Welcome to Kitchen Queries, where the nigella.com team will answer your cooking or food related questions.  We’d love you to submit some of your recipe problems, dilemmas or queries for us to get our teeth into!

Please note, we are only able to answer questions selected for publication and aren't able to enter into personal correspondence.

• Birthday Cupcakes and Lemon Royal Icing

  hello, i am looking to make some fancy cupcakes for my daughter's birthday. Do you have a recipe? I would like to make different flavours of butter cream and different coloured icing too. Thank you, brighteyes30.

  I'm going to be making cupcakes for a wedding and some of them are going to be lemon flavoured. I usually use butter icing, but for this I am going to make royal icing and wondered how much lemon juice I could substitute in place of water to make the icing? I want it quite lemony, but still sweet. Thanks, jojoscot.

  Posted by jojoscot. Answered on 3rd Jun 2011 at 12.00

  Read The Answer

• Double Cream in France

  I want to make a cake and the recipe has a double cream filling. I'm in France and it's impossible to buy double cream, or whipping cream, as we would normally find in the UK. What would you use, especially when making sweet recipes, as a substitute?

  Posted by andreaturner. Answered on 2nd Jun 2011 at 12.00

  Read The Answer

• Melted Butter

  When I melt butter for a recipe I find it starts to separate. Have I warmed it too much? If so, what's the secret to getting it just right?

  Posted by MiltonAA. Answered on 1st Jun 2011 at 12.00

  Read The Answer