Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes

Need a dose of summer sunshine...for your belly rather than your skin? Try my latest cupcake experiment...Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes.

The Lemon Blueberry cupcake is based on the Ultimate Vanilla Cupcake recipe (from the cupcakeproject.com) with the addition of lemon zest from 1 1/2 lemons, and 1 1/2 cup of blueberries. And to top it off, I decided to try what I think would be the ultimate vanilla frosting/icing...a modified version of my Strawberry-like ice cream icing (sans strawberries).

To make, follow the vanilla cupcake recipe link above, and fold the lemon zest and blueberries into the batter at the end before you scoop everything into your cupcake/muffin pans. In my oven, it took about 18 minutes to cook the cupcakes, and my batter produced 18 cupcakes (ironically).

Let cool.

My version of the Ultimate Vanilla Icing:

• 5 Tablespoons Flour
• 1 cup Milk
• 1 Vanilla Bean
• 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla
• 1 cup Butter
• 1 cup Granulated Sugar

Directions

In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk and heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. You want it to be very thick, thicker than cake mix, more like a brownie mix is. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature.

Remove/de-seed the black gooeyness from the vanilla bean and add to granulated sugar in a small bowl. With the back of a spoon, break up any clumps of vanilla bean and incorporate it into the sugar. (You basically now have vanilla sugar). Transfer to a mixing bowl.

For info on how to de-seed, the vanilla bean, checkout this helpful video: http://youtu.be/nD3zH-43duA. 

In the mixing bowl, add the butter to your vanilla-sugar combo. With an electric mixer cream the butter and vanilla-sugar combo together until light and fluffy. You don’t want any sugar graininess left.

Then, add the completely cooled milk/flour mixture and beat the living daylights out of it. Beat it until it all the ingredients are combined and it resembles whipped cream. If you love lemon, you could always add some more lemon zest, but it's just fine with out it.

Frost your cupcakes before you eat all the icing!