Blueberry Cupcakes

Hiya

How hot has it been?! I haven't baked in a while as I can't be bare the heat of the kitchen. These were made BBH (Before the British Heatwave!)
How pretty is this colour people? As I loved my Lemon +  Blueberry cupcakes I fancied a complete Blueberry one so here are the pics of my Blueberry baking labour.

With these I used my usual cupcakes recipe and just chucked some blueberries in at the end. As I had some Bonne Maman Blueberry jam I decided to use this to flavour my buttercream. A thing to note was that I had to use a lot of the jam to get the Blueberry flavour I wanted, loads actually, but as the jam isn't really sweet it thankfully didn't make the buttercream too sweet. Next time I think shall use fresh Blueberries in the buttercream, as I think that would  be an easier more effective way of getting a lovely Blueberry flavour. 

Recipe for Blueberry Buttercream

100g Unsalted Butter (Lurpack)

200g Icing sugar

3 heaped tablespoon of Blueberry Jam

Method

Beat the butter with half the icing sugar till you get a  sandy consistency, then add the rest of the icing sugar along with the blueberry jam. Beat this all together till everything is incorporated.This is where I stop and check if I'm happy with the flavour and add more Blueberry jam if necessary. Normally I'm carefully to not over beat however I'd heard about beating your buttercream a lot to get a nice light fluffy buttercream. So hoping I wouldn't take it too far.. I gave it ago...and er...I  think I may have beat it too much. It was certainly lighter in consistency but I felt it made it way too soft really, which made piping trickier plus I felt it made it taste buttery which was a bit odd .

On to the flavour, I seriously loved these! The cupcake was lovely with juicy blueberries in and around. The buttercream was a lovely Blueberry flavour. Light consistency + lovely flavour...loved it.  

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Chocolate & Cherry Brownies

I do solemnly swear that I shall make brownies more often! They are seriously awesome,          
Fudgy-tick
Seriously chocolatey -tick
Divine-tick

I have used another Fold In The Flour recipe,this time it's Susie's Cherry Chocolate Brownies.Now that makes three recipes of Susie's I have tried which I think means I'm officially her stalking her blog now :)  Its her own fault for having too many lovely recipes....so Susie only has herself to blame!

I decided on using cherries because recently I've been buying cherry scones which have been really lovely, so naturally that progressed to wanting to smother them a in chocolate brownie....as you do.

I was really happy with these, I was very careful not to over/under bake them. The result was delicious fudgey textured brownie mmm. The only thing I was annoyed about was I couldn't find the cherries Susie used so I opted for fresh cherries. They were perfectly fine and juicy but not as flavoursome as I bet the other cherries would have been. Although It was nice to bite in to the brownie and get a juicy cherry, I would have loved a stronger cherry flavour .

I shall be entering these in to Teatime Treats which is hosted this month by Lavendar &Lovage as the theme is fresh fruits. As I used fresh cherries I think they qualify.