Poor girl cooks: Gluten-free cardamom chai cupcakes with lemon frosting

Let me preface the story with this: I found these cupcakes online at work and they originally called for regular flour; however, a good friend of mine is gluten intolerant and so I thought to myself "hey, how hard can it be for these to be gluten-free?" And now we're about to find out.

It's a pretty standard cupcake recipe. Cream sugar and butter, add vanilla, mix in flour with baking powder and spices, add tea and milk, bake. Not so hard, right?

Here are today's featured contestants:



















Cream the butter and sugar...


Add the flour, etc...

I may have neglected to measure the cardamom...

Oh crap and some idiot forgot to make the tea! Here's to some thumb twiddling and random pictures of masks...

Now mix it all together...

Looks normal to me so far!

My oven even decided to cooperate and heat to the recommended temperature (although I'm regretting it with today's weather).


Here's the first batch out of the oven. They smell FANTASTIC!


Time to make filling/frosting! If ever you wake up one morning and realize you own too much powdered sugar, making frosting is the best way to remedy your problem.

Also, if there is any one activity in this world that I utterly despise, it is the zesting of a lemon. This is probably due to the fact that I do not own a zester. Guess who's birthday is coming up?


At any rate, here's the filling with lemon curd...


And finally, the cupcakes filled (and some with tops back on). I was getting pretty tired at this point and sort of forgot to keep taking pictures.


All frosted and packed for work.


So far the taste is good, although a little powdery, perhaps due to the new flour. I'm waiting to see how they mature overnight and then present them to the test subjects (aka coworkers) first thing in the morning. Wish me luck!

On a side note, all of today's photos were provided by my trusty cellphone. My actual camera committed technological suicide today and refuses to turn on. I play to replace it as soon as I get that raise...

Ciao!