Sometimes you just need to bake up a fancy treat in a hurry, right?

Well, here’s a recipe that’s bailed out this disorganized cook more than once! In fact, just this past week I managed to forget all about our beekeepers’ potluck supper until that very day… and hadn’t been to the grocery store, so there wasn’t a big choice of exotic ingredients in the pantry.

Jelly cakes to the rescue!

p.s. If you’re wondering about my battered old mini-muffin pans — those were a great frugal find, picked up for mere pennies when a local cooking school yard-saled their old kitchen gear!

And now, on to the recipe…

Lemon Jelly Cakes

¾ cup butter
¾ cup sugar
1 beaten egg
1 Tbsp lemon juice
pinch of salt
1½ cups flour
jam or jelly

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Cream together butter and sugar. Add the beaten egg, lemon juice, salt, and flour.

Shape 1 slightly rounded teaspoon of the dough into (greased and floured) miniature cupcake tins.

Make a dent and fill with jelly.

Bake about 12 minutes at 350°F, watching after 10 minutes to make sure that the cakes don’t get brown. Cool slightly before removing from the tins.

Tips:

• One teaspoon of dough doesn’t sound like much, but take my word for this! It’s important not to use too much dough — each muffin cup should be no more than one-third full, because these will rise a great deal.
• Grape jelly or high-bush cranberry jelly are my favourites, because they’re not overly sweet and have a good strong flavour to balance out the lemon cake part — but a nice strawberry jam is a good alternative, too.