Lemon Olive Oil Cupcakes (Bake Just 6 Cupcakes!)

Lemon olive oil cupcakes are light, tender, simple to throw together (no mixer required!) and bake up in just 15 minutes. Are six cupcakes too much for your small household? Don’t worry, the leftovers freeze great!

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Are cupcakes special to you?

Is it because you remember them from your childhood birthday parties or because you usually only get one or two?

They probably wouldn’t feel so special if you ate a dozen of them.

That’s why this lemon olive oil cupcakes recipe is the perfect size for just one or two people.

It’s adapted from my favorite Christmas gift, Mark Bittman’s How To Bake Everything Cookbook (affiliate). His original Olive Oil Cake recipe tastes fantastic.

But it makes 12 to 16 servings!

The responsibility to dispatch ALL of that cake before it goes stale is too much for our little two person household.

And I don’t know about you but I can’t trust myself with that many sweets in the house.

But just six light and tender, not-too-sweet cupcakes featuring the lovely combination of olive oil and lemon?

That’s the right amount.

You can enjoy one or two today and then freeze the rest.

Simply wrap any leftover plain cupcakes individually in plastic wrap and toss in a freezer safe bag. The bag will take up less space than your ice tray and you’ll have a sweet treat ready when a craving strikes.

{Related: How To Bake A Toaster Oven Carrot Cake}

Set one out before dinner to defrost and it will be your tasty reward for cleaning the toaster oven before bed. (You deserve a reward for doing your chores after all)

The recipe uses simple ingredients with lots of room to customize and make these cupcakes your own.  Have fun experimenting with different types of citrus like oranges, limes, grapefruit, or clementines.

And the batter couldn’t be easier to throw together:

1. Whisk the dry ingredients.
2. Whisk the wet ingredients.
3. Fold them together and bake. Easy, peasy.

Two important things to note about the batter; it will be thinner and have tiny lumps.

Are you an over-mixer?

I’m notorious for over-mixing cake batter. The Virgo in me wants a perfectly smooth batter.  All that mixing though leads to a tough cake with LOTS of large holes.

So just make sure there are no big lumps and then get that batter in your pan and quickly into the toaster oven.

{Related: What Are The Best Toaster Oven Pans?}

Once your baked cupcakes have cooled you can finish them off with a light glaze of lemon juice and honey, strawberries and whipped cream or Tim’s favorite a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Give yourself permission to go a little overboard, after all it’s only one special cupcake.

Baking Cupcakes With Convection

Like all of our recipes this one was originally written and tested using a conventional toaster oven but we’ve included directions for using a convection toaster oven too.

If you’ve never tried baking with your toaster oven’s convection function check out this post for Everything You Need to Know About Convection Toaster Ovens and you’ll be set.

Tips For Baking This Recipe With Convection:

• Use the lower rack placement.  (We tried a batch on the middle rack and it was too close to the fan, the cupcakes did rise more but they were dried out and cracked on top)
• Reduce the temperature by 25 degrees to 325℉
• Start testing for doneness 2/3 through the cooking time (about 10 minutes).