Blueberry Frosted Chocolate Cupcakes

Red, white and blue...it's almost July 4th...can you believe it! We have a great chocolate cupcake and blueberry frosting recipe to share with you plus some ways you can spruce up your seltzer to make it a little more fun and fruity during the hot summer months! These are easy recipes you can make for your holiday celebration or summer entertaining. Living in Maine, summer means Wild Maine Blueberries. We have a short season, usually 2-3 weeks in late August where you can pick your own or find the sweet little berries at all the farmers markets. While we used fresh blueberries from the grocery store for this recipe, it was the Wild Maine Blueberries that inspired the frosting recipe and look forward to to making it again during the peak season.

Chocolate cupcakes are a personal favorite, specifically this recipe. You will notice it uses mayonnaise instead of butter, but it creates a light fluffy cake that stays fresh and moist for days! It just might become your go-to recipe anytime you need a chocolate cake or cupcakes! The batter is very thin, the best way to get it into the muffin tin is by using a squeeze bottle or a measuring cup with a spout.

Shauna's Chocolate Cupcake Recipe

2 cups AP flour
¾ cup natural cocoa powder
1 ¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon baking powder
1 2/3 cups sugar
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon espresso powder
1 cup mayonnaise
1 1/3 cups water

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and baking powder together and set aside. In a small bowl dissolve the espresso powder in the vanilla extract. In a large bowl whisk the sugar, eggs, mayo and vanilla mixture together. Slowly whisk in the water, then the flour mixture until smooth. Fill each muffin tin about 2/3 full and bake for 18-20 minutes. Recipe makes 24-28 cupcakes.

Chocolate and blueberries are divine together! The light blueberry flavor in this frosting is a nice compliment to the moist chocolate cupcake. This buttercream frosting recipe is also a great go-to recipe. It is very versatile allowing you to create endless flavors! If you want just a good ol’ vanilla frosting, simply swap out the blueberry puree for whole milk or heavy cream. For this recipe, we were going for a red, white and blue theme in honor of the 4th of July so we enhanced the color using Americolor Royal Blue Food Coloring to give it the nice rich blue color. If you do not add food coloring you will get a nice pale lavender color freckled with blueberry skins and seeds. We used the fabulous red and white rugby stripe designer grease resistant cupcake liners we carry. Did you notice how the white of the liner is still pretty white even with the dark cake...these are the best liners! A fresh blueberry and small sprig of orange mint straight from Esther's garden was used for a simple yet pretty presentation.

Shauna's Fresh Blueberry Frosting Recipe

2 pounds confectioner’s sugar
2 sticks of butter, soften but still cool to the touch
1/2 cup pureed blueberries
2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
Dash of salt
Royal Blue food coloring, optional (tip: when adding food dye to frosting note the color will darken a little after it sets for a few hours)

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the vanilla. Slowly add the blueberry puree 1 tablespoon at a time until you reach desired consistency for frosting cupcakes.

Tip: I puree fresh blueberries with my Kitchen-Aid Immersion Blender. You can also use frozen blueberries, just make sure to blend both so there are no large chunks fruit remaining. If you do not use the blue food coloring the frosting comes out a nice pale lavender. We just enhanced the color to a darker blue for decorating purposes.

Shopping made easy! Click on the item names below to go to the product listings of the items we used in this post that we carry:

Royal Blue Americolor Food Coloring

Red and White Rugby Stripe Designer Grease Resistant Cupcake Liners

Patriotic Boutique Confetti - this is a shop exclusive and is great for decorating dessert trays or table top displays!

Summer cupcakes deserve a summer drink! We've been lovin' sipping on water that we steep with sliced fresh fruits, berries and mint from the garden. As the weather gets hotter we thought some fruit flavored seltzers would be fun to try. We added lime slices plus the juice of one lime and some frozen mixed berries to raspberry lime seltzer. Adding the frozen berries instead of ice cubes will keep the seltzer from getting watered down and then you can enjoy eating the berries once your drink is done! It makes a fruity and refreshing drink that goes perfectly with our chocolate cupcakes with blueberry frosting!

We hope you give these recipes a try for your summer parties!

Happy baking!

~the girls

Post written by Esther & Shauna, photographed by Esther.

Here is a sneak preview for something else we've worked up to share with you next week...can you guess what we are making?


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