Make It Pinterest – Mascarpone Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes

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It took me awhile, but with Pinterest I finally found my love for social media. Twitter and Facebook have never been my thing.  But, Pinterest is another story.  It’s like saving all your favorite things, but they don’t have to be in some scrapbook or recipe file, just right at your fingertips for easy retrieval.

My love for Pinterest has made me want to create a weekly post called “Make It Pinterest” where I will share a recipe or tutorial or something that I’ve made from Pinterest recently.  Maybe I’m the odd one out, but I make a lot of stuff from Pinterest — recipes, sewing tutorials, activities for the kids, decorations for my house.  A lot of the time it’s stuff I rarely show on my blog (mainly because I am having too much fun to remember a camera in the process).

Today’s Make It Pinterest is a heavenly cupcake recipe which came from a blog called There Goes the Cupcake.  It’s this heavenly Lemon Blueberry Cupcake.  The challenges I faced were A) learning how to make lemon curd because this is a cupcake stuffed with lemon curd and I’ve never made it; and B) the frosting was a mascarpone cream also with the lemon curd.  I wasn’t sure what mascarpone cream was or tasted like or even where to get it.  Plus, not only did I need to succeed in making a decent lemon curd, but I had to incorporate some of it into the frosting.

I should also mention that as ridiculous as it sounds, I usually turn my nose up at blueberries in food.  I love blueberries by themselves, but before now the thought of eating blueberries in something like a cupcake, muffin, bread, etc., has never appealed to me.  Then, I saw this cupcake, and it’s all I could think about for a week. Blueberries + lemon = yumminess!

The lemon curd was amazingly easy.  I have always been afraid of adding eggs to anything that’s hot.  It seems they always scare you with the eggs cooking themselves in the heat and then whatever you’re making comes out disgusting.  But, that didn’t happen to me.  I just kept on stirring with a whisk and about 8 minutes into it, my lemon curd was beautifully thickened.  I cooled it in the fridge.

As for the mascarpone cream, it’s heavenly and even better than cream cheese.  You can even find it at Walmart in the deli section with the “fancy” cheeses.  It’s expensive, but it was very tasty.

For the final verdict — it was divine!  Even Nate loved it, and that man is still obsessed with my pumpkin cheesecake cupcakes.  For him to say, “Wow, this is amazing!” is a feat because his usual response to any cupcake I make is “This is good, but not as good as the pumpkin ones.”

Lemon-Blueberry Cake                                                           Printable Recipe
Yields: About 30 cupcakes

Ingredients

2 cups + 6 tbs all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

3 cups fresh blueberries

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 cup whole milk

2 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 tsp lemon extract

1 tsp lemon zest

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

4 eggs

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350.  Prepare the muffin tins with cupcake liners. 
2. In a separate bowl mix flour, baking powder and salt.  Take 1-2 tbs of this flour mixture and mix it into the blueberries.
3. In another bowl mix the cream, milk, vanilla extract, lemon extract, and lemon zest. 
4. With a mixer, cream the butter and sugar until it’s very fluffy and a lovely yellow color.  Usually this takes about 3-5 minutes.  
5. Add each egg one at a time to the butter and sugar
6. Then begin adding the milk and flour mixtures.  Start and end with the flour mixture.  
7. Next fold the blueberries into the batter. 
8. Fill each cupcake liner about 3/4 full. 
9. Bake for about 18-20 minutes.  
10. Let cool completely before adding lemon curd. 

Lemon Curd

Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter 

1 cup lemon juice

2 tbs lemon zest

1 1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoon cornstarch

1/4 tsp salt

12 large egg yolks

Directions:

1. Prepare all your ingredients first. 
2. Mix together the sugar, salt and cornstarch in a separate bowl. 
3. Place the egg yolks in another bowl. 
4. Melt the butter in a sauce pan over medium-low heat. 
5. Remove from heat and add the lemon juice and zest. 
6. Add the sugar mixture to the pan.  
7. Whisk in the egg yolks until smooth and return to heat. 
8. Cook over medium-low heat for roughly 8-10 minutes until the mixture has thickened and coats the back of a spoon. Do not allow the mixture to boil. 
9. Once thickened, strain the mixture though a fine mesh strainer (or I used a colander with small holes) into a large bowl. 
10. Allow to chill in the refrigerator completely before using. 

Lemon Mascarpone Cream Frosting 

Ingredients

16 oz mascarpone cheese, softened

2/3 cup lemon curd 

2 cups heavy cream
1/3 cup + 2 tbs white sugar

Directions:

1. Beat the sugar and cream to soft peaks in your mixer. 
2. Combine the mascarpone and lemon curd in a separate bowl and mix. 
3. Add the mascarpone mixture to the cream.  
4. Gently fold to combine.  I ran the mixture on very low until they were just combined.  Then, I used my rubber spatula to gently mix it together a bit more. 
5. If the mixture is overworked it can separate or look grainy.  To fix this add several tablespoons of heavy cream and mix with the spatula until smooth again. 

Assemble the cupcakes: 

1. First, measure out the 2/3 cup of lemon curd for the frosting and set aside. 
2. After the cupcakes are finished cooling, use a cupcake corer (or even an apple corer or knife) to cut  the middle out and remove the tops .  Then, pipe in a bit of lemon curd in the hole (about 1 tbs). 
3. Then place the tops back on.  If they don’t fit perfectly, it’s fine, you’ll hide it with piped frosting.
4. I piped on the frosting with a large star tip but you could put it on however you like. 
5. I garnished each cupcake with a washed and dried blueberry and yellow sprinkles. 

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