Blueberry & Lime Cupcakes

Yes, I’ve used the C word. Cupcakes, as these are what I think of as cupcakes due to the prolific swirls of buttercream on the top, though they are more of fairy cake proportions.There has been a slight delay on posting these as they were made for a secret 30th Birthday Party. The person in question reads my blog and follows me on twitter so I had to keep these under wraps. For the party I also made Nigella’s Chocolate Cloud Cake that I topped with fresh strawberries.

For a while I’ve been meaning to buy a “Mr Whippy” style tip for piping icing with and the lovely Julie from Vintage & Cake recommended me the Wilton 1M open star tip along with the disposable piping bags. She also gave me tips on how to make certain patterns with the icing. Usually I’m not a huge fan of throw away things, but these bags I can highly recommend. Not only are they bigger than conventional piping bags but you don’t have the faff of cleaning them afterwards. So much easier to use and you don’t need to worry about a coupler.

These cakes were a bit of an experiment that worked surprisingly well. I used blueberries because I had some blue edible glitter that I decided HAD to be used on the birthday boy’s cake so blueberry was the natural choice. Icing wise I really liked using the 1M tip and the swirls it produces. For fantastic advice on how to pipe buttercream see Ruth’s guest post on A Thrifty Mrs. I need a bit more practice to get the swirls uniform but overall I was pleased with them.

Blueberry & Lime Cupcakes
makes 12 fairycake sized cakes

100g self-raising flour

100g caster sugar

100g butter

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

75g (1/2 punnet) of blueberries

zest of 1 lime

Buttercream icing

90g unsalted butter

180g icing sugar

1 tbsp lime juice

75g (1/2 punnet) of blueberries for decoration

blue edible glitter

1) Preheat oven to 180°c and line a bun tin with fairy cake liners.

2) In a bowl beat together the butter and caster sugar until it is light and fluffy then one at a time stir in the eggs. Don’t worry if it begins to look curdled. Mix in the vanilla extract.

3) Carefully fold in the flour then lime zest and blueberries.

4) Fill each liner 2/3 with cake mix.

5) Bake for 15-20 min until risen and golden. Allow to cool before icing.

6) In a bowl beat together the butter, icing sugar and lime juice until light and fluffy. Pipe icing onto cakes.

7) Place the blueberries and a small pinch of edible glitter into a bowl then roll the blueberries around to coat them in the glitter. Then decorate the cakes with the glittered up blueberries.