Ok, I'm trying to find a scrumptious pink lemonade cupcake recipe and I have a couple questions. The recipes I'm finding seem to shift between sweetened pink lemonade powder and pink lemonade concentrate.

In everyone's opinion which recipe would you gravitate towards? Do you think it matters? I just don't know which would give the best flavor, or if it matters at all and I should just pick one and give it a try.

Paula Dean's recipe has good reviews. . she uses the powder, so i've been leaning towards that one, but then I just wonder if the concentrate would be better?

Thanks in advance for the help!

i would use the concentrate just because it has a more real lemon taste...but thats just my opinion...what are you going to fill it with? This sounds yummy!

In her magazines, which is what I am guessing that you are reading from; she gives tips at the ends of the recipes for the actual item she used for that cake. That is if she has an asterisk by it. If she doesn't have an asterisk by the lemonade I would see if I could contact someone on her website that could find out and tell you. They are all very friendly there and I bet they would help you out. There can be so much difference between brands of lemonade powders that unless you know which one she used it could be very iffy. If you leaned toward the concentrate of course you would have to figure out the difference in the liquids. Take out some water or other liquid somewhere else. But concentrates can be the same. Good luck.

I use a sleeve of Crystal lite powder for my lemonade or margarita cakes and it works well. The only probem I ever have had is that it contains citric acid(which I usually add extra of to the batter and the icing anyway). This can make your cake come out dense and not rise correctly. I usually add additional baking powder to the batter to compensate. I start with an extra teaspoon, bake one cupcake and be sure that it is rising correctly before I use the batter for my cake.

Thanks for the replies! I actually saw the recipe for Paula Dean online on one of the food channel websites.

I'm thinking I may go for the concentrate. I also feel it would have more of a kick. I don't want you to "kind of" guess what it tastes like, I want it to have a good flavor.

I wasn't going to fill the cupcake, I was just going to ice it with a pink lemonade icing as well. These are for a Farmer's Market that I go to so I'm always weary for filling my cupcakes there, since I'm outside for 5 hours. What do you guys think?

I made Pink Lemonade Cupcakes last month and used the concentrate. They were pretty tasty. The icing (also with the concentrate) was definitely the star though!

@Cakeasyoulikeit - Would you mind sharing your recipe??

Here is the recipe I used. http://sweetcheeksinthekitchen.blogspot.com/2009/08/pretty-in-pink.html

My only thought on the cupcakes themselves was that the taste was a little odd at first. Like if you bit into it expecting it to taste like sweet vanilla, it was weird. But if you ate it expecting lemonade, it was good. The lady I made them for thought they were some of the best cupcakes she'd ever had. So, I guess it depend on personal preference. I loved the icing though!

Lemonade is lemon juice and sugar. A high quality natural extract will allow you to use more. No need for concentrate. The pink is just food coloring.

Actually I'm pretty certain that there's another juice mixed in with pink lemonade, not just food coloring. It has a completely different flavor than lemonade. Grapefruit juice or something along those sorts, I can't remember off hand.

well, we'll see how these babies turn out this weekend! Fingers crossed!

True pink lemonade I believe has grenadine. Although, the mass produced stuff is probably just extra sugar and red food color. LOL

I have never really had a recipe that was for Pink Lemonade. I always wondered how it got it's pink color. I put maraschino cherry juice in mine and then it turns pink sometimes red depending on how much I pour in and that changes with whatever the situation or my mood is at the time. BUt I know that then it is Cherry Lemonade. But it is sure good. I never thought about Grenadine. I have some of that too. I wonder how it would affect the flavoring? I guess I really never paid much if any attention to Pink lemonade flavor vs. reg. lemonade flavor. Does anyone out there know how "pink" lemonade came into existence or why?

Pomegranate juice would probably be nice as well to transorm lemon cupcakes to Pink Lemonade.

I did regular lemonade cupcakes for my SIL's wedding, and I used the lemonade koolaid powder. They really did taste like lemonade cupcakes. Pink lemonade sounds fascinating!

I always just assumed that pink lemonade was pink because of food coloring so for my pink lemonade cake I used "The ultimate butter cake" recipe (one of my favorite go-to basic cakes - from baking 911) subbing pure lemon essential oil for the vanilla extract and adding some pink food color and a bit of lemon zest. It's a lot of essential oil, but it needs to be punchy for it to have that taste. I also add the oil to a pink tinted mostly butter buttercream to frost the cake. It's delicious. You can use Lorann's lemon oil, but i'm an aromatherapist so I buy from a local supplier because she gets some fantastic organic citrus essential oils.

I live in and have a bakery in Mexico. I cannot find pink lemonade powder or concentrate here. I've been here for almost 8 years. I was thinking of using grenadine syrup and lemon juice. I'm WAY too busy the next couple of weeks, but have a few weeks off soon for learning new stuff, lol. I'll try it and let you know if it works. 

AI've always used the concentrate in mine