Summer Dessert – Page 4 – Bead Yarn & Spatula

Blueberry Crumb Muffins

While berries can pretty much be found year-round at most supermarkets, there’s nothing like getting them during the summer when they are at their peak. I have definitely made the most of them this summer incorporating them into quite a few desserts – as the pièce de résistance on a lemon & pastry cream cake, as a topping to 4th of July themed cupcakes and most recently in raspberry cupcakes. And when I saw that I had a pint of blueberries sitting in my refrigerator a little longer than I would have liked, I decided it was time to use them before losing them. I opted on making a recipe that I love using for blueberries – and one that I have blogged about before – a Blueberry Crumb Cake. Although, this time around I made two tweaks to the recipe….

I dredged the blueberries in flour before folding them into the batter so they wouldn’t all sink to the bottom…

And I used the batter to make muffins instead of a cake,

Which I still topped with streusel before baking.

Hence, Blueberry Crumb Muffins.

And if you are wondering if the flour covered blueberries worked, just take a look. You can see hints of blueberries at the top of the muffin near the crumb topping as opposed to seeing all of the blueberries at the bottom.

Blueberry Crumb Muffins – adapted from here

Makes 8 Muffins

Streusel:

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup light brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

Muffins:

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature (3/4 stick)

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest

2/3 cup sour cream

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup fresh blueberries, dredged in enough flour to coat them

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line 8 muffins cups with paper liners.

For the streusel:

Combine granulated sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg in a bowl. Stir in the melted butter and then the flour. Mix well and set aside.

For the muffins:

In a medium bowl sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together, set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment cream the butter and sugar on high speed for 4 to 5 minutes, until light. Reduce the speed to low and add the eggs, one at a time. Then add the vanilla, lemon zest and sour cream.

With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture to the batter until just combined. Fold in the blueberries and stir with a spatula to be sure the batter is completed mixed.

Divide the batter among the muffin cups – I used an ice cream scoop – and crumble the streusel over the batter.

Bake for 20 – 25 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean. Remove the cupcakes from the tins and let them cool completely on a wire rack.

Freshly Squeezed Key Lime Pie

They say you should never go to the supermarket hungry and I think the same should be said when your creative baking juices are running wild. Living in New York it’s extremely rare to see key limes at my local supermarket but during a recent trip I found just that… three lonely bags of key limes and I immediately thought why not make a key lime pie (I should note that prior to this I had only tried it once and didn’t care for it since I couldn’t taste the lime). I put a bag in my shopping cart and then called a friend to see if she knew anything about making one – I wasn’t sure how many limes I needed and wondered whether or not it required any oddball ingredients. She did a quick Google search for me and it turned out that it wasn’t all that difficult and the ingredients were all ones that I already had home – except for the key limes of course.

Once I got home I did a few Google searches of my own to find the perfect recipe to follow. I decided on one that I found on the website the Joy of Baking. But then the following morning as I was getting ready to start making the filling I noticed that there was a recipe right on the bag of the key limes so I decided to combine the two of the recipes to make the filling.

I knew that I needed a 1/2 cup of key lime juice, but, I wasn’t too sure how many limes I would need to squeeze to get that amount. From looking at recipe online I got all different numbers ranging from 12 – 20. I decided to start on the smaller side and opted to start off with slicing and squeezing 10 limes. Prior to slicing the limes rolled them to make sure I would get the most juice out of them.

After squeezing the 10 limes I had just about a 1/2 cup of juice.

Since I did have pulp and seeds in the juice I strained it using sieve. My sieve also doubles as sifter from time to time. In all honesty they are both one in the same.

After straining it I was just shy of a 1/2 cup.

So, I rolled, sliced and squeezed 2 more limes which got me exactly to a 1/2 cup. I wised up this time and squeezed the limes over the sieve so I wouldn’t have to strain out any pulp or seeds.

Along with the lime juice I also needed 4 egg yolks, a can of sweetened condensed milk and the zest of one regular lime to make the pie.

I also needed a pie crust… I cheated and opted to use a Keebler Graham Ready Crust instead of making one myself. I figured squeezing the limes was enough work… LOL!

To begin I used the whisk attachment of my stand mixer and whisked together the eggs yolks.

I then slowly added in the sweetened condensed milk.

Then the freshly squeezed lime juice.

And finally I added in the lime zest.

Here’s what the filling looked like prior to being poured into the pie crust.

As you can see the filling barely filled the pie crust. Which I didn’t mind since it meant that I wouldn’t have to worry about it overflowing into my oven while it baked and more importantly it meant that there would be enough space for a whipped cream topping!

After baking for a mere 15 minutes it was ready to come out of the oven. I let it cool on the wire rack for a bit and then placed it in the refrigerator so it could cool.

Once it was in the refrigerator for at least two hours I started working on the whipped cream frosting. It’s a basic recipe… one cup of heavy cream and 2 tablespoons of confectioners’ sugar whipped until stiff peaks form.

Using my favorite Wilton tip -1M – (my favorite because I don’t need to use a coupler on the decorating bag for it, it creates a nice sized star for decorating and you can use it to create a nice swirl topping on cupcakes) I decorated the top of the pie with dropped stars. I started by adding stars around the outer perimeter of the pie and then for the second round I placed the stars in between the stars from round one and continued that for the remaining rounds.

The pie was delicious… Definitely something I will make again.

Key Lime Pie*

Ingredients

1 9-inch graham cracker pie shell

1/2 cup key lime juice (approximately 12 key limes)

1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk

4 egg yolks

Grated lime zest of one lime

Directions

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

2) Whisk together the four eggs yolks until pale and fluffy

3) Gradually add in the condensed milk and continue mixing until the mixture becomes light and fluffy

4) Add in the lime juice and finally the lime zest.

5) Pour the filling into the graham cracker pie shell and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the filling is set.

6) Let the pie cool completely on a wire rack and then cover and refrigerate for a few hours.

7) Decorate with whipped cream or save for serving and drop heaping spoonfuls of whipped cream on each slice.

*Recipe is a combination of the Key Lime Pie recipes from Joy of Baking and Susie Key Limes.

Whipped Cream

Ingredients

1 cup heavy whipping cream

2 tbsp. confectioners’ sugar

Directions

Using a whisk attachment on an electric mixer beat the cream and sugar until stiff peaks form.

Lemon Cupcakes with Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting

I recently went to Georgetown Cupcake – if you haven’t tried them and you get the opportunity to do so definitely do it, even if you have to wait on a ridiculously long line – to get some cupcakes and while I was there I picked up one of their menus. While they have staple cupcakes they make every day they also have a daily (and monthly) rotating schedule of specialty flavors that they offer as well. One of those specialty flavors is a Lemon Berry cupcake – a lemon and raspberry cupcake with a raspberry frosting topped with a candied lemon – which gave me the idea for a basic lemon cupcake with a raspberry whipped cream frosting which then turned into a raspberry cream cheese frosting. I could have sworn I had a recipe for lemon cupcakes among my recipe stash, but, I couldn’t find one so I turned to Allrecipes to do so. I like using recipes from their website since you can scale them down to whatever serving size you need. After reading through a few recipes I settled on one submitted by Megan C. that was initially scaled for twenty-four cupcakes and I scaled down to twelve. The directions also have a recipe for a Blackberry Buttercream which sounds pretty good as well.

I started by assembling all of my ingredients for the cupcakes: sugar, butter, an egg, vanilla extract, flour, baking powder, milk and a lemon.

Using a Microplane I grated half of the lemon to get the zest and then squeezed it to get the juice.

To make the batter I started off by creaming together the sugar and butter and then adding in the egg.

Once the egg was mixed in well I added in the vanilla extract.

Next up the flour.

Then the milk, lemon zest and juice.

Now it was time to spoon the batter into my prepared cupcake tin. While I did scale the recipe down for twelve cupcakes the batter definitely didn’t look like it was for twelve decent sized cupcakes so while I normally use my ice cream scoop to spoon the batter into the cupcake tins I opted to use my cookie scoop instead so I could be sure to have enough batter for twelve. As you can see the liners were barely halfway filled.

After baking for 20 minutes in a 350 degrees F preheated oven they were done. As I suspected, the cupcakes by no means baked-up to fill the entire liner. Oh well, at least I know for next time that if I am going to make twelve I should scale the recipe to make eighteen cupcakes.

While the cupcakes cooled I got to making the frosting.

As I mentioned before, I was initially planning on making a raspberry whipped cream frosting but decided to make a cream cheese frosting instead since I figured it would hold up better and be a little richer with the lemon cupcake. I actually didn’t follow a specific recipe for it since I’ve made cream cheese frosting quite a few times before and it’s fairly simple. I opted to cut back on the confectioners’ sugar so it wouldn’t be too sweet with the addition of the raspberry jam.

I started by creaming together one stick of unsalted butter and an 8oz. block of cream cheese with a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

I then added in 2 cups of confectioners’ sugar.

And finally 1/4 cup of seedless raspberry jam. It came out to be a nice shade of pink actually.

Once the cupcakes were completely cooled I piped the frosting onto each of the cupcakes using a large star tip.

Final verdict… They were quite yummy, especially the frosting. I plan on using it again for chocolate or vanilla cupcakes.

Lemon Cupcakes

1/2 cup white sugar

1/4 cup butter

1 egg

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 cup low-fat milk

1/2 lemon, juice and zest

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

2. Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners

3. Cream sugar and butter in the bowl of a stand mixer until fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla extract.

4. Beat in flour and baking powder until thoroughly combined; beat in milk, lemon juice, and lemon zest to make a smooth batter.

5. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups.

6. Bake in the preheated oven until cupcake edges are slightly golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool cupcakes completely.

Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting

1 8 oz. package cream cheese, softened

1 stick unsalted butter, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups confectioners’ sugar

1/4 cup seedless raspberry jam

Begin by creaming the cream cheese and butter together and then add in the vanilla extract. Reduce the speed of the mixer to low and add in the confectioners’ sugar, once the sugar is incorporated add in the raspberry jam and continue mixing on medium speed.

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