Wild Blueberry Cupcakes with Mascarpone Icing

Light spongy cupcakes made with wild blueberry jam. They’re topped with white chocolate and mascarpone which is flavoured and coloured with bilberry powder. These wild blueberry cupcakes are worth making for the colour alone, but bilberries do have quite a few health benefits too.

On a recent trip to St Austell, I was quite excited to discover Nature Kitchen. This is a shop dedicated to spices and herbs. What bliss, I could have spent hours there and bought up half the shop if only I had the time, space and money.

Bilberries

One of the purchases I did make, however, was a pot of bilberry powder or ground dried bilberries. Bilberries are the UK’s native blueberry and grow wild around these parts. They’re incredibly good for you, but the season is short and they are often difficult to find. They’re also much smaller than the commercial blueberry that most people are familiar with.

Buying the powder, I reasoned, would not only enable me to give a blueish colour to cake icings, but would imbue me with super powers too!!!

Wild Blueberry Cupcakes with Mascarpone Icing

I was eager to try the bilberry powder out as both a flavouring and colouring. So I decided to make some wild blueberry cupcakes at the first opportunity.

CT had a pot of wild blueberry spread that he’d been gifted at some point, but it’s been loitering around in the cupboard now for far too long. This was the ideal opportunity to use it. It’s called a spread because it’s made with apple juice rather than sugar so EU regulations prevent it being called jam.

For the cake part of the recipe, I based it on the one given for raspberry cupcakes in Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery. I substituted the blueberry spread for the stated raspberry jam. And I also used half wholemeal flour as I usually do and made a couple of other tweaks. The icing I made up.

Rather than mixing the jam into the batter completely, I tried to swirl it in so that the finished cakes were streaky. But by the time the cakes were cooked, it was hard to see the difference in colour. So there’s really little point in attempting that step.

These wild blueberry cupcakes went into the last of my favourite blue cupcake cases. I’ve not been able to find them again, so I heaved a bit of a sigh. But really blue cakes had to go into blue cases.

White Chocolate and Mascarpone Bilberry Icing

The white chocolate and mascarpone icing was delicious. At first I added the bilberry powder rather cautiously. Just a pinch and then a bit more. But the colour was not as powerful as I thought it might be, so I ended up adding larger quantities until I’d used a rounded teaspoonful.

I used some of the sugar alphabet letters from my recent cake decorating wins to write Wild, Blue, Berry, Cup, & Cakes on the top of the bilberry cupcakes. This was rather time consuming and I’m not sure I’d be so exacting again.

The cakes were delicious, well risen, moist and surprisingly light. The icing was also good and set the cakes off nicely, I thought. I loved the colour, but was a little disappointed that I couldn’t taste anything in the least bit fruity. CT, however, as a seasoned bilberry forager was adamant he could taste the bilberries. My palate obviously requires radical cleansing.

Other Fruity Cupcake Recipes You Might Like

• Apple crumble and custard cakes
• Blackberry & apple cupcakes
• Blueberry lemon cupcakes (sugar free)
• Lemon coconut cakes
• Mini orange cakes
• Passionfruit & white chocolate cupcakes
• Raspberry & white chocolate cupcakes
• Roasted strawberry chocolate cupcakes

Keep in Touch

Thank you for visiting Tin and Thyme. If you make these wild blueberry cupcakes, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. Do you have any recommendations or advice for making these cakes?

Please rate the recipe, it really helps. If you post pictures of your creations on social media, tag me @choclette8 so I can see them.

For more delicious and nutritious recipes follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard or Pinterest. And don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to my weekly newsletter. Or why not join the conversation in our Healthy Vegetarian Whole Food Recipes Facebook Group?

If you’d like more cupcake recipes, follow the link and you’ll find I have quite a lot of them. All delicious and nutritious, of course.

Choclette x

Wild Blueberry Cupcakes. PIN IT.

Wild Blueberry Cupcakes – The Recipe

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5 from 3 votes

Wild Blueberry Cupcakes

Light spongy cupcakes made with wild blueberry jam. They're topped with white chocolate and mascarpone which is flavoured and coloured with bilberry powder.

Cook ModeToggle to keep screen awake

Prep Time30 minutes mins

Cook Time20 minutes mins

Total Time50 minutes mins

Course: Afternoon Tea

Cuisine: British

Keyword: blueberries, cakes, cupcakes, mascarpone, white chocolate

Servings: 12 cupcakes

Calories: 297kcal

Author: Choclette @ Tin and Thyme

Ingredients

Cupcakes

• 110 g unsalted butter softened
• 180 g golden caster sugar (I used my homemade cardamom sugar)
• 2 large eggs (I used duck eggs)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 125 g self-raising wholemeal flour (self-rising whole-wheat flour)
• 120 g plain flour (all purpose flour)
• ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
• 125 ml milk
• 3 tbsp blueberry jam (I used wild blueberry spread)

Bilberry Icing

• 50 g white chocolate (I used Green&Black’s)
• 125 g mascarpone cheese
• 1 ½ tsp bilberry powder

Metric – US Customary

Instructions

Cupcakes

• Cream the butter with the sugar until well beaten and fluffy.
  110 g unsalted butter, 180 g golden caster sugar
• Beat in the eggs, one by one, followed by the vanilla extract.
  2 large eggs, 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl.
  125 g self-raising wholemeal flour (self-rising whole-wheat flour), 120 g plain flour (all purpose flour), ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
• Stir in ⅓ of the flour, followed by ⅓ of the milk.
  125 ml milk
• Repeat this process twice more until all the flour and milk is incorporated.
• Roughly stir in the blueberry jam or spread.
  3 tbsp blueberry jam
• Spoon into 12 muffin holes lined with cupcake cases and bake in a preheated oven at 180℃ (350℉, Gas 4) for 20 minutes.
• Leave to cool a little then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Bilberry Icing

• Melt the white chocolate in a bowl suspended over a pan of hot, but not boiling water. Leave to cool a little.
  50 g white chocolate
• Beat the mascarpone in a bowl with a wooden spoon until smooth.
  125 g mascarpone cheese
• Add the bilberry powder and stir it in. You might want to use a little more or a little less depending on what shade of purple you’re after.
  1 ½ tsp bilberry powder
• Beat in the white chocolate.
• Spread over the top of the cooled cakes with a palate knife.
• Decorate as you see fit.

Notes

Please note: calories and other nutritional information are per serving. They’re approximate and will depend on exact ingredients used.

Nutrition Estimate

Calories: 297kcal | Carbohydrates: 37g | Protein: 5g | Fat: 15g | Saturated Fat: 9g | Cholesterol: 59mg | Sodium: 50mg | Potassium: 88mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 21g | Vitamin A: 431IU | Vitamin C: 1mg | Calcium: 47mg | Iron: 1mg

Tried this recipe?Leave a comment below letting us know how you got on and do share a photo on Instagram. Tag @choclette8 or use hashtag #tinandthyme.

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Sharing

Ros chose B as the letter for this month’s AlphaBakes. So I’m submitting my wild blueberry cupcakes to this monthly challenge which is hosted this month by The more than occasional baker.

I’m also adding these bilberry cupcakes to Made With Love Mondays. This is a blogging event created by Javelin Warrior which I keep meaning to enter but never seem to manage. The aim is to encourage people to make everything from scratch rather than use ready made items.

And I’m sharing these wild blueberry cupcakes with Apply to Face Blog for #BakingCrumbs.