Blueberry Pie Day

So Monday was National Blueberry Pie Day. Who knew there were so many food holidays? It inspired me to make blueberry pie cupcakes, although I wasn't able to actually make them until the next day.

I recently bought a new cookbook, Trophy Cupcakes & Parties, from Trophy Cupcakes in Seattle. Although I've never been to their bakery, I've been a fan for a while. Since they have a recipe in the book for blueberry pie cupcakes, I could try a new recipe while celebrating a food holiday. Two in one!

This is a multiple step recipe with many components. Pie crust, blueberry pie filling, vanilla cupcakes and vanilla frosting. Fortunately, I had leftover pie dough in the fridge, so I just rolled it out and baked it. I also had blueberries in the freezer, so I used those for the filling.

Their vanilla cupcake recipe is different, there's a lot more sugar in it than I'm used to. The texture of the cupcakes was a little unusual. It took longer for them to bake, they were pretty raw in the middle for a while. There's also a disk of baked pie crust at the bottom of each cupcake, before you pour in the batter.

The frosting recipe was even more unusual. 6 sticks of butter!!!! I didn't have that much butter so I halved the recipe and it was the perfect amount to frost 24 cupcakes.

Cupcakes baked, cored, filled and frosted! I of course turned to my taste-tester, Jason, to bite into the first one. The crust and filling were perfect. I'm still not pleased with the texture of the cupcake, and the frosting is super rich. It was so warm in my house that I had to chill them or the frosting would melt.

Overall, a fun challenge, but I think I'll stick to my tried and true vanilla cupcake recipe in the future.

Cupcake Challenge #11- Blueberries and cream cupcakes

Blueberry-Vanilla cupcakes topped with Whipped Cream and Blueberries. I made 24 minis and 24 regular sized.
These were simply vanilla cupcakes, with blueberries mixed in, topped with fluffy whipped cream and fresh blueberries. The recipe called for 2 cups of blueberries for the batter and more to put on top. I used a whole 2 pints in total, because I wanted to make sure each cupcake had enough blueberries. The regular ones had 3 or 4 a piece, but the minis had only 1 each.

Here they are right out of the oven, smelling fantastic!

I dug around my cupcake cabinet and found these blue striped liners. I love how you can see the blueberries through them, it lets you know what to expect when you take a bite! These would have been good also with just a sprinkling of powdered sugar.

Here's a finished cupcake all by itself.

This was a good recipe for the summertime, as blueberries are in all the markets. The whipped cream on top is light enough to not take away from the fresh taste of the fruit. The minis can be devoured in one bite!

Here's the inside, with the yummy blueberries.

I was concerned that they'd all fall to the bottom of the batter, but that didn't happen. I'm guessing it's because the blueberries are light enough, as opposed to a heavier fruit such as raspberries. In that case, most recipes recommend dusting the fruit (or whatever else) with flour before folding it in, so they will remain suspended in the batter and not fall to the bottom.

So, next recipe coming up is zucchini-spice, but I may hold off. When baking today, it got sooo hot in the kitchen, it was really unbearable, being 110 degrees outside. We'll have to wait for a day when it's only 105 before baking again :)