I'm finding myself caught in the same conundrum (I spelled that right on the first try!) I was when I made the banana pecan cupcakes. Though the fruit in this case is a blueberry as opposed to a banana, the question remains the same... when does a muffin become a cupcake? I'm still going to maintain what I said before, that it's the frosting that turns a simple muffin into a cupcake. But, in the instance of these blueberries-and-cream cupcakes (no link on marthastewart.com) they were much more cakey than your average muffin. This could mean it's more than just the frosting that transforms a muffin into a cupcake. Jury's still out.I still haven't learned to read through an entire recipe before I start baking, but in this case, it didn't matter. This was a fairly simple recipe, nothing too tricky involved. I was surprised though, that I didn't have to toss the blueberries in flour before folding them into the batter (like I did with these chocolate chip cupcakes) to help them "float" in the batter so they wouldn't all sink to the bottom. But, I didn't. Turns out blueberries are less dense than chocolate chips, who knew?
Like I said, nothing too tricky about these cupcakes, the batter was done relatively quickly and ready for the oven. I filled the liners about three-quarters full and for the most part was happy with the size of the cupcakes when they came out of the oven. Only a few were a little larger that I normally like, and they were all flat. Not the rounded beauties that I strive for. Martha said to bake these cupcakes for 25 total minutes with a turn halfway through the total baking time. Since my oven timer only works in whole minutes I baked in 12-minute intervals and the cupcakes came out perfectly, with a lovely golden hue.
While the cupcakes were baking I made the whipped cream that was to accompany them. Normally I wait a little while to give myself a baking break before making the cupcake's topping, but since whipped cream is very easy I found the energy to get everything done at once. It took less than 5 minutes (thank you stand mixer with whisk attachment) and it was done. I put the whipped cream in the fridge to keep cool while the cupcakes continued baking, and then cooled.
The last time I made whipped cream was for these rhubarb cupcakes and for those cupcakes I piped the whipped cream onto the cupcakes directly from the Ziploc bag I stored it in. Since I liked how those cupcakes turned out so much I did the same thing with these cupcakes. Unfortunately my piping this time around wasn't as good as the last time. I think I cut the hole in the bag a little too big this time. The cupcakes looked fine nonetheless, just not as good as the rhubarb cupcakes. Like the rhubarb cupcakes these cupcakes also got a little garnish, naturally blueberries would make the most sense and that's precisely what the garnish was. I had a good amount of blueberries left over, turns out my eyes are not very good measuring cups, so I liberally gave each cupcake 4 berries. I thought 5 might be a little overkill. The garnish on top definitely gave these cupcakes a little something extra, but my favorite part of these cupcakes was the blueberries that you can see through the cupcake liner. Like a pretty little secret.
