Put the lemon juice, zest, sugar and butter in a heat proof bowl over a pan of simmering water and melt.

Add the eggs and whisk in to combine then swap to a spatula and stir continuously over the pan of water until the curd thickens – this happens quickly and you need to take it off the heat as soon as this happens to prevent over cooking.

Pour into a large sterilised jar and allow to cool completely before storing in the fridge.

Preheat the oven to 170ºC

Line two muffin pans with cupcake liners or use stand alone baking cups (note the latter are a touch smaller than standard cupcake cases so you may get an extra cupcake out of this mix)

Put the butter, sugar, flour, bicarb, lemon zest and eggs in a bowl and mix with a hand mixer until combined or use a stand mixer. It is important your butter is very soft indeed or you will over work the batter and get tough cupcakes. Not cool.

Beat in the lemon juice and then divide between the cases – I fill mine half full as I live in fear of cupcakes with muffin tops! You will probably be ok filling to 2/3’s full but no more than that. Bake for around 18-20 minutes until risen and spring back fully to touch. Note the relatively high sugar content will mean these are quite golden brown cupcakes. Also if you can’t get both pans on the same, centre shelf of the oven to bake the lot at once do not panic – the second batch bakes identically even after sitting on the work top for the time it takes the first batch to bake.

Cool on a baking rack then carefully poke a hole in the centre of the cupcake with a skewer or chopstick and wiggle it to widen a little. Don’t go more than half way down or curd will squirt out the bottom when you remove from the wrapper to eat!

Fill a piping bag with the lemon curd and cut a 3mm opening in the end. Stick it into the hole you have created and squirt in curd until it just rises up around the bag and stop.

Make the buttercream by beating the butter until soft then adding in the icing sugar and beating until light, soft and fluffy – by hand, electric hand whisk, food processor or stand mixer is all good, just go with what you have. Add in the lemon juice to let down the buttercream to a soft consistency but certainly not a runny one. Fold in enough crumbled meringue to give a rubbly texture but not so dry that it’s difficult to top the cupcakes.

In old school fashion, use two tablespoons to dollop out mounds of frosting onto each cupcake and drizzle with more lemon curd. If you have any meringue left, crumble on top just because you can. Nothing succeeds like excess ;)