CH July-Blueberry Lemon Cupcakes with Raspberry Cream Cheese frosting!

For the month of July, Clara from I Heart Cuppycakes and Nikki of Crazy Delicious Food are hosting this month's challenge. Get this..Red, White and Blue. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, so this is what I came up with. I have made this cupcake batter before except that I used lime instead of lemon and this time I folded in the blueberries. Now, if you look really hard at the frosting, you will see red specks from the raspberries, instead of just pink.

Now, confession time. I really like this cupcake. I use it again and again. But, in my crazy head, sometimes, I tend to skip a few steps or add something....like using 2 sticks of butter instead of just 1. And only realizing this after they are baked and are like a muffin with melted butter. Don't get me wrong...I love that. If I eat a muffin, it has to be loaded with all that fatty butter, but...not really what I was going for in the cupcake. So, I just pretended that there was the only 1 stick and it was the fluffy batter that I love.

And let me just go on to say that I LOVE this frosting! You have the tartness from the cream cheese with the sweetness from the raspberries. I could have stuck my face in the bowl and licked the bowl clean! :)

Blueberry Lemon Cupcakes:
1/2 Cup unsalted butter, softened
zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 Cup sugar
2 eggs, room temp
3/4 Cup self-rising flour
1/2 Cup plus 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
4-5 Tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 Cup Blueberries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream butter and zest in the bowl of an electric mixer on medium speed until butter is smooth. Gradually add sugar and continue beating until fluffy. Add the eggs 1 at a time, scraping the bowl and beating until smooth after each addition.-Squeeze the lemon directly into a liquid measuring cup. Add enough milk to total 1/2 cup of liquid, whisk to combine.

In a medium bowl, whisk flours together to combine.-Add the flour mixture to the batter in four parts, alternating with thirds of the milk mixture and beating after each addition until incorporated. Add in the vanilla. Fold in the blueberries.

Divide batter among the 12 cups of a lined standard cupcake pan. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until cupcakes are just starting to turn brown and toothpick comes out clean. Remove cupcakes from pan and let cool completely.

Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting:
3 oz cream cheese, room temp
1 pint of raspberries
2 lb bag of powdered sugar
1 tbsp vanilla
pinch of salt

Cream together cream cheese and raspberries. I just put the whole berries in the mixer with a whisk attachment and creamed the 2 ingredients together. Add the vanilla and salt. Start adding the powdered sugar until you get the consistency that you want. You may not use the whole back of powdered sugar.

Blueberry Drop Cookies-for the Cookie Carnival!

Kate at The Clean Plate Club hosts a monthly round up known as the Cookie Carnival. Each month she chooses a cookie recipe and we post about it by the end of the month. Enough said. My hubby and kiddos, as well as myself, love a batch of homemade cookies. So, I was in. This month Kate chose these blueberry drop cookies, and what a great choice! They were simple to throw together, just a few ingredients, let chill for at least 4 hours, and bake for 12-15 minutes. The only change that I made was using vanilla instead of almond extract. Only because I was out of the almond and really didn't want to make the extra trip to the store. The cookies turned out perfect! Soft and chewy. Tart from the blueberries with a hint of lemon from the zest and sweet. My husband loved them, heck, I loved them! These will definitely be made again and again!

BLUEBERRY DROP COOKIES

Ingredients:
* One-half cup shortening
* 1 cup sugar
* 1 egg
* One-fourth cup milk
* One-half teaspoon almond extract
* One and one-half teaspoons grated lemon zest
* 2 cups all purpose flour
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* One-half teaspoon salt
* 1 cup blueberries, rinsed and picked over

Instructions:
1. In a large mixing bowl, cream the shortening, sugar, egg, milk, almond extract and lemon zest, mixing well after the addition of each ingredient. Slowly add the flour, baking powder and salt. Fold in the blueberries and mix until well blended.

2. Cover and chill for 4 hours. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Drop the dough by teaspoonfuls, one and one-half inches apart onto greased cookie sheets. Bake 12 to 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes before removing them with a spatula.

Makes about 4 dozen.

TWD-Orange Berry Muffins

Here we are again, with this weeks edition of Tuesday with Dorie. When I joined in on this a few weeks ago, I just figured that we would bake a recipe each week and make a few great friends and just post about it, so that I could go back a year from now and remember my experience on it. I never dreamed that Dorie herself would check it out and actually comment. So, a great big THANK YOU to Dorie for the comment!



This week was chose by Michelle with Sugar and Spice. What a great choice! These are perfect for any morning snack....or late morning, early afternoon...bedtime...ok, anytime of the day perfect. The orange flavor is a background flavor, just as Dorie said in the book. It is not a really strong flavor at all. I also made half of mine with sugar sprinkled on top and the other half not. I liked the half that had the sugar on top, it gave a little extra sweet crunch, although, my 10 year old son did not like the sugar topping.



The batter came together quickly, and because I made mini muffins, 10-12 minutes later, I had perfect blueberry muffins.



This week, we have 2 new chicks to join our escapade..Nicole from Crazy Delicious and Ashley from Eat Me Delicious. A great big welcome to you guys. And of course, don't forget to check out Laurie, Michelle and Jaime, too!



We have a great one already picked out for next week!

Orange Berry Muffins


Grated zest and juice of 1 orange
About 3/4 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons honey
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/3 cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup blueberries–fresh preferably, or frozen (not thawed)


Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter or spray the 12 molds of a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Alternatively, use a silicone muffin pan, which needs neither greasing nor paper cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.
Pour the orange juice into a large glass measuring cup or a bowl and pour in enough buttermilk to make 1 cup. Whisk in the eggs, honey and melted butter.

In a large bowl, rub the sugar and orange zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and the fragrance of orange is strong. Whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough–the batter will be lumpy and bubbly, and that’s just the way it should be.

Stir in the blueberries. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

Bake for 22 to 25 minutes. If you want to top the muffins with decorating sugar, sprinkle on the sugar after the muffins have baked for 10 minutes. When fully bakes, the tops of the muffins will be golden and springy to the touch and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins will come out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold.

Blueberry Crumb Cake

What can I say about this? Wonderful! All you need to go with this cake is a hot cup of coffee. This is from Dorie Greenspan's book "Baking From my home to yours". There are so many great things to make in this book that I have a hard time deciding on what to bake. This cake is light and buttery, with the sweetness of the berries, with a topping that is crunchy, nutty and buttery...how can you go wrong with that?!

Blueberry Crumb Cake

For the crumbs:

5 Tbsp unsalted butter, at room temp

1/4 Cup sugar

1/3 Cup (packed)light brown sugar

1/3 Cup all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 Cup chopped walnuts (I didn't have walnuts, so I used pecans instead)

For the cake:

2 Cups blueberries (preferably fresh, or frozen, not thawed)

2 Cups plus 2 tsp all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

2/3 Cup sugar

Grated zest of 1/2 lemon or 1/4 orange

3/4 stick (6 Tbsp) unsalted butter, at room temp

2 eggs. at room temp

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 Cup buttermilk

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter an 8-inch square pan and put it on a baking sheet.

To make the crumbs: Put all the ingredients except the nuts in a food processor and pulse just until the mixture forms clumps and curds and holds together when pressed. Scrape the topping into a bowl, stir in the nuts and press a piece of plastic against the surface. Refrigerate until needed.

To make the cake: Using your fingertips, toss the blueberries and 2 tsp of the flour together in a small bowl just to coat the berries; set aside. Whisk together the remaining 2 cups flour, the baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Working in the bowl of a stand mixer or in another large bowl, rub the sugar and zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and aromatic. Add the butter and, with the paddle or whisk attachment, or with a hand mixer, beat the sugar with the butter at medium speed until light, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one by one, beating for about 1 minutes after each addition, then beat in the vanilla extract. Don't be concerned if the batter looks curdled-it will soon smooth out. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour mixture and the buttermilk alternately, the flour in 3 parts and the buttermilk in 2 (begin and end with the dry ingredients). You will have a thick, creamy batter. With a rubber spatula, gently stir in the berries.

Scrape the batter into the buttered pan and smooth the top gently with the spatula. Pull the crumb mix from the refrigerator and, with your fingertips, break it into pieces. Scatter the crumbs over the batter, pressing them down slightly.

Bake for 55-65 minutes, or until the crumbs are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

*My cake was done in about 45 minutes, so you may want to check on yours after it has baked for about 35-40 minutes, just in case your oven decides to bake a little hotter than usual. :)

I hope that you enjoy this cake as well as I did!