fine and gross motor skills it really is worth it.
By holding, shaking and moving each action is using the muscles in the hands and arm. This will be hard to start with and possibly also tricky for older children.
Whisk
The whisking action is great for building strength in the hands and arms. Particularly the bigger muscles in the arms and shoulders. This is great for developing gross motor skills.
Whisking also helps with fine motor skills. It is a super strengthening workout.
Take over if needed, as we don’t want to wear them out or put them off baking!
Scales
Using electronic scales is a great way to introduce numbers. In this recipe it will be looking at numbers in the hundreds. However, if your child is not at this stage yet you could ask them to tell you each number individually. So the number 123, you could say 1 and 2 and 3, rather than one hundred and twenty three.
Cupcake Tray and Cases
When adding the cupcake cases to the tray, it is a good opportunity to add in some counting. If you are at the stage of counting from 1 to 6. You can also talk about the shape of the cupcake cases.
It also helps to develop hand eye coordination, lining up the cases to the tray. Fine motor skills, particularly the pincer grip is used when taking the cases apart and then placing carefully in the tray.
Grater
You could try using a zester for taking the zest off the lemon, however, I find this is quite tricky for children to master. So probably best to start with a grater.
When your child is using the grater, do supervise, unless you are sure they are confident using it.
Make sure fingers are kept away from the sharp bits.
Ingredients
Flour
You can use white or wholemeal self raising flour. White flour is refined which takes away a lot of the health benefits. Wholemeal flour has a higher protein level, which is great for our growing children. This Lemon Zest Cupcakes recipe shows it with white self raising flour, a recipe using wholemeal flour is coming soon.
Lemon
When buying lemons and you are using the skin as well, it is always recommended to choose wax free. This means that the lemons do not have that layer of wax, which is put onto to preserve them for longer. The wax will be food grade and edible, but it is generally better to choose without the wax if you can.
Olive Oil
This may make you think why are we using oil instead of butter! But there is a reason behind this. Firstly it is easier when starting our hand and arm strengthening through cooking to start with an easier texture. Trying to mix butter with a whisk is really hard. Using extra virgin olive oil is a lot easier.
Extra virgin olive oil is also healthier than using butter. It is high in healthy fats and antioxidants. Olive oil is also anti-inflammatory.
If you or your child has a dairy allergy, using olive oil is a good alternative.
Eggs
For a long time we have bought our eggs from the supermarket, which is really convenient when you are spinning so many plates as a parent. When I started to write this Lemon Zest Cupcakes recipe and look into different eggs, I thought it would make a good, free (apart from the eggs!) trip out. So we started to look for farms local to us that sold eggs.
Why don’t you take your children out for a trip to your local farm. It doesn’t have to be every time you buy eggs, but once in a while it is a really fun thing to do together.
Method – Lemon Zest Cupcakes
Whisk the egg and sugar
This helps to get air into the mixture so make sure to give it a good whisk. At this point you may need to take it in turns, as it is quite hard to keep the whisking going for long enough.
You are aiming for the eggs to have risen slightly and have become paler.
If you perfect this stage, which will take some time, it will give you a light cupcake.
This step will need some patience, if it gets too much you can always transfer it to an electric mixer to finish it off.
Do be sure to give it a good go with the hand whisk, this will really strengthen those hand and arm muscles, which will take time.
Add Self Raising flour and olive oil
Here I chose to add olive oil rather than butter initially because it is easier to mix by hand. But when I started to look into the health benefits, it is actually healthier to use olive oil than it is butter. So a win in all areas!
To ensure we don’t create a dense set of Lemon Zest Cupcakes, it is best to fold in the ingredients. So using a metal spoon, fold the ingredients. Your child will probably want to do a stirring action. This is fine, just try and keep it brief. If too much stirring happens here it can cause the cakes to be more brick like, lol. Still tasty, just not as fluffy.
Lemon zest
Using the grater carefully zest the lemon and add to the mixture.
Cupcake Tray
Pop into each cupcake hole a cupcake case. Great opportunity to add some maths.
- What shapes can you see in the tray and cases? – Circle, possibly a cone if your cakes cook with a dome, if it rises and it has a flat top then this is a cylinder,
- How many cases will we need?
- Can we put the cupcakes cases in using symmetry – What might we need to be able to do this?
- Time – Look at how long the cupcakes need and then what time this will mean they are ready.
- Symmetry – Cut the cake in half, they are identical in shape and therefore symmetrical
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Are My Lemon Zest Cupcakes so dense and not light and fluffy?
This has happened to me a few times! So you are not alone. It can mean that the whisking stage hasn’t been long enough. Or it could mean the opposite at the point of mixing in the flour! This step should be a brief folding in or stirring.
Lemon Zest Cupcakes
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Whisk the egg and sugar together
- Sieve in the self raising flour
- Add the olive oil
- Grate in the lemon zest
- Fold the ingredients using the dessert spoon
- Put mixture into cupcake cases
- Bake for 15 – 20 minutes