Tessa's Recipe Rundown
Taste: Absolutely bursting with fresh, fruity, and tangy flavors!
Texture: The cupcakes are perfectly tender and moist, with juicy blueberries studded throughout. Then the buttercream is ultra rich, smooth, and creamy. Heaven!
Ease: Super simple!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe: So pretty, flavorful cupcakes, perfect for any spring event!
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These Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes are the perfect bright, fresh treat for spring or summertime celebrations.
I was recently reminded just how delightful the lemon & blueberry flavor combination is, so I was inspired to create a recipe for Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes. I’m SO excited with what I was able to come up with.
This recipe uses a small amount of brown sugar in addition to the standard granulated sugar and an extra egg yolk. These tweaks ensure the cupcakes are as moist and flavorful as possible, while being tender yet sturdy enough to handle a generous amount of buttercream frosting.
Finish it all off with a stunning swirl of buttercream frosting, and you have yourself a treat that’s perfect for Easter, Mother’s Day, or any springtime or summertime party!
Sprinkle of Science
How to Make Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes
How to Make MOIST Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes
- Measure your flour correctly. I highly recommend using a digital kitchen scale for the most accurate way to measure your ingredients. If you don’t have one, use the ‘spoon and level’ method to prevent adding too much flour to your cupcake batter, as this will make your Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes dry and tough. Learn more about how to measure correctly here.
- Don’t reduce the sugar in this recipe. Sugar actually helps contribute to moistness, structure, and more! Learn more about the role sugar plays in baking here.
- Use real buttermilk. More on this just below.
Do I Have to Use Real Buttermilk?
I’ve tried this recipe with both regular milk and buttercream, and the buttercream really does make a difference. It’s worth making a trip to the store! Real buttermilk brings a beautiful tang and helps produce a moist, tall, light cupcake. DIY substitutions simply can’t provide the same benefits. You can learn more about the magic of buttermilk here.
What is the Best Cupcake Pan for Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes?
I love my Wilton cupcake pan here for all cupcakes. I have not tried these Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes as mini cupcakes.
How to Prevent Cupcakes from Sticking to the Liner
Use high-quality liners. These cupcake liners are my favorite, as cupcakes don’t stick to them. Check out my article on how to prevent cupcake liners from sticking here if this is a common problem for you.
How to Frost Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes
- For the gourmet swirled frosting, we’re going to make one batch of buttercream and add fresh blueberry puree to one half. So easy, but so impressive!
- I used the Ateco #846 piping tip, which is a large closed star piping tip, but you can use any piping tip you prefer.
- If you wish to enhance the color of your frosting, I highly recommend using a purple gel food coloring like this one. Liquid food coloring adds too much liquid to the frosting, making it thinner and more difficult to pipe.
- Check out my full tutorial on how to achieve beautiful swirled cupcake frosting here.
How to Store Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes
Serve or store at room temperature for up to 1 day, or in the fridge for up to 3 days. Let come to room temperature before serving.
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Ingredients
For the cupcakes:
- 1 3/4 cups (222 grams) all-purpose flour, measured correctly
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 stick (113 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup (50 grams) lightly packed brown sugar
- 1 large egg plus one egg yolk, at room temperature
- 1 cup (240 ml) buttermilk, at room temperature
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon zest
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 3/4 cup (115 grams) fresh or frozen blueberries
- 2 tablespoons (16 grams) all-purpose flour
For the buttercream:
- 3/4 cup (115 grams) fresh or frozen blueberries (thawed and drained if frozen)
- 3 cups (306 grams) powdered sugar, sifted
- 2 sticks (227 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 to 2 tablespoons heavy or whipping cream
- Lemon zest, to garnish
Instructions
Make the cupcakes:
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two standard muffin tins with 15 paper liners.
- In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, use an electric mixer on medium-high speed to beat the butter and sugars until fluffy and very well combined, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl. On medium-low speed, add the egg and yolk and beat until combined, scraping down the bowl as needed. Combine the buttermilk, lemon zest, and lemon juice. Add in the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture in alternating batches, starting and ending with the flour, mixing until just combined.
- In a small bowl, toss the blueberries with the remaining 2 tablespoons of flour. Add into the batter and fold with a spatula until combined. Be very careful not to overmix, as that will create dense and gummy cupcakes.
- Divide the batter among the prepared muffin tins, filling each 3/4 full. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow the cupcakes to cool in the pan for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.
Make the buttercream:
- Using a blender, immersion blender, or food processor, puree the blueberries. Pass the pureed blueberries through a fine mesh strainer and into a medium bowl to remove the skins. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix together the sugar and butter. Mix on low speed until well blended and then increase the speed to medium and beat for another 3 minutes. Add the salt and vanilla and beat on medium for 1 minute.
- Remove half of the buttercream to a bowl and add the blueberry puree gradually until the buttercream is well-colored and flavored but not too thin. If the buttercream does get too thin, add more powdered sugar to thicken.*
- To the plain buttercream, add the cream and beat until well combined.
Swirled Piping:
- In a large piping bag fitted with a decorative tip (such as the Ateco #846), use a spoon to scoop the plain frosting into one section of the bag, using your finger on the outside of the bag to help scrape it off. Repeat with the blueberry frosting. Ensure you’re aligning the frosting so it starts at the same place in the bag. Don’t worry if the colors touch each other.
- Squeeze the bag to slightly blur the colors together for a watercolor type effect. Twist the bag and squeeze out a test pipe to ensure the colors are coming out evenly before piping onto your cupcakes. Garnish frosted cupcakes with lemon zest.
- Serve or store at room temperature for up to 1 day, or in the fridge for up to 3 days. Let come to room temperature before serving.
Notes
This post was originally published in 2016 and has been updated with additional baking tips.
First time making cupcakes and wanted to try this recipe. It was easy to follow, and the cupcakes came out really tasty! My frosting was a little too buttery for my taste, but still! Really good cupcakes.
how do you store cupcakes
Hi Yvonne! As it states at the bottom of the recipe, “store at room temperature for up to 1 day, or in the fridge for up to 3 days. Let come to room temperature before serving.” Happy baking!
Very lovely and easy. I’m not a baker, and they came out perfectly. I didn’t have enough powdered sugar, so my frosting only had two cups. It was ideal sweetness for my family. It was my first time piping, and I kind of impressed myself (thanks to this recipe, of course).
So excited you loved these cupcakes, Leah! We hope to see you trying out other Handle the Heat recipes as you expand your baking repertoire! 🙂
Lord help me, these cupcakes are amazing! So yummy and light. Not to sweet, a little tang and a burst of fresh blueberry. So good! I did add a little bit of lemon juice to the plain half of the buttercream, instead of adding the heavy cream. I could eat a dozen by myself.
Can I make this buttercream a day before?
Sure! Store in an air-tight container in the fridge, then bring to room temperature prior to re-whipping and piping onto the cupcakes. Let us know what you think of this recipe! 🙂
Do you typically use light brown sugar or dark brown sugar for this recipe?
Hi Krystina! We used light brown sugar 🙂
Absolutely wonderful. Just wondering if you have any tips for converting this into a whole cake? It was so good I’m going to make it a 3 tier cake for my kid’s birthday party.
Happy to hear it! I have an article all about converting cake into cupcakes and vice versa that I just published last month 🙂
I made these for my mom’s 52nd birthday!
They were delicious and so pretty! Everyone loved them!
They were easy to make and everything came together perfectly!
Thank you for this recipe!!
I’m so glad to hear this!
Turned out great! Very pretty, very tasty. Thanks for the recipe Tessa!
Sadly – it didn’t work terribly well for me… and I was stunned as I think this was the first semi fail
that I’ve ever had 🙁 And of course it HAD to be for my husbands birthday :((
I was very excited to try this one. Followed the recipe to the letter. The cupcakes faired pretty well
although I too found them a bit dense… despite baking them according to the toothpick test.. I think
they may have needed a bit more time.
My BIG problem came with the butter cream icing. It kept separating… or curdling ? I looked
on line and the suggestion was to mix it longer.. but things didn’t improve. And as I used
frozen blueberries.. ( defrosted of course) .. there wasn’t much liquid and so the butter
cream was far too thick, I had to add more whipping cream to loosen the mixture up..
but it never produced a nice fluffy spreadable icing as featured in the image. I would
make the cupcakes again but would definitely go with a different icing… SO much butter yikes !!
Thank you for the recipe nonetheless !
Even with making substitutions for my gluten/ dairy free family, these cupcakes were still absolutely delicious.
So happy to hear that, Carol!
I really liked these cupcakes but I found that when I used fresh blueberry purée for the buttercream it came out so thin. I had to add at least two extra cups of powdered sugar to thicken it up.
I made a second batch and used blueberry jam instead and it came out much better. I didn’t have to add any powdered sugar and the blueberry flavor was great.