Blueberry cupcakes

I've had two things in the kitchen for the past month or so that I've been itching to use. One is a few more bags of blueberries in the freezer from our berry-picking expedition last month. The other is two sets of really nice, professional-grade, extra-large pastry tips (a few of them so big that I still haven't found a coupler to use them with, and I have an extra-large coupler already). Those two things finally came together yesterday, in some most unusual cupcakes.

Now, let's be clear -- these aren't muffins (though they did end up with a little bit of a sugary crust on top that's reminiscent of muffins). These aren't your typical white cake base with blueberries thrown in. Oh no. These are BLUE. Well, alright, they're more like purple, but that's the color you get when you mash up blueberries. I suppose I could've food-colored them to death to make them actually blue, but the natural color is pretty, so I left well enough alone.

The berry flavor of the cake is pretty subtle, but the frosting adds a nice hit of flavor to balance it all out. I actually tried filling them, too, using some leftover blueberry puree... um, bad idea. It was drippy, counter-staining carnage. It might still be a good idea, but you'd need to either thicken the hell out of it with cornstarch first or else just use some jarred blueberry preserves. I'll also lay a little of the blame on the fact that I'd never tried to make filled cakes before, so I don't exactly have the technique down. Ah, well. After one disastrous-but-still-tasty test cupcake, I decided to leave well enough alone with the rest of them.



Blueberry Cupcakes
Adapted from The Casual Baker

About a pound of blueberries
Sugar

1 c butter
1 1/2 c sugar
2 eggs
1/4 c milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 c blueberry puree
2 c + 2 tbsp flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
6 tbsp butter, room temperature
1/2 c blueberry puree
Few drops vanilla
2 1/4 c confectioners' sugar

1. Place the blueberries in a saucepan with a little bit of water. Sprinkle a bit of sugar over the top (use your own judgment, based on how tart your berries are). Cook until the berries soften and become a tickened sauce. Cool slightly, then puree with a stick blender or in a regular blender or food processor.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar.
3. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then the milk, vanilla and blueberry puree.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder.
5. Dump the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and beat until blended.
6. Fill muffin cups (greased or lined with papers) about two-thirds full.
7. Bake at 350 degrees for about 18 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Let sit 5 minutes, then depan and let cool on a rack.
8. Beat together the cream cheese, butter, vanilla and blueberry puree until thoroughly combined. Beat in the sugar, adding more if needed, to crease a smooth frosting.
9. Frost cupcakes with a knife or pipe with a piping bag and large tip.

Blueberry buckle

It's always nice when your hobby becomes someone else's treat, a situation where someone is actually asking you to do something you love to do. So it is now with my baking -- first with my coworkers, who seem to get excited every time I walk through the door with a plate or my trusty Cupcake Courier (I don't get a commission on these -- I just love mine so much!).

Now, my boyfriend's gone from willing guinea pig ("here, hon, eat this, tell me what you think") to eager customer, so to speak, asking me the other day if I'd make him something else this week that he could munch on in the mornings, since he'd eaten the blueberry muffins all last week and enjoyed them. Ask and ye shall receive -- I'd been eying this recipe for blueberry buckle ever since he bought the farmers' cookbook when we went berry-picking.

Here's one thing I learned, though -- don't trust a farmer to proofread. The recipe they've printed calls for 1/4 cup of salt. A quarter-cup of salt??? Good thing I'm not a blind recipe-follower -- at this point, I have enough knowledge and instinct to know that that had to be a typo. A quick Google search turned up plenty of blueberry buckle recipes, all of them with 1/2 teaspoon of salt, so that's what I went with. The result was delicious, though a little over-iced (you know how it is -- "oh, too thick, needs more milk..." "wait, too thin, add more sugar..."). It's also a tad Bisquick-y ... I imagine there's probably a shortcut version of this recipe out there that uses Bisquick instead. But me, I work from scratch as much as possible. :)




Blueberry Buckle
Adapted from the Winney's Farm cookbook, volume 3
2 c flour
3/4 c sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 butter, softened or melted and cooled
Scant 3/4 c milk
1 egg
2 c blueberries, thawed if frozen, coated with flour

1/2 sugar
1/3 c flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 c butter, softened

1/2 c confectioners' sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
Milk as needed

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease 9-inch round or 8-inch square baking pan.
2. With a hand mixer, beat together the butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour, baking powder and salt.
3. Gently fold in the blueberries. Spread in pan.
4. Crumble together sugar, flour, cinnamon and butter. Sprinkle over top of batter.
5. Bake for 40-50 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
6. Whisk together the confectioners' sugar, vanilla and milk to make a glaze, then drizzle over cake. Serve warm if possible.

Blueberry pancakes

Our freezer is still packed full of blueberries from our recent picking expedition, so I decided that rather than going out to brunch on Sunday, a homemade breakfast was in order. How better to use up blueberries (aside from muffins, of course) than blueberry pancakes?

Of course, this was right around the time I remembered that blueberries, like the Cookie Monster's cookies these days, are a sometimes food for me -- I really do get tired of them awfully quickly, so I found myself picking around them after a pancake and a half or so. No matter, though. The pancakes were still quite good, so good, in fact, that my boyfriend, not much of a pancake eater, said he'd eat them again whenever I want to make them. :)



Blueberry Pancakes
Adapted from The Joy of Cooking
1 1/2 c flour
3 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 c buttermilk
3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
2 eggs
1-2 c blueberries, fresh or thawed if frozen

1. Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.
2. In another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, butter and eggs. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk together briefly until just combined.
3. Heat up and grease your griddle or a large skillet. Pour 1/3 cup or so of batter at a time onto the griddle, then scatter blueberries over the top. When the edges go a bit dry and the bubbles in the batter start to break, flip them over and cook until both sides are lightly browned.

Blueberry muffins

I went blueberry-picking for the first time yesterday, intent on getting some more farm-fresh fruit for my baking endeavors ('cause farm-fresh really makes a lot of difference as far as flavor is concerned). It was mission accomplished, and then some -- we walked away with a total of more than 3 quarts of berries, plenty for me to put up in the freezer to go in cobbler or pie or, well, who knows? Maybe even cupcakes.

But I left one pint out in the fridge, 'cause I knew I had to start with the one dish everyone thinks of when they think of blueberries and baking: Blueberry muffins.

I had intended to use the recipe in Bakewise, 'cause I own a copy and haven't made a single thing out of it yet. But sadly, the book will have to keep waiting, 'cause I had the idea to look up the "Cook's Illustrated" recipe, and their recipes are almost always good, plus, theirs looked way less complicated than the one in Bakewise (I love Shirley Corriher, but damn, her recipes are fussy). I found the "Cook's Illustrated" recipe online, but it, too, seemed a bit fussy -- make jam, just to make muffins? Then, I poked around online a bit and figured it out: They were only doing this because their recipe was created for store-bought berries, which tend to have a lot less flavor. Surely, I wouldn't need to go to such trouble with berries fresh off the bush.

Still, it did call for a lot of bowls, at least five different bowls of prepped ingredients. But ah, well, that's what dishwashers are for, right? And the results were delicious -- they were a touch berry-heavy for me (I probably could've used fewer, since the ones I used were so flavorful), but the lemon-sugar topping provides contrast and keeps the berry flavor from being overwhelming.




Blueberry Muffins
Adapted from a "Cook's Illustrated" recipe reprinted at The Bitten Word
1/3 c sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
2 c blueberries (1 pint)
1 1/8 c sugar
2 1/2 c flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1/4 c vegetable oil
1 c buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Spray a 12-muffin pan with nonstick spray.
2. Zest the lemon and mix the zest with 1/3 c sugar. Set aside.
3. Place the butter in a small bowl, microwave until melted and set aside.
4. Rinse and dry your blueberries, then place them in a bowl with a little bit of flour and toss gently to coat. Set aside. (This will keep the berries from sinking to the bottom of your muffins when they're baked.)
5. In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
6. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and 1 1/8 c sugar. (FYI, 1/8 c is 2 tbsp.) Add the melted butter and the oil and whisk to combine. Whisk in the vanilla, then the buttermilk.
7. Stir the flour mixture into the liquids until just moistened -- batter will be a bit lumpy, and this is fine, don't overmix.
8. Fold in the blueberries.
9. Spoon or scoop the batter into the muffin cups; batter should completely fill the cups and mound slightly. Sprinkle the lemon sugar evenly over the tops.
10. Bake 17-19 minutes, until golden and just firm. (I used the toothpick test on mine, even though the recipe didn't say to, and they were done at around 17 minutes.)
11. Let cool in pan 5 minutes, then cool on rack for at least 5 minutes before eating. (Note: When I de-panned mine, they were so moist and berry-filled that they wouldn't stand on the rack without collapsing into the rack wires. I'd advise cooling them upside-down, 'cause the tops are firmer and can take the weight better.)