Blueberry Hill Cupcakes

As promised… the cupcakes. I made two dozen, but after my friends came over last night, I think I have about six left. These are that good.

I got the recipe from epicurious, and even though some of the reviews said that they were more like muffins than cupcakes, I wanted to try the recipe… one that is probably going to be my last berry recipe of the season *sigh* because of the exorbitant prices that people are trying to get me to pay for berries now.

These were worth it though. Dense and full of blueberries that exploded with every bite and turned the inside of each cupcake a pleasing purple, these cupcakes were a lot of fun to make and to eat. (Plus, I made my own measuring cups! Yep! I don’t have any in France, so I measured out 8 ounces of water to find out how much a cup was. I know it’s approximate, I know I can’t bake bread this way, but the cupcakes turned out fine, and I don’t hear any complaints about the peach muffins from yesterday!)

It’s getting tiring to say “because I’m in France” every time I have to explain why I had to change a recipe, but it’s the truth. We have maple syrup in specialty import stores, but no maple sugar, so I used vanilla sugar. I also used more blueberries than were recommended. Here’s my version of the recipe, but you can get epicurious’ version over there. If anyone tries the real version, let me know how it turns out! Now, I believe I have some cupcakes to finish…

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease each cup of your muffin tin. Sift 3 1/4 cups all purpose flour, 1 1/4 cups sugar, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon coarse kosher salt, and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda into large bowl. Whisk 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) melted, unsalted butter and 1/4 cup canola oil in medium bowl. Add 2 eggs; whisk to blend. Whisk in 1 cup of fromage frais, 1 cup milk, 1 tsp vanilla extract, and 1 tsp grated lemon peel. Add this mixture to dry ingredients; whisk just to blend. Stir in 1 1/2 cups frozen blueberries. Divide batter among muffin cups. Bake cupcakes about 23 minutes.

Combine 2 1/4 cups powdered sugar, 10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) room temperature unsalted butter, 1/2 cup vanilla sugar, 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon peel, and 1/2 teaspoon coarse kosher salt in a medium bowl. Add milk by the teaspoon and beat until well blended and fluffy. Spread frosting over top of cupcakes.

Garnish cupcakes with chilled berries.

Before frosting…

I love cupcakes.