Salted Caramel Blueberry Filled Cupcakes With Caramel and Blueberry Buttercream

This month’s Cupcake Hero challenge is hosted by Kitchen Koala who asked cupcake fanatics to create a cupcake with a blueberry flavor. I was curious to try filling cupcakes for the first time. Now I had a good excuse.

There are thousands of amazing cupcake recipes out there and gadzillions with blueberries. I had a hard time thinking up something a little different. My first idea was to make a blueberry girl Willy Wonka cupcake with fondant, etc.  Then I had a talk with myself about this compulsion I have to design and create everything over the top.  It doesn’t usually work, this talk.  But this time it did. I am trying to practice restraint in this area, specifically my addiction to over embellishing baked goods.

So I thought about my favorite flavors and went with pairing blueberry with caramel. I will eat caramel anything. It’s one of my “stranded on a desert island” flavors. Keep chocolate. Pass the caramel please.

Salted Caramel and blueberry. Not very original and not quite as visually dramatic as my blueberry girl idea, but they taste day’m good.

For the cupcakes:

Salted Caramel Cupcakes
(Adapted from this recipe at How to Eat A Cupcake)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup brown sugar (I used firmly packed brown)
• 1/2 cup caramel sauce*
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 stick of butter
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup of milk

*I used homemade caramel sauce but you can use a good store bought brand as well.

Directions:

• Sift together flour, baking powder and salt and set aside.
• Beat butter sugars until light and fluffy and then add the caramel sauce and beat until thoroughly
•  blended.
• Add Eggs one and a time.
• Don’t forget to scrape down sides of the bowl as you go along.
• Add flour and milk mixture alternately until everything is combined.
• Fill a disposable pastry bag with the batter and pipe into paper lined cupcake pans about 3/4 full.
• Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes or until a knife or cake tester inserted in the middle of one of the cupcakes comes out clean.

While the cupcakes are in the oven, make the blueberry sauce for the filling:

Blueberry Sauce
(adapted from this recipe by Ina Garten)

Ingredients:

• 3 cups fresh blueberries (washed and stems removed)
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 Cup vanilla sugar*
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch

* If you don’t have vanilla sugar, add 1 cup of regular white granulated sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla in place of the vanilla sugar.

Directions:

• Throw all ingredients into a medium saucepan and mix together with a wooden spoon.
• Put the pan under a low heat and simmer until everything is dissolved, stirring occasionally.
• Remove from burner and transfer to a bowl to cool.
• If you still have too large globs of blueberries (the pastry bag clogging kind), give the sauce a few turns with an electric beater or mixer to break everything up.

While the sauce is cooling, make the butter creams. I am sure one would suffice. Just double the ingredients for whichever buttercream you choose.  I did two flavors.

Like I said, over the top, it just has to sneak in to this somewhere…

For the Caramel Buttercream Frosting:


Ingredients:

• 1 stick of butter
• 5 tablespoons Caramel Sauce
• 2 teaspoons milk
• 3 cups powdered sugar

Directions:

• Beat butter and caramel sauce together until well blended.
• Add half the sugar and beat until combined.
• Beat in the milk.
• Add the rest of the sugar and beat until thoroughly mixed.
• Put buttercream in pastry bag.  A disposable one you can snip the end off, or add your favorite tip to a disposable or regular pastry bag.

For the Blueberry Buttercream Frosting


Ingredients:

• 1 stick of butter
• 2 tablespoons blueberry sauce (yes, the one you just made)
• 3 cups confectionary sugar
• 2 teaspoons milk

Directions:

Then it’s onto the buttercream. If you are using two flavors you can play with swirling them together, putting both flavors on opposite sides of one pastry bag. I snipped the tops off of two disposable bags and worked with each color independently. This was the result I liked best. Obviously, I am not a genius with a piping bag.