Cupcakes Violet Beauregarde aka Blueberry cupcakes!

I tweeted that these were some of the most delicious cupcakes I've ever made, and I hand on heart was not lying.

I had originally bought blueberries to try my hand at some blue velvets as I keep seeing them and think they look really fun, and perfect for boys who like cupcakes. However, I kept thinking back to the amazing blueberry and lemon cupcake I had from Ottolenghi and decided to have a go a recreating it!

First I made a compote which is incredibly easy (this makes a lot you could probably half it - or use the leftovers with yogurt for breakfast?)

Blueberry compote
175g fresh blueberries
50g caster sugar (I used golden)

Cook over a gentle heat, stirring occasionally, until the blueberries begin to pop and then remove from heat and leave to cool.

Next the cupcakes. They are a plain vanilla cupcake, using my favourite 'go to' recipe - however I had no milk in the house so instead used organic natural yogurt and it worked a treat (I'll give the measurements for both below).

Anne's favourite vanilla cupcakes
125g golden caster sugar
125g unsalted butter (room temp)
125g self raising flour
1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons milk (I substituted approx 2.5 tablespoons yogurt - until I got dropping consistency)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees - I have a fan oven, and an oven thermometer (which I recommend everyone gets - the oven thermometer I mean).

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla together with your mixer until light and fluffy. I do this for about 10mins to get a lot of air in.

Add the eggs, one by one and mix.

Mix in the flour and baking powder - I do this by hand as find the mixer knocks the air out of the flour and it makes a lighter cake. Than add the milk, or yogurt, and mix until all combined.

Scoop into cases using an ice cream scoop or a tablespoon. I get 10 large cupcakes out of this recipe - you can get 12 smaller ones though, it depends on your cases. In my oven these take just under 20 minutes. I find the house tends to smell of lovely baking and they're ready.  They are ready when you can stick a cake tester/cocktail stick in and it comes out clean.

Remove from oven and transfer immediately to a wire cooling rack.

Once cooled, use an apple corer to remove the centre of the cake and fill with a hearty amount of your cooled compote.

As you can see I didn't always hit the centre, but it's ok as you're going to cover them in lashings of delicious lemon frosting.

Best ever lemon frosting
100g cream cheese (full fat not light!)
40g unsalted butter, room temp
250g icing sugar (See note below)
lemon juice
lemon extract (I use Star Kay White)

Mix the butter and cream cheese for about 2 minutes in your mixer. Add icing sugar and then mix for about another 2 or 3 mins until smooth. Add lemon juice and some lemon essence to taste - I put in a few drops lemon juice and approx 1/2 a teaspoon to 1 teaspoon of lemon extract - tasting as I went. You want it to taste lemon'y and each persons taste buds are different.
Note: I added about two more tablespoons of icing sugar while adding the lemon extract as it thinned it out - you want it to be of piping consistency, ie not too runny!

Pipe onto the cupcakes and then plop a lovely blueberry on top and enjoy with a lovely cup of tea and decide whether they are the best cupcakes you have ever made. I think they're my favourites.

Finally, when making these I decided to test out some new Cath Kidston cupcake cases I got a while ago.

As you can see they were NOT worth the money. I'm a massive fan of Cath Kidston, I know it's a cliché to be a cupcake fan and love Cath but there you go, however these pretty much went translucent on baking. Not happy.