Red, White, and Blueberry Cupcakes with Forget-Me-Nots
My friend Natalee made these Memorial Day cupcakes: red velvet cupcakes filled with blueberry pie filling, topped with mascarpone frosting and Forget-Me-Not flowers. Forget-Me-Nots are the traditional memorial for Canada’s Newfoundland war dead instead of the Flanders Poppies popular in America. These cupcakes are beautiful.
Ingredients
Method
Blueberry Pie Filling
- In a saucepan, combine the sugar, flour, spices, and zest, and slowly add the water. Mix in the blueberries and lemon juice.
- Cook over medium heat until thick, stirring constantly but gently so as to not crush the berries. Remove from heat and stir in the butter.
Fill the Cupcakes
- Use a knife to cut a cone out of the center of each cupcake.
- Cut the top off of the cone.
- Fill the hole with blueberry filling.
- Replace the “lid”.
Patriotic Swirl Frosting
- Paint the inside of your pastry bag with red and blue food coloring before putting your plain colored frosting into it. It doesn’t matter if your painting is perfect; it will look great when it’s piped out.
- Pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes.
Piped Forget-Me-Nots
- Use a 101 tip if you have one. Hold the wide end of the tip out from the center of the flower and move the tip in a slight oval motion while piping the frosting out, then ease up on the pressure, return to center, and gently lift up at the end.
- Repeat for 4 more petals, holding the cupcake in your hand and gently rotating it to place each petal slightly overlapping the previous one.
- Once you have all five petals, pipe a small yellow dot in the center. A zip-top bag with the corner cut off works fine.
Marshmallow Forget-Me-Nots
- Cut mini marshmallows diagonally. Cut straight down; do not move the knife back and forth or you will be left with small balls of marshmallow instead of the petal shape.
- Press the cut edge gently in blue sugar.
- Arrange as five petals, pipe a yellow dot in the center, and voila!
Nutrition
Notes
The blueberry pie filling makes enough for about 48 cupcakes; halve it for 24.
The cone method of filling works for pretty much any filling, especially with a dense cake that would not take kindly to piping a filling inside, or with a lumpy filling like this one.
Use a stiffer frosting for the flowers so they hold their shape. Real forget-me-nots are tiny, about half the size of a dime; a larger tip like a 104 will make bigger flowers.
Save some white frosting for under the flowers if you want them to stand out. Gloves are a good idea with this much red food coloring.
The red velvet cupcakes and mascarpone frosting are Hallee’s recipes, posted separately on the blog.
Thanks for hosting me on your blog, Hallee!